THE SPACE IN-BETWEEN CULTURES: SITE-SPECIFIC MEETING PLACES OF

INDIGENOUS AND EUROPEAN KNOWLEDGES

by

Kristina Parzen

B.A. Hons, The University of Saskatchewan, 2017

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS

in

THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES

(Art History and Theory)

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

(Vancouver)

October 2020

© Kristina Parzen, 2020

The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled:

The Space In-Between Cultures: Site-Specific Meeting Places of Indigenous and European Knowledges

submitted by Kristina Parzen in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

In Art History and Theory

Examining Committee:

Dr. Michelle S.A. McGeough, Assistant Professor, Dept. Art History. Concordia University. Supervisor

Dr. Erin Silver, Assistant Professor, Dept. Art History, Visual Art & Theory. Faculty Associate at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. University of British Columbia. Supervisory Committee Member

ii

Abstract

Liminal space may be thought of as the space in-between before and after, the space where transformation occurs, and where knowledge is as of yet unknown, but in formation. This concept has been discussed by post-colonial studies scholars such as Homi K. Bhabha and Mary

Louise Pratt to describe the place where cultural change occurs as they come into contact with one another. I employ the term liminal space in my thinking about what happens to different cultural knowledges when they encounter one another in particular places. Specifically, I examine the encounter of Indigenous and European knowledges in the liminal space of colonialism in Canada. While I make reference to historical encounters taking place during the

19th century, my focus is on the contemporary context of the 21st century. By examining the site- and land- specific installation artworks of Métis artist Tiffany Shaw-Collinge and Canadian artist Marina Hulzenga, the liminal may be discussed as a means for understanding how knowledge is produced in this space when different cultures encounter each other. I ask, what can site- and land-specific contemporary art teach us about the potential for the occurrence of a non-hierarchical knowledge production through people’s exposure to alternative histories and cultural knowledges? I argue that site- and land-specific spaces can be mobilized as places where different cultural knowledges can come together to share, learn, and understand in a way that is respectful of their differences, sensitive to their unique positionality, and that work against hierarchical structures that promote the domination and privileging of for example, European knowledges over Indigenous knowledges. I draw from scholarship of Opaskwayak Cree academic Shawn Wilson and Mi’kmaq elders Murdena and Albert Marshall through their respective concepts of relationality and two-eyed seeing. These concepts offer alternative ways iii

of seeing and understanding the world outside of the current Settler colonial system of knowledge. Investigating knowledge production taking place in liminal space at sites in Canada by using a two-eyed relational framework allows for the development of a system of inclusive social knowledges, moving away from the current system of social knowledge that privileges

Eurocentric ideological perspectives.

iv

Lay Summary

The works of contemporary artists Tiffany Shaw-Collinge and Marina Hulzenga demonstrate a bringing together of different cultural knowledges and the mobilization of specific sites as spaces for conversation. These site- and land-specific installation works provide example for how knowledge production can occur without one culture’s knowledge dominating others, translating to a system of social knowledges that respects the unique position of each culture and its peoples. This analysis and method aims to counter-colonize the system of social knowledge that is characterized by colonial cultural models. By offering an alternative to the current Settler colonial system of social knowledge, it demonstrates a new avenue of thinking about how knowledge(s) can be produced through people(s), culture(s), and idea(s) in particular places and through their relationships to place.

v

Preface

In writing this thesis, I aim to produce work that questions Canada’s current system of social knowledge that is produced and reproduced by political, economic, educational, and social practices in society and is deeply intertwined with the histories of the Settler colonial nation- state. My focus rests on the ongoing systemic destruction, loss, and uncaring attitude toward alternative histories and knowledges that the Settler colonial narrative and its ideological perspective seeks to silence through the marginalization of Indigenous peoples and disregard for the importance of ensuring the protection of these histories and knowledges.

To the best of my ability I have endeavored to look to and cite the scholarship and voices of Indigenous peoples in my thesis reading, writing, and learning process. As a white woman of

European heritage, it is neither my intention nor desire to speak for peoples from cultures who I am not a member of. I take the position of student through my encounters with the scholarship, histories, and creative works that have informed the following paper, recognizing that learning is never complete, but an ongoing and transformative process occurring over time and place.

