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The Black Prairies: History, Subjectivity, Writing by Karina Joan Vernon B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1995 M.A., Simon Fraser

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The Black Prairies: History, Subjectivity, Writing by Karina Joan Vernon B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1995 M.A., Simon Fraser The Black Prairies: History, Subjectivity, Writing by Karina Joan Vernon B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1995 M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2000 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of English © Karina Joan Vernon, 2008 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee The Black Prairies: History, Subjectivity, Writing by Karina Joan Vernon B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1995 M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2000 Supervisory Committee Dr. Smaro Kamboureli, (Department of English) Supervisor Dr. Evelyn M. Cobley, (Department of English) Departmental Member Dr. Sheila Rabillard, (Department of English) Departmental Member Dr. Sada Niang, (Department of French) Outside Member Dr. Leslie Sanders, (Department of English, York University) External Examiner iii ABSTRACT Supervisory Committee Dr. Smaro Kamboureli, Department of English Supervisor Dr. Evelyn M. Cobley, Department of English Departmental Member Dr. Sheila Rabillard, Department of English Departmental Member Dr. Sada Niang, Department of French Outside Member Dr. Leslie Sanders, Department of English, York University External Examiner This dissertation contributes to the fields of Canadian literature and black cultural studies in Canada a new regional archive of literature, the black prairie archive. It unearths and brings critical attention, for the first time, to the unknown history and cultural production of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century black pioneer writers on the Canadian prairies, and connects this historical literature to the work of contemporary black prairie authors. The black prairie archive thus brings together one hundred and thirty five years of black writing on the prairies, from 1873-2008. Theorized in terms of what Pierre Nora calls a lieu de mémoire, or a site of memory, the black prairie archive operates as a site of collective black-inflected memory on the prairies. It retrieves memory of a repressed but important black history and culture and brings it into consciousness of the present historical moment. In its ability to remember what has been repressed and forgotten, the archive functions as a literary counterhistory, calling attention to the aggressive exclusions and erasures involved in the historical, social, critical, and legal construction of the prairies as an ideological—not a geographic—space in relation to race. iv In addition to bringing a new regional black literature to light, this study offers the black prairie archive as a discursive formation that points to a new methodology, a methodology capable of addressing the limits of certain critical debates in Canada. Specifically, it offers a strategy for theorizing black belonging and territoriality in terms other than the problematic metaphors of black indigeneity; for reading the regional particularities of black prairie literature and subjectivity; and for overcoming the impasse at the centre of black Canadian cultural studies, represented by the debate between Rinaldo Walcott and George Elliott Clarke, regarding which model, the archival or diasporic, best articulates the space of black Canada. The black prairie archive demonstrates how, like diaspora, the archive can become a critical, activist, anti-national strategy for recovering repressed black histories, literatures, and presences. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page i Supervisory Page ii Abstract iii Table of Contents v List of Figures vii Acknowledgements viii Dedication x Frontispiece xi Introduction: The Black Prairies: History, Subjectivity, Writing 1 I. Collection and Recollection 15 II. Black Canadian Cultural Studies: Between the Diasporic and 22 National Debates Chapter 1: Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance and the History of the Oklahoman Migration 42 I. The Oklahoma Migration and Canadian Prairie Racism 48 II. Long Lance in Calgary 57 III. Long Lance’s Autobiography 60 IV. Long Lance and the Black Prairie Archive 75 Chapter 2: Inside the Black Prairie Archive: The Pioneers 83 I. An Archive of Memory 88 II. William Beal: A Black Pioneer in Manitoba 92 III. William Beal’s “Archive Fever” 98 IV. Alfred Schmitz Shadd: A Black Pioneer in Saskatchewan 109 V. The Saskatchewan General Election of 1905 110 VI. Ellis Hooks: A Black Pioneer in Alberta 122 Chapter 3: The Pioneers’ Descendants: Theorizing a “Territorialized” Prairie Blackness 137 I. The Limits of Black Canadian Indigeneity 139 II. First Nations and the Black Canadian Literary Imaginary 143 III. NourbeSe Philip and the Black Canadian “Unhomely” 150 IV. Deleuze and Guattari: Reterritorialization and the Prairie Plateau 152 V. The Black Pioneer Descendants Society’s A Little Taste of Soul 154 VI. Cheryl Foggo’s Pourin’ Down Rain 167 Chapter 4: The Second Wave of Migration and the Black Prairie Archive 187 I. Deconstructing the Local/Global Binary 190 II. Esi Edugyan’s The Second Life of Samuel Tyne: Bringing the Archival and 198 the Diasporic Together Conclusion 220 vi Appendix: Bibliography of Black Prairie Cultural Production 227 Works Cited 237 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. John and Mildred Ware and Family 1 Figure 2. Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance 43 Figure 3. Page One of William Beal’s Memoir 95 Figure 4. William Beal glass plate 12: Gus and Louie Johnsson 106 Figure 5. William Beal glass plate 3: Clarence Abrahamson 107 Figure 6. William Beal glass plate 11: Bob Dennison 107 Figure 7. William Beal glass plate 42: Self-Portrait 108 Figure 8. Alfred Schmitz Shadd 113 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks are due to many people who provided assistance, knowledge, and support during the researching and writing of this dissertation. I am grateful to my supervisor, Smaro Kamboureli, whose critical passion, insights, and encouragement enabled me to shape my material, push the boundaries of my thinking, and become a better writer. Thanks also to my examining committee, Evelyn Cobley, Sheila Rabillard, Sada Niang, and my external examiner, Leslie Sanders, whose careful readings of this work and insightful questions will continue to influence the directions of my thought. My thanks to the many archivists, librarians, and individuals across the prairies who helped track down archival information and documents, especially Robert Barrow, Jim Bowman, Nadine Charabin, Garry Forsyth, Junetta Jamerson, and Marilyn Mol. My thanks also to Fred Booker, Wayde Compton, Addena Sumter-Freitag, April Sumter-Freitag, Suzette Mayr, Ashok Mathur, and Lorena Gale who brought my attention to new texts by black writers on the prairies. I would like to thank the members of the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project and the Commodore Books collective: Sheilagh Cahill, David Chariandy, Wayde Compton, Junie Desíl, and Naomi Moyer. Their intellectual generosity and dedication to imagining black communities was inspiring. For their support, I thank my Emeny, Morton, and Dyck families, as well as Chris and Farheen HaQ, Anne Stone, Heather Martin, and my fellow Ph.D. comrades: Chris Fox, Tanis MacDonald, and Frances Sprout. I want to give special thanks to my sister, Waleska Vernon, who always seemed to call exactly when I needed a break. My most heartfelt thanks are to my husband, Reg Johanson, who ix was a true partner in all ways to me though this process, and who has gone so long without a room of his own so that I could have mine. x To black prairie writers: past, present, and future xi The Black Prairies: History, Subjectivity, Writing by Karina Joan Vernon INTRODUCTION THE BLACK PRAIRIES: HISTORY, SUBJECTIVITY, WRITING Without memory can there be history? —Marlene NourbeSe Philip, She Tries Her Tongue: Her Silence Softly Breaks (1989) Figure 1. John Ware and Family (Mildred, Robert, and Nettie) on their ranch at Sheep Creek, ca. 1896 (courtesy of the Glenbow Museum.) 1 “Have you heard of John Ware?” This is the question I was asked most frequently during the course of researching and writing this dissertation. It seemed that as soon I revealed to archivists, librarians, or new acquaintances I met at conferences and parties that I was constructing a literary archive of black prairie writing, from the nineteenth- 2 century pioneers to contemporary writers, I was asked if I already knew about the black cowboy, John Ware. What is it about the memory of this nineteenth-century black cowboy that has proved so enduring? Whereas, I have observed, few people are aware of any black writers whose life and work is connected to the ideological, social, cultural, political, and critical construct known as the Canadian prairies, I am amazed by how many are already familiar with the legend of Alberta’s black cowboy, John Ware. Why is it that the memory of this particular figure endures where the remainder of the prairies’ black history and cultural production seems to have been collectively forgotten? The answer to this question is complex, and it is, in part, what this dissertation seeks to find out. That the 188 year-long history of black people on the prairies, together with the legacy of their cultural production, has been collectively forgotten— or, from a psychoanalytical perspective, repressed—in the region’s historical and cultural imaginaries, is one of this study’s abiding concerns. It provides the impetus for assembling this regional black literary archive, an archive which I theorize as a site of and for collective black-inflected memory. Paradoxically, the processes of forgetting
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