Of This Land, on This Land: Indigenous Artists Challenging the Racial Logics of Liberal Modernity Suzanne Morrissette a Disserta
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OF THIS LAND, ON THIS LAND: INDIGENOUS ARTISTS CHALLENGING THE RACIAL LOGICS OF LIBERAL MODERNITY SUZANNE MORRISSETTE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO November 2017 © Suzanne Morrissette, 2017 ABSTRACT This dissertation discusses the role of Indigenous artists in illustrating and denaturalizing the systems of colonial thought that continue to constrain Indigenous peoples’ expressions of political agency. I argue that the works of select contemporary Indigenous artists challenge contemporary liberal settler society’s racial ideas of citizenship, belonging, and relationship to place through methods that involve diverse audiences in imagining more just and shared futures upon Indigenous lands. My examination of tendencies to frame Indigenous political expression as aggressive, anti-state, or anti-progress looks to literature on liberal thought, which describes concepts of freedom and equality manifested in the development of the social contract that has determined citizenship. I look at the ways that these concepts have been deployed historically to determine the value of Indigenous subjectivity and the supremacy of settler nations and institutions. In this sense, the artworks that I highlight engage critically with liberal thought, and also express Indigenous political thought in their own right. The analysis takes place in three parts: an examination of the history of ideas surrounding perceptions of Indigenous political presence; an investigation into the legacies of liberal thought now threatened by assertions of Indigenous political presence; and a study of the ways in which Indigenous people are misconstrued as violent even as they are the continued subjects of ongoing colonial violence. Using an artist-curator approach to research, I draw upon artworks that together help to articulate the ontological barriers facing Indigenous political thought while offering texts through which audiences can collectively and reflexively examine life together upon Turtle Island. ii Dedicated to my beautiful, complicated, resilient, and ever-loving family. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the support of my supervisor Janine Marchessault and committee members Carmela Murdocca and Celia Haig-Brown. Janine, thank you for the kind, generous, and enthusiastic support that you have shown for my work over the last few years. Your guidance has been critical not only for helping me to complete this dissertation but also for finding success in other aspects of my professional life. I would like to thank Carmela for introducing me to many of the interdisciplinary pathways that I traverse in my analysis, and for holding my work to high standards of critical rigour. Thank you, Celia, for requesting that I demonstrate this rigour in both the use of concepts and theory and in the careful selection of words to help convey my own relationship to these concepts. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have studied with each of you. Thanks also to those individuals who joined my supervisory committee as examiners for this dissertation: Anna Hudson, John McCullough, and Michael Hart. Your questions and conversations offered challenging and generative conversations that I will be taking with me as I develop this research in the future. To the artists whose works have inspired this analysis, thank you for leading important discussions about the perceptions that surround the exercise of political knowledge from Indigenous perspectives. Bonnie Devine, Kent Monkman, Kade Twist, Christian Chapman, Susan Blight and Hayden King of the Ogimaa Mikana Project, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Carl Beam, Merritt Johnson, A Tribe Called Red, and Fallon Simard, your work inspires me to better understand the operations of ongoing colonial power structures, and to evaluate the important role that art can play in bringing people iv together to dismantle them. To those artists whom I had the opportunity to speak with during the course of my research I would like to extend my deepest gratitude for sharing your time and thoughts as participants in this study. Over the last several years my family has stood beside me as I grappled with the concepts explored in this dissertation. To my Mom and Dad, thank you for helping me to work through difficult ideas, and for walking with me through the most beautiful and most challenging parts of this process. To my husband Nathan, thank you for always being there for me, for all of the times that you stayed up late so that I could read you what I had written that day, and for your unending support and kind-hearted perspective on the difficult issues I broach in this research. You have shown me, among many things, that there are ways to press up against these issues that are rooted in love and kindness. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………....ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………...iii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….iv Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………...…….vi List of Figures…………………………………………………………………...………...x Foreword…………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One | Writing Indigenous Art Histories During Times Marked by a Continued and Flagrant Disregard for Indigenous Life and Law Introduction..……………………………………………………………………....9 Indigenous Political Presence………………...………………………………….12 Situating the Research Within a Contemporary Political Context……………….12 An Artist-Curator Approach to Research………………………………………..15 Indigenous Political Philosophy in the Context of Settler State Liberal Democracy……………………………………………………………………….22 John Trudell’s Halluci and ALie Nations as Metaphor……………………….…27 Chapter Overview………………………………………………………………..32 vi Chapter Two | Theorizing Indigenous Political Presence and Settler States: Conceptual Framework Introduction………………………………………………………………………37 An Ideal Society, It’s Citizens, and Their Rights….…………………………….44 Conceiving a “Just Society”……………………………………………………...52 The Problem With Recognition………………………………………………….57 Beyond Inclusion: The Intelligibility of Indigenous Art………………………...63 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….67 Chapter Three | A History of Ideas Surrounding Perceptions of Indigenous Political Presence Introduction………………………………………………………………………69 An Appeal to European Aesthetics…..…………………………………………..72 What is Civilization?……………………………………………………………..82 Unmapping Indigenous Subjectivity……………………………………………..92 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….97 Chapter Four | Claiming Indigenous Land, Confronting the Liberal Subject Introduction……………………………………………………………………..101 Naming the Liberal Subject………………………………………………….....102 Confronting the Liberal Subject………………………………………………...106 Asserting Indigenous History and Presence……………………………………115 Learning, Responsibility, and the Inclusion of Non-Indigenous Perspectives…125 vii Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...130 Chapter Five | Resisting and Reframing the Liberal Subject’s Perceptions of Indigenous Political Presence as Violence Introduction…………………………………………………………………..…133 Performances that Deny and Transform the Dynamics of Liberal Privileges.....139 Threatening History…………………………….......…………………………..148 Denying Comfortable Points of Reference……………………………………..152 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...155 Chapter Six | Conclusion Reflection……………………………………………………………………….157 Evaluation of the Process……………………………………………………….159 Outcomes of the Research……………………………………………..……….160 Implications of the Research……………….…………………………………..163 Contributions to the Field………………………………………………………165 Further Research Related to the Dissertation…………………………………...168 References………………………………………………………………………………172 Appendices Appendix A | The Halluci Nation lyrics…..……………………………………184 Appendix B | The ALie Nation lyrics…….…………………………………….185 viii Appendix C | kitaskinanaw lyrics………..……………………………………..186 Appendix D | kitaskihkanaw lyrics……………………………………………..187 ix LIST OF FIGURES FOREWORD 1. Family Photo with Myself, Cousin Greg, unknown child, Uncle Larry, and Dad, photographer unknown………………………………………………………………..5 CHAPTER 3 2. Bonnie Devine, La Rábida, Soul of Conquest, photograph by the author…….…74 3. Bonnie Devine, Cristobal Colon, photograph by the author ………..…………..77 4. Bonnie Devine, Bartolomeé de las Casas, photograph by the author …………..78 5. Kent Monkman, The Rise and Fall of Civilization, photograph by Jimmy Limit……………………………………………………………………………...83 6. Kent Monkman, The Rise and Fall of Civilization, photograph by Jimmy Limit……………………………………………………………………………...85 7. Kent Monkman, The Rise and Fall of Civilization, photograph by Jimmy Limit……………………………………………………………………………...86 8. Pablo Picasso, Bull – plate 4……………………………………………………..88 9. Pablo Picasso, Bull – plate 5……………………………………………………..88 10. Pablo Picasso, Bull – plate 7……………………………………………………..88 11. Pablo Picasso, Bull – plate 9…………………………………………………….88 12. Pablo Picasso, Bull – plate 10…………………………………………………...88 13. Kent Monkman, Bull in a China Shop………...…………………………………90 x 14. Pablo Picasso, Tête de Taureau/Bull’s Head…………………………………….91 15. Kent Monkman, The Scream…………………………………………………….93 16. Kent Monkman, The Subjection of Truth………………………………………..95 17. Kent Monkman, The Daddies of Confederation…………………………………95 CHAPTER 4 18. Kade Twist, Our Land, Your Imagination: The Judeo-Christian Western Scientific Worldview and Phoenix, photograph by Klaus Rossler………………………...108 19. Christian Chapman, This Is Indian Land I………….……………......................112