This thesis project included two interviews with artists whose artworks, discussed in this paper, are situated either physically or associated with the territory of Treaty 6 (1876) and the

First Nations and Métis peoples part of the lands there. These peoples include 50 First Nations that are members of the Cree, Dene (Chipewyan), Nakota Sioux (Assiniboine), and Saulteaux cultural groups.1 Ethics approval was obtained from the University of British Columbia (UBC)

1 In the case of Marina Hulzenga’s work, her project is also associated with the peoples of territories in Treaties 4 (1874), 6 (1876), 7 (1877), 8 (1899), and 10 (1906-1907) in Alberta, Canada; For a complete list of the First Nations peoples of Treaty 6 (1876) territory please see https://www.aadnc- vi

Behavioural Research Ethics Board, under Certificate Number H20-01579. These two artists have reviewed text of the thesis pertaining to where they have been quoted or referenced from the interviews.

This thesis is the original, unpublished, and independent work of the author, Kristina

Parzen.

aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100020670/1100100020675#chp3 for a list of Treaty 6 (1876) First Nations in Alberta. See http://www.otc.ca/ckfinder/userfiles/files/fnl_1100100020617_eng.pdf for a list of Treaty 6 (1876) First Nations in Saskatchewan. See https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1418853369350/1418854433358#chp10 for list of Treaty 6 (1876) First Nations in Manitoba. vii

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... iii

Lay Summary ...... v

Preface ...... vi

Table of Contents ...... viii

List of Figures ...... x

Acknowledgements ...... xii

Dedication ...... xiv

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 2: Moving Towards Relational Method and Practice ...... 8

2.1 Homi K. Bhabha’s Third Space and Treaty 6 (1876) ...... 13

2.2 Mary Louise Pratt’s Contact Zone ...... 23

2.3 Relationality and Albert and Murdena Marshall’s Two-Eyed Seeing ...... 30

Chapter 3: Pehonan, Tiffany Shaw-Collinge ...... 35

3.1 Métis ᐄᓃᐤ ÎNÎW River Lot 11 ...... 38

3.2 Past, Present, and Future Conditions Reflected through Form ...... 42

3.3 The Language of Relationships ...... 46

Chapter 4: Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan, Marina Hulzenga ...... 49

4.1 “How do I get to know my neighbours?” ...... 52

4.2 Visualizing Space, Building Community ...... 63

Chapter 5: Conclusion ...... 69

viii

Figures ...... 74

Bibliography ...... 83

ix

List of Figures

Figure 1. Aaron Arrowsmith and John Pinkerton, British Possessions in North America, July 15,

1814, atlas map, 51 x 69 cm, David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Stanford Library,

Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America...... 74

Figure 2. Tiffany Shaw-Collinge, Pehonan, 2018, public art installation, 12.19 m length x 5.49 m diametre x 1.68 m height, Métis ᐄᓃᐤ ÎNÎW River Lot 11 – Indigenous Art Park, Edmonton, AB,

Canada, http://www.tiffanyshawcollinge.com/#/pehonan/...... 75

Figure 3. Department of the Interior Dominion Lands Office, Plan of Edmonton Settlement

N.W.T., May 25, 1883, 27.94 x 35.56 cm, City of Edmonton Archives, RG-200, Series 8, EAM-

85, Edmonton, AB, Canada...... 76

Figure 4. Tiffany Shaw-Collinge, Pehonan - close-up view, 2018, public art installation, 12.19 m length x 5.49 m diametre x 1.68 m height, Métis ᐄᓃᐤ ÎNÎW River Lot 11 – Indigenous Art Park,

Edmonton, AB, Canada, http://www.tiffanyshawcollinge.com/#/pehonan/...... 77

Figure 5. Marina Hulzenga, Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan - spatial installation, 2014-2020, spatial installation, dimensions unknown, Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands, http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space----awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html...... 78

Figure 6. Marina Hulzenga, Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan - spatial installation (2nd circle),

2014-2020, spatial installation, dimensions unknown, Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands, http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space----awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html...... 79

x

Figure 7. Marina Hulzenga, Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan - spatial installation (3rd circle),

