Brandon Kerfoot

Claiming Animals, Claiming Sovereignty: Animal Welfare, Indigeneity, and Sovereignty in the Canadian Eastern Arctic by Brandon Kerfoot A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In English Department of English and Film Studies University of Alberta © Brandon Kerfoot, 2018 ii Abstract This dissertation examines a series of case studies in the politics and semiotics of animal welfare, Indigeneity, and sovereignty in the Canadian Eastern Arctic from 1950 to 2017. Arctic animals such as seals, sled dogs, wolves, and polar bears often become the focus of Canadian animal welfare activism, fundraising, and policy, a focus that quickly becomes conflict, for these animals are central to Inuit hunting and social relations, whereas many Southern Canadians have never encountered them. Drawing on Frank Tester and Peter Kulchyski’s analysis of the twentieth-century welfare state and animal management in Tammarniit (Mistakes) and Kiumajut (Talking Back) respectively, I argue that in contemporary literature and politics, various politicized groups make covert sovereignty claims as they assert kinship with arctic animals. This research exposes the animal welfare state, which formed in the late twentieth century to circumvent Indigenous activism and continue colonial policies under the guise of concern for animals. This project defines and analyzes the appropriated meanings that sustain the animal welfare state. Deploying Roland Barthes’ analysis of myth, I develop a semiotic framework that addresses the movements and barriers between Inuit speculative fiction, environmental and animal welfare activism, and political documents, and I contribute to the fields of critical animal studies and Indigenous literary studies by identifying the common structure by which seemingly disparate groups make legitimacy claims. By exposing the mechanics and pressure points of the animal welfare state’s mythological structure, I also show how its apparent resilience belies a deep instability and vulnerability. iii Acknowledgements I am fortunate to have received multifaceted support in the course of writing this dissertation. I am grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Karyn Ball, and my readers, Dr. Christopher Bracken and Dr. Keavy Martin, whose combination of expertise and styles of critique have been invaluable. Karyn’s attention to textual detail and argumentative nuance has trained me to be a more careful reader, and her near-mythical sense of when to let me work through difficulties and when to step in has been integral to this project’s success and to my development as a scholar. I am grateful to Christopher both for his incisive criticisms and for his varied modes of delivering them, which has made complacency impossible and has exposed the clichés that I inhabit. I thank Keavy for guiding me out of a comfort zone too small for this project and for challenging me when I tried to cleave the scholar from other facets of my person. My externals, Dr. Kim TallBear and Dr. Margery Fee, have helped to reshape the project in its later stage. Kim’s questions and criticisms during the defense immediately reoriented my relationship with the texts in ways that will certainly show in this project’s next form, and Margery’s editorial comments go beyond the duties of an external and have made this dissertation more precise. There are many brilliant and compassionate scholars in the Department of English and Film Studies who were not directly involved in this dissertation but who have taught me much by way of example. I hope they will not object to my considering them mentors: Drs. Cecily Devereux, Corrine Harol, Natasha Hurley, Sarah Krotz, and Julie Rak. Marcelle Kosman and Dr. Hannah McGregor’s public scholarship is a continuing lesson in research that is collaborative and responsible to its audiences and communities, and Katherine Meloche has been an invaluable friend and colleague, always ready to recommend new texts and to challenge flimsy arguments. iv I am grateful to Dr. Erin Julian, my cherished friend, for whom half a continent does nothing to prevent ongoing company, collegiality, and support. Thank you especially for prompting me to read more widely and for filling my cat void with polar bear crochet: Lucy was a wonderful dissertation mascot. The Making Waves Aquatics Club has diminished the periods of isolation that frequently accompany long research projects. I am grateful to my friends and teammates for all the practices, competitions, and social events where nobody quoted Foucault. I thank my parents, Colleen Kerfoot and Dale Kerfoot, for their unwavering support, for somehow knowing before I did that I would write something of this dissertation’s scope, and for inscribing this knowledge in me when I was still sounding out words (and very indignant