Unsettling the Archive: Intervention and Parody in Contemporary Indigenous Photography Reilley Bishop-Stall McGill University, Montreal December 2018 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Art History and Communication Studies Art History Program © Reilley Bishop-Stall, 2018 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My doctoral research, which has spanned many years and undergone significant changes over time, would not have been possible without the support of numerous individuals and institutions. First and foremost, I am grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Christine Ross, for her guidance, encouragement, patience and advice. I have benefited immensely from Prof. Ross’s expertise in the study of contemporary art and broad theoretical knowledge, as well as from her openness and enthusiasm regarding my own research interests. I am forever grateful for the opportunity to have been mentored by Prof. Ross over these years. I owe my gratitude also to the rest of the faculty in McGill University’s Department of Art History and Communication Studies. In particular, I thank Prof. William Straw for the thoughtful and valuable feedback he has offered, acting as my second reader and internal examiner. I am grateful also to Prof. Angela Vanhaelen for her conversations, commentary and support over the years and to former faculty-member Dr. Amelia Jones for acting as second reader during my comprehensive exams. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the late Prof. Hajime Nakatani, my Master’s supervisor, whose mentorship, encouragement, and camaraderie in the earliest years of my graduate studies inspired and motivated me to pursue a doctoral degree. I extend my thanks also to Maureen Coote, Susana Machado and Matthew Dupuis for their informed and efficient attention to all administrative matters. Finally, I am grateful to both the Department of Art History and Communication Studies and the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada for affording me the opportunity to develop and teach a course on Contemporary Indigenous Art and Culture in Canada. Teaching this class strongly impacted my own doctoral work and cemented my research concentrations. I want also to acknowledge the undergraduate students that I had the honour of teaching for consistently impressing and inspiring me with their inquisitiveness, openness and eagerness. As a non-Indigenous Canadian scholar, researching and writing about the historically and politically informed work of Indigenous artists, I owe my gratitude to the many Indigenous artists, writers, academics and activists from whom I continue to learn so much, through either visual art spectatorship, reading, or personal correspondence and conversations. While there are too many people to name, I acknowledge above all, the artists whose work is examined in this thesis: Wendy Red Star, Chris Bose, Ken Gonzales-Day, Meryl McMaster, Kent Monkman, and Da-ka-xeen Mehner. All of my graduate work has been undertaken in Montreal, on the unceded ancestral territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka. I have endeavoured to remain cognizant of my location and my settler position in relation to the land throughout the course of my studies and extend my gratitude and admiration to the artists and activists, such as those discussed in this thesis, who tirelessly perform the vital labour of confronting and opposing settler colonialism. My doctoral research would not have been possible without the generous financial support of various institutions. I am grateful to the McCord Museum for granting me a year-long Max Stern Fellowship to undertake primary research in the Museum’s Notman Photographic Archives. In addition to the generous financial support provided by this fellowship, the archival research undertaken at the Museum fundamentally transformed my doctoral research and provided a foundation for the project, as it exists today. I extend my gratitude also to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for awarding me a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC CGS). In addition, I thank the Department of Art History and Communication Studies for my Principle, Provost and Graduate Excellence Fellowships and Graduate Travel Awards. I thank also Media@McGill for my Graduate Research Fellowship, Advanced Dissertation Grant and Travel Award. I thank the McGill 2 Institute for the Study of Canada for awarding me a Charles and Mayo Bronfman Award for Excellence in Teaching. Finally, I am further grateful to Dr. Christine Ross for furnishing me with multiple research fellowships, from which I not only benefited financially, but was also afforded invaluable opportunities to engage closely with her research and gain knowledge of academic publishing and conference organizing. I am also grateful to