2014-2020, spatial installation, dimensions unknown, Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands, http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space----awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html...... 80

Figure 8. Marina Hulzenga, Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan - spatial installation (inner circle), 2014-2020, spatial installation, dimensions unknown, Design Academy Eindhoven,

Netherlands, http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space----awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html.. 81

Figure 9. Marina Hulzenga, The Territory of Alberta Mapped by: First Nations reserves, Métis settlements and Treaties, 2019, hand-painted map, natural pigments, 50.17 x 69.85 cm, in the posession of the artist...... 82

xi

Acknowledgements

This thesis project was written on the Traditional, Ancestral, and Unceded Territories of the Coast Salish Peoples including the territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam),

Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil- Waututh) Nations. I realize that this acknowledgement of respecting Indigenous Peoples as the traditional stewards of the land is not enough, but it is important for all of us who are occupying spaces within this land as guests of these peoples and their territories.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me during my learning and writing process especially the faculty and staff of the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory. Thank you to my supervisor, Dr. Michelle McGeough, for your support and encouragement, and for your advice and teaching that has helped shape the process and course of my inquiry. Thank you to my second reader, Dr. Erin Silver, for your enthusiasm and dedication to my research and studies as I find my place in academia. I would also like to thank Dr. Julia Orell for your support and enthusiasm throughout my studies and Dr. Joseph Monteyne for welcoming me into the

M.A. program in Art History at the University of British Columbia.

Thank you to Tiffany Shaw-Collinge and Marina Hulzenga for your time and consideration in granting interviews for this project. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to listen and learn from you as you shared your thoughts about your works and practices.

I am also grateful to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, for the Canada Graduate Scholarship (Master’s Program) that I was awarded in 2020, and to the

University of British Columbia, Faculty of Arts Graduate Award for funding support in the

2018-2019 academic year. xii

Thank you to my wonderful friends and peers whose care, time, and friendship made this thesis possible.

The greatest appreciation and thanks to my family (mom, dad, sister) for your love, patience, guidance, and always supporting and encouraging me to follow my passions.

xiii

Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to my grandmothers Ingrid Helga Parzen and Joan Anne Leydon, both of whom passed away during my master’s studies. Thank you for your love, inspiration, guidance, leadership, encouragement, and support as the matriarchs of my family. Your love of art, culture, and life as well as respect for people of all backgrounds and identities will be a model I always strive to follow each and every day of my life.

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Chapter 1: Introduction

“Knowledge cannot be owned or discovered but is merely a set of relationships.”2 In the writing and scholarship of Opaskwayak Cree academic Shawn Wilson, he brings forward a relational research paradigm in order to engage with the production of Indigenous knowledges in a colonial world, whose current system relies heavily on the European tradition of understanding.

Detailed in his 2008 work Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods, he uses the

Indigenous concept of relationality to allow for Indigenous knowledges to guide the research process.3 As he builds this methodological framework he offers both Indigenous and non-

Indigenous students and scholars writing about Indigenous cultures an Indigenous paradigm and alternative to Eurocentric research frameworks. He develops this research framework in order to encourage the celebration of Indigenous cultures among its peoples and assist in the non-

Indigenous understanding of historical and contemporary Indigenous cultural values and issues.4

Relationality, he argues, is about how “we are the relationships that we hold and are part of.”5 It is about the collective, the group, and the community.6 In other words, relationality when discussed as an ontology of knowledge regards the way in which knowledge is produced and realized as a part of culture and cultural interactions. It encompasses all people’s relationships with other people, animals, objects, ideas, and environments (land in Indigenous scholarship). In this thesis paper, I view relationality as a methodological concept that has the potential to

2 Shawn Wilson, Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2008), 127. 3 Ibid, 19. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid, 80. 6 Ibid. 1

encourage people’s participation in learning about alternative histories and knowledges without today’s Settler colonial ideological perspectives imposing their specific hierarchical and

Eurocentric narratives on other cultures worldviews. I use the term Settler colonial to describe the structure of colonialism that is formed through its history of invading Europeans that

“annihilated, displaced, and/or marginalized” Indigenous populations resulting in the non-

Indigenous Settlers becoming the majority population.7 This structure, argued by writer and historian Patrick Wolfe, is said to be propelled by processes of elimination, which is motivated by a desire to access territory.8 For the purpose of this paper, I will use the term Settler colonial to describe the ongoing impact of colonialism on Indigenous peoples in the Settler colonial nation-state of Canada.