that “Mr.” reads as “mister,” when clearly there aren’t enough letters in the word to represent such a sound). This project would not have been possible without food and shelter, and for these I am grateful to the many funders of this research. I thank the Department of English and Film Studies for its financial supports and award nominations in the form of teaching jobs, the Doctoral Recruitment Scholarship, Queen Elizabeth II Doctoral Scholarship, President’s Doctoral Prize of Distinction, and Sarah Nettie Christie Travel Bursaries. I thank the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research for Graduate Travel Funds, and the Canadian Circumpolar Institute and the Ashley and Janet Cameron Travel Fund. Finally, I thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for awarding me a Doctoral Fellowship. v Table of Contents Introduction: The Animal Welfare State ……………………………………………...…………1 The Animal Welfare State and Arctic Sovereignty…………...……………………...……16 Land-based Sovereignty and Divine Sovereignty ………………………………………...28 Chapter Summary ………….……………………………………………………………...42 Chapter 1: Writing Nuliajuk, the Mother of Sea Beasts: Land, Sovereignty, and Literature…....46 Writing Nuliajuk: Sexual Violence and Sovereignty……………………………………...52 Narrative Sovereignty and the Limits of Transformation…………………………………66 Chapter 2: Slaughtering Dogs and Saving Wolves: The Rise of the Animal Welfare State…….78 The Dog Slaughter in Context……………………………………………………………..79 Naming Sled Dogs: The Strategic Ambivalence of the Animal Sign……………………..84 From the Welfare State to the Animal Welfare State……………………………………...95 Dangerous Indigeneity and Euro-Settler Heteronormativity in Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf...................................................................................................................102 Conclusion: Animal Welfare and the Politics of Concern……………………………….115 Chapter 3: Powerful and Vulnerable Polar Bears: The Animal Welfare State as Land-based Sovereignty.…………………………………………………………………………………….118 Anecdote in Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change……………………..123 The Vulnerable Polar Bear in BBC's Planet Earth and Frozen Planet…………………..138 The Polar Bear as Synecdoche for the Perilous Arctic …………………………………..152 Conclusion: An Anecdote………………………………………………………………...158 Chapter 4: Hunting Seals: Criticism as Kinship in Anti-Sealing Literature …………………...166 Anti-Sealing: History and Context…...…………………………………………………..169 Adoption Narratives: Disgust and Savagery in Anti-Sealing Campaigns………………..173 Animal Welfare and the Soul…………………………………………………………….191 Animals, Souls, and Vengeance: Seal Killers and Killer Seals in Alootook Ipellie’s Arctic Dreams and Nightmares………………………………………………………….………195 Conclusion: Anger and Criticism………………………………………………………...210 Conclusion: Arctic Place-Making………………………………………………………...…….217 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………….223 vi List of Figures Figure 1: Alootook Ipellie, “Summit with Sedna, the Mother of Sea Beasts” Figure 2: Jeremy Mohler, “Nuliajuk” Figure 3: World Wildlife Foundation, “Would You Care More If I Was a Panda?” Figure 4: World Wildlife Foundation, “Would You Care More If I Was a Gorilla?” Figure 5: Alootook Ipellie, “After Brigitte Bardot” Figure 6: Alootook Ipellie, “Survival of the Most Violent” 1 Introduction The Animal Welfare State This dissertation examines a series of case studies in the intersecting politics and semiotics of animal welfare, indigeneity, and sovereignty in the Canadian Eastern Arctic from 1950 to 2017. 1 Arctic animals such as seals, sled dogs, wolves, and polar bears often become the focus of Canadian animal welfare activism, fundraising, and policy, a focus that quickly becomes conflict, for these animals are central to Inuit hunting and social relations, whereas many Southern Canadians have never encountered them. Drawing on Frank Tester and Peter Kulchyski’s analysis of the twentieth-century welfare state and animal management in Tammarniit (Mistakes) and Kiumajut (Talking Back) respectively, I argue that in contemporary literature and politics, various politicized groups make covert sovereignty claims as they assert kinship with arctic animals, collecting comprising the animal welfare state, which formed in the late twentieth century to circumvent Indigenous activism and continue colonial policies under the guise of concern for animals. This project also defines and analyzes the appropriated meanings that sustain the animal welfare state. Deploying Roland Barthes’ analysis of myth, I develop a semiotic framework that addresses the movements and barriers between Inuit speculative fiction, environmental and animal welfare activism, and political documents. By exposing the mechanics and

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