Visual Art Discourses As Rhetoric: Exploring the Colonial Creation of the Canadian Northwest Passage

Visual Art Discourses As Rhetoric: Exploring the colonial creation of the Canadian Northwest Passage by Daryl Anderson A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. in Human Studies The Faculty of Graduate Studies Laurentian University Sudbury, Ontario, Canada © Daryl Anderson, 2015 THESIS DEFENCE COMMITTEE/COMITÉ DE SOUTENANCE DE THÈSE Laurentian Université/Université Laurentienne Faculty of Graduate Studies/Faculté des études supérieures Title of Thesis Titre de la thèse Visual Art Discourses as Rhetoric: Exploring the colonial creation of the Canadian Northwest Passage Name of Candidate Nom du candidat Anderson, Daryl Degree Diplôme Doctor of Philosophy Department/Program Date of Defence Département/Programme Human Studies Date de la soutenance June 17, 2015 APPROVED/APPROUVÉ Thesis Examiners/Examinateurs de thèse: Dr. Hoi Cheu (Supervisor/Directeur de thèse) Dr. Philippa Spoel (Committee member/Membre du comité) Dr. Carolle Gagnon (Committee member/Membre du comité) Approved for the Faculty of Graduate Studies Dr. Jonathan Paquette Approuvé pour la Faculté des études supérieures (Committee member/Membre du comité) Dr. David Lesbarrères M. David Lesbarrères Dr. Jonathan Bordo Acting Dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies (External Examiner/Examinateur externe) Doyen intérimaire, Faculté des études supérieures Dr. Lee Maracle (External Examiner/Examinateur externe) ACCESSIBILITY CLAUSE AND PERMISSION TO USE I, Daryl Anderson, hereby grant to Laurentian University and/or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or for the duration of my copyright ownership. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also reserve the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that this copy is being made available in this form by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner. pii Abstract In the 1920s Canadian colonialism became domesticated; a political and economic change was publically presented and mystified through the creation of a professedly nationalist landscape mythology. In the words of A.Y. Jackson, Canada needed “a new, modern landscape art tradition, for a new modern nation.” According to Jonathan Bordo, such colonial myths of origins have served to supplant aboriginal peoples by establishing a precolonial belief of “ terra nullius,” which was later enforced by the removal of visual and cultural references to aboriginal cultures and peoples, rendering their historic and contemporary presence invisible to colonizers. In Canada, however, a second modern art tradition interceded. Even as the Group of Seven’s interpretation of the Canadian landscape became definitive, Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North rose to acclaim as well. Flaherty’s devotion to the idea (also borne of Europe) that morally uncorrupted pre-modern landscape essentialist communities existed in protective isolation would re-implant certain aboriginal peoples back into the Canadian landscape imaginary, but on particularly disadvantageous terms. Farley Mowat’s mid-Century reconfiguration of these two landscape art traditions as rhetoric continues to define Canadian understandings of the political relations between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples, as well as the Canadian understanding of political claims and relations between mainstream Canadians and their government(s) and internally colonized peoples. Since the closure of the two historic economic engines along the Northwest Passage, sealing and the cod fishery, in the mid 1980’s and early 1990s respectively, the turn to cultural and eco-tourism based economies has resulted in the wide iii promotion of images founded in Mowat’s reimagined history of Inuit and Newfoundlanders. Cultural and eco-tourism have, in turn, led to a drive to conformity with Mowat’s visions in Northwest Passage communities, which have resulted in both processes of cultural selection, and instances of resistance. As the Canadian administrative state positions itself with regard to melting Northwest Passage, it behooves those wishing to understand the politics pertaining to the Northwest Passage to analyze the rhetoric of the images underlying and promulgated during these international negotiations. Keywords Canadian landscape, art politics, Northwest Passage, internal colonization, cultural tourism, eco-tourism iv For Lilian and John Sutherland and my 5 children, Sarah, Craig, Sven, Anna-Lisa and Ella. Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Danielle Pitman for her careful proofreading, assistance with the bibliography and support. v Table of Contents Abstract p.iii Dedication and Acknowledgement p.v Table of Contents p.vi Prologue: Journeying to the Northwest Passage p.1 Introduction p.33 Chapter 1 p.45 Transplanting European Ideas to North America Chapter 2 p.69 The Invention of the Canadian Inuit Chapter 3 p.136 Canadian Visions for Newfoundland Chapter 4 p.179 Resistance and Reassertion Chapter 5 p.224 Something old, something new…the discourse continues Conclusion p.249 Endnotes p.254 Bibliography p.266 vi Prologue: Journeying to the Northwest Passage As the Northwest Passage (NWP) opens for navigation, and Canadians endure a sea of rhetoric steering their opinions so as to bolster Canadian sovereignty claims to resources and control of the storied trade route’s Eastern Gate, it is important to note that Canadian opinions concerning the people of the NWP are also being guided by visual images anchored in landscape ideas. Most often these images present a romanticized landscape populated by landscape essentialist people, of traditional pre- modern cultures who live in harmony with, and are the guardians of, the Canadian Wilderness. “Wilderness” as land unmarked by human presence is a foundational image of Canadian culture that gained currency in North America in the mid-19th Century, and rose to the fore in Canada in the early 20th Century along with folklore studies. Thus, while I have been primarily concerned to understand the visual imagery of the politics of Canadian colonial expansions into the Northwest Passage since 1950, my research led me back repeatedly to Toronto, in the period just after WWI. That is when the Canadian elite, by then largely domesticated, embarked upon a materially motivated quest of nation building both west and north, and while enumerating and advertising the commercial viability of their newly annexed territory, founded Canada’s landscape art aesthetic. Their landscape aesthetics as rhetoric continue to found myths of origin that rationalize the displacement of internally colonized peoples on moral grounds, and make way for the colonial administration and exploitation of their territories. Colonial policies along the NWP have always been resource motivated and implemented on a standard business model. The first colonial governing agencies in the NWP were the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in the Arctic, and British fishing - 1 - admirals/ship’s captains in outport Newfoundland. Motivated by an austere vision of efficiency and a coarse disregard for workers, these commercial entities disinterestedly extracted the most resources at the least cost. In the Eastern Arctic this meant the HBC built exploitative relationships with Inuit, while lobbying successive colonial governments to curb any potential international competition and/or provision of social services. In Newfoundland, for centuries, European settlement beyond the Avalon Peninsula was with rare exception prohibited by international treaty agreements. Under (alternating) British and French colonial rule Newfoundland’s coastal forests were denuded for shipbuilding timber, and the Beothuk, the Island’s coastal Indigenous peoples were first driven inland, and then became extinct. The small European descendent outport populations straddling the coastline were first comprised of escaped indentured fishers (the polite term for legal debt-bondage, commonly known as “white slavery”). These outporters went to extraordinary lengths to avoid detection and starvation, and the Inuit shared their local knowledge of subsistence hunting and fishing with them, ensuring their survival. The descendants of these groups were people of Canada’s new territories after World War II, and were dealt with by the new colonial government expeditiously, so as to limit barriers to resource exploitation. Continuing a long established European rhetorical method toward national identity giving rise to territorial claims, the landscape is illustrated and advertised as national territory, to establish an alibi for expansion, occupation, exploitation, and, if deemed necessary, evictions. The Group of Seven, Canadian artists, first illustrated the Canadian wilderness, and were central

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