With this term in mind, I focus on the general history of colonialism in what is now called Canada by highlighting the impacts of this history on Indigenous cultures and their knowledges. As well, I assert that the systems and perspectives introduced and imposed upon these cultures during colonization continue to effect Indigenous knowledges and the production of new knowledges. These knowledges continue to be marginalized and subjected to hierarchies and dichotomies that Canada puts into practice in its political, economic, cultural, educational, and social institutions and systems. As a result, the tradition of European knowledge and discourse encourages a particular kind of knowledge production, distribution, and consumption.

One that is characterized by the view that Western knowledge (European-descended) is the most legitimate form of knowledge, which places it at the center to which all other knowledges are

7 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2013), 236. 8 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no.4 (2006): 338. 2

compared and weighed against.9 I assert that this knowledge then becomes social knowledge as it is pushed onto the national and international community by the systems, powers, and structures that claim its legitimacy. Social knowledge or knowledge that is produced through the interactions between individuals and disseminated to the collective, which is mainstream and particular to the thinking and ideologies of the dominant culture, often appropriates or altogether refuses to acknowledge the existence of other knowledges. Alternatively, some have termed this universal knowledge. As Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith puts it, this knowledge is

“available to all and not really ‘owned’ by anyone, that is, until non-Western scholars make claims to it.”10 The challenge is therefore how to create a social knowledge or collective of social knowledges that is inclusive of more than the mainstream culture. Social knowledges that go beyond solely the acknowledgement of the existence of thinking alternative to the Western discourse but putting them into practice. I use the plural knowledges to place emphasis on the idea that there is no single knowledge to encompass the complexities of people, places, and ideas and their relationships within and outside of the world. Even when we think about what knowledge itself is, it is incredibly hard to define. Thus, knowledges plural is better suited as a term to describe learning and understanding rather than the singular knowledge, which implies that there is only one way to think about and explain the world, its objects, and its structures.

Only by asking questions that confront how imbedded colonialism is within society and its systems can we move toward a new system of social knowledges that is inclusive of alternative histories and ideological perspectives. I ask, is there a way for cultures to come together in the same space at specific sites to share knowledges, learning, and understanding in a way that

9 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (New York: Zed Books Ltd., 2012), 66. 10 Ibid, 66. 3

prevents the dominance of one knowledge over others and discourages from operating within knowledge hierarchies? Questioning the places in which we are situated, their histories, and the people, objects, and interactions that take place within these sites both historically and contemporarily is imperative if we are to support a new system of social knowledges inclusive of alternative worldviews. I argue that site- and land-specific spaces can be mobilized as places where different cultural knowledges (specifically Indigenous and Settler colonial) can come together at a meeting place to share, learn, and understand in a way that is respectful of their differences, sensitive to their unique positionality, and work against hierarchical structures that promote the domination and privileging of Settler colonial (descending from European) knowledges over Indigenous knowledges. In this space that is a liminal space of knowledge production a new system of inclusive social knowledges can develop.

I will endeavor to demonstrate what this system can look like in practice by examining the works of two contemporary artists whose installation works consider site- and land-specific histories of Indigenous cultures in Canada through their meeting and contact with European culture. In the work of Métis artist and architect Tiffany Shaw-Collinge the histories of Métis culture are reflected through the meeting of Indigenous and European peoples as their visual arts, language, and culture is represented in the public space of an outdoor park. Her work reduces the space between the historical, contemporary, and future moments as well as the space in-between

Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges. This welcomes the close sharing of different cultural knowledges and histories, which in turn encourages a production of knowledges inclusive of all voices. Alberta-based settler artist, designer, and curator Marina Hulzenga utilizes the concept of the border as a liminal in-between space to demonstrate how people and land and their histories are impacted by the way we visualize and represent space. Her work and 4

practice emphasize that people and land are always in relationship with one another and these relationships allow for a mutual understanding of different knowledges when they are brought to meet each other in the same space. While both of these artists have created spaces for conversation and reflection through their works, their ideas show how past histories shape present knowledges and how these knowledges in turn effect current understanding of these histories and other cultures outside of our own. The knowledge that is being produced in these public spaces now, occurs in liminal space. This space is the in-between space between cultures.

In-between what came before and what is to come after, a space where transformation occurs, and the space where knowledge is as of yet unknown but in formation. It is also a transition space where people, objects, ideas, and environments experience each other through their interactions. While this space has been widely discussed in colonial and post-colonial scholarship, its discourse focuses on how liminality can be used to explain the incidence of cultural change and the effect of colonization on cultural identity. For instance, in the work of humanities scholar and critical theorist Homi K. Bhabha, this is related to what he calls the Third

Space. This is the unrepresentable space that constitutes the production of meaning and thus is the space where cultural systems and enunciations or statements are formed.11 Literature and languages scholar Mary Louise Pratt’s approach to liminal space is known as the contact zone or the spaces where cultures clash with one another.12 This zone or space of encounter is where processes of transculturation occur and is closely associated with the colonial frontier.13 While this conversation about liminal space is important, I aim to demonstrate that liminal space can also be used to reveal the limitations of Settler colonial systems, whilst expressing how the

11 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994) 53, 55-56. Ashcroft et al., 136. 12 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992), 7. 13 Ibid, 7-8. 5

encounter of cultures and their knowledges can occur in this space in a balanced way that works to counter-colonize the current system of knowledge production.14

I will consider these works of visual art as examples of how cultures can bring their knowledges to a common site without the domination and reification of hierarchical structures enacting power and control, as well as privileging one group over another. These sites of exchange, learning, and understanding are necessary if we and our cultures are to move forward positively, respectfully, and sincerely. Both Shaw-Collinge’s and Hulzenga’s works are not only representative of how a system of social knowledges can materialize, but also of what Mi’kmaq elders Murdena and Albert Marshall call two-eyed seeing. This idea views Indigenous and

“Western” or European knowledges as coming from different perspectives similar to an “eye,” which has a distinct monocular field of view.15 Alone, each eye is unique and sees something the other eye cannot. However, together the two eyes expand the “field of vision” to create a new perspective through their coming together at a common meeting place, which enables them to interpret and “understand” both sides or views.16 The practice of two-eyed seeing as well as these works by artists Shaw-Collinge and Hulzenga represent what it looks like when different cultures and their knowledges come together in the same space without the presence of knowledge hierarchies. I employ this relational research paradigm as theorized by Indigenous scholar Shawn

Wilson, to emphasize the importance of place in understanding alternative histories and peoples relationships to these histories, which become a part of their cultural knowledge. I cite

14 Counter-discourse refers to theories and practices of resistance to the dominant discourse. The term was coined by scholar of literature Richard Terdiman. In relation, to counter-colonize means to work against the systems and structures of colonialism in an effort to resist their continued practices. 15 Marilyn Iwama, Murdena Marshall, Albert Marshall, and Cheryl Bartlett, “Two-Eyed Seeing and the Language of Healing in Community-based Research,” Canadian Journal of Native Education 32, no. 2, (2009): 4-5. 16 Ibid, 5. 6

Indigenous scholarship and acknowledge my place as a white scholar, an outsider of Indigenous cultures, to reflect on what this scholarship and knowledge teaches and informs me about social and alternative knowledges. It is this engagement with alternative knowledge methods and practices that allow for my critical encounter with Settler colonial systems in the Settler nation- state called Canada; and I encourage others embedded in the ongoing practices of colonialism to be open and welcoming to this encounter as well. Through these examples and in this work, I call for a push toward a system of inclusive social knowledges in all areas of society.

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Chapter 2: Moving Towards Relational Method and Practice

Coming to know the past has been part of the critical pedagogy of decolonization. To hold alternative histories is to hold alternative knowledges. The pedagogical implication of this access to alternative knowledges is that they can form the basis of alternative ways of doing things. Transforming our colonized views of our own history (as written by the West), however, requires us to revisit, site by site, our history under Western eyes. This in turn requires a theory or approach which helps us to engage with, understand and then act upon history.17

In Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s book Indigenous Methodologies: Research and

Indigenous Peoples (2012) she emphasizes how the Western worldview or ideological perspective (descending from the European system of knowledge and discourse) is unaccepting of histories that run alternative to its own as it is both consciously and subconsciously under the impression that these views will threaten its position and its single narrative of success and progress. The legacy of Settler colonialism is one that celebrates the idea of white supremacy descending from a history of promoting European superiority in comparison to other cultures.18

The term Eurocentrism communicates this idea as it is used to describe the notion that ‘Europe” as a collective is constructed as a symbol of superiority and as a binary to the rest of the world’s cultures.19 The claim of superiority communicates the character of Eurocolonial ideology and knowledge systems as racist, patriarchal, heterosexist, exploitive of people and resources, and hierarchical, etc. through its comparison of cultures where Europe is always centralized as the source of cultural meaning.20 These characteristics that Shawn Wilson describes using the adjective “dominant,” are part of the European-descended and Eurocentric culture, which

17 Tuhiwai Smith, 36. 18 Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, xi. 19 Ashcroft et al., 107. 20 Ibid, 107. 8

materialize in practice through economic, political, legal, military, religious, and educational policies established and enforced by governments throughout the global world.21 In Canada, a policy of assimilation was adopted by the government and its institutions in order to enact the absorption of Indigenous peoples into Settler colonial society by targeting community and family relationships, language, traditional practice, and belief systems, all part of Indigenous knowledges. The vehicle for this was the Indian Act (1876) that legislated the establishment of residential schools and the ban on ceremonial practices such as the Potlatch and the Sun Dance.

Between the years 1883 and 1996, the federal government forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families and communities. Separating children from their culture, and educating them in western institutions, with the intent of assimilating them into the Settler colonial state.22 The

Indian Act also made it illegal to engage in ceremonial practices such as the Potlatch and the Sun

Dance by attempting to prevent the expression of Indigenous identities.23 This practice of assimilation was also the motivating factor behind what has become known as the Sixties Scoop, referring to the “scooping” up of Indigenous children. Occurring predominantly throughout the

1960s and 1970s, Indigenous children were taken away from their communities and families and

‘adopted out’ into white homes.24 Thus, once again the Settler colonial government attempted to sever the ties and connection to their cultural heritage. While these are just a few examples of

21 Wilson, 35. 22 Mary Jane Logan McCallum, foreword to John S. Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999, foreword 2017), xvi. 23 Sara Florence Davidson and Robert Davidson, Potlatch as Pedagogy: Learning Through Ceremony (Winnipeg: Portage & Main Press, 2018), 27. The Potlach ban was written into the Indian Act of 1884 as an amendment. In 1885, the Sundance of the plains Indigenous cultures was also banned under an amendment to the Indian Act. Sara Davidson and Robert Davidson write that these bans to cultural practices was the government of Canada’s attempt to “sever authentic connections” of Indigenous peoples to their histories as well as the “genuine expressions” of Indigenous identities. 24 Patrick Johnston, Native Children and the Child Welfare System (Ottawa: Canadian Council on Social Development, 1983), 24. 9

assimilationist practices implemented and regulated in Canada, what is common among them all is the belief by the Settler colonial government that the integration and absorption of the

Indigenous population into its newly established society was not possible without first, the targeted destruction of Indigenous knowledges and second, the education (European-descended system) of children through the intentional prevention of having them engage with and learn from anything/one related to their traditional cultural heritage.25 These policies must be acknowledged as part of the history of Canada’s participation in cultural genocide. They also demonstrate the nature of Eurocentrism and its ideologies that arrange knowledges into hierarchies such as “civilized” and “uncivilized” at great consequence of emotional, physical, and cultural harm to Indigenous peoples.

In academic writing and practice, while European and Settler scholars have been criticized for the neoliberal narrative that victimizes Indigenous populations, Indigenous scholars urge both academic and non-academic communities to listen to the Indigenous perspective, voice, and lived experience of their communities’ histories while stepping away from the