Dr. Ross for contributing funds for my travel to academic conferences and research sites over the years. I have been supported throughout my studies by a great number of friends and colleagues. In particular, I thank Dr. Caroline Bem for her friendship, feedback and French translations. I thank also my academic peers, Natalie Zayne Bussey, Karen Judge, Abigail Shapiro, Chris Gutierrez, Zoe de Luca and Karla McManus. Outside of academia, I have also benefited from the support and friendship of many people. I am eternally grateful to my family: my partner, my daughter, my siblings, and my parents. In particular, my graduate studies and the completion of this thesis would have been impossible without the unconditional love, support and encouragement – as well as the readership and feedback – of my parents, Bob Stall and Jacqui Bishop. Writers and editors, themselves, I thank my parents for instilling in me a sense of rigour when it comes to words and ideas, as well as a commitment to responsible and ethical research and reporting. I am also grateful to my partner’s family and specifically my mother-in- law, Shirl Gladue, for the generosity with which she has shared her stories and wisdom and for her enthusiasm about my research. I thank my dear friend Ela Leung for providing much-needed childcare to my darling daughter Olive during the final months of completing this thesis. Last, but not least, I thank my partner, Jason Gladue, who has been with me every step of the way and has served as both my strongest supporter and my most constant interlocutor. Our conversations have opened my eyes in so many ways and have greatly informed my research. Thank you, Jay, for everything. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of Deborah Trudel. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS IMAGES………………………………………………………………………………………..... 6 ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………. 11 RÉSUMÉ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 12 PREFACE………………………………………………………………………………………. 13 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………… 19 Literature Review……………………………………………………………………….. 25 1. Indexicality and the Crisis of Photography…………………………………. 26 2. Reframing the Photographic Frontier.……………………………………… 33 3. Photographic Ethics and the Picturing of Atrocity………………………..... 40 Chapter Breakdown…………………………………………………………………….. 46 CHAPTER I: ATROCITY OBSCURED: OMISSION AND EXPOSURE IN COLONIAL PHOTOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………… 52 Edward Curtis and the Myth of the Vanishing Race…………………………………… 57 Photo-colonialism and the Construction of Authenticity………………………………. 60 At a Crossroads………………………………………………………………………… 66 The Residential School System………………………………………………………… 78 ‘Kill the Indian in the Child’……………………………………………………………. 71 Residential School Photography………………………………………………………... 75 1. Before-and-After Photos …………………………………………………… 76 2. Class Photos……………………………………………………………….... 78 3. Deflecting Criticism………………………………………………………… 80 A Road Paved with Good Intentions…………………………………………………… 87 CHAPTER II: UNSETTLING THE PHOTOGRAPHIC FRONTIER: ARCHIVAL INTERVENTION………………………………………………………………………………. 93 The Art of the Apology………………………………………………………………... 100 Unsettling Spectatorship………………………………………………………………. 103 Ken Gonzales-Day: Erased Lynching…………………………………………………. 107 Lynching in America………………………………………………………………….. 112 Lynching Photography…………………………………………………………………117 Meryl McMaster: Ancestral……………………………………………………………121 4 Spectral Unsettlement…………………………………………………………………123 Projecting Strength, Photographing Resurgence………………………………………125 CHAPTER III: RE-STAGING THE PLAY OF HISTORY: SATIRE, MIMICRY AND MASQUERADE……………………………………………………………………………… 134 Taxidermic Semiosis and the Digital Diorama……………………………………….. 138 Wendy Red Star: Four Seasons………………………………………………………. 141 Building a Legend…………………………………………………………………….. 147 Playing Indian…………………………………………………………………………. 151 Time Travel and Queer Identity……………………………………………………….. 160 Da-ka-xeen Mehner, Reinterpretation………………………………………………… 167 Indigenous Photographic Legacy……………………………………………………… 173 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………184 IMAGES……………………………………………………………………………………..... 188 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………229 5 IMAGES 0.1. C.M. Bell, Medicine Crow (1880). Photograph. 0.2. C.M. Bell, Old Crow (1880). Photograph. 0.3. C.M. Bell, Pretty Eagle (1880). Photograph. 0.4. Honest Tea First Nation Organic Peppermint Tea (Est. 1999). http://www.honesttea.com. 0.5. Wendy Red Star, Peelatchiwaaxpáash/Medicine Crow (Raven) (2014). Artist-manipulated digitally reproduced photography by C.M. Bell, Pigment Print on Archival Photo-Paper, 24 x 16.45 inches. http://www.wendyredstar.com/medicine-crow-the-1880-crow-peace- delegation. 0.6. Wendy Red Star, Peelatchiwaaxpáash/Medicine Crow (Raven) (2014.) Artist-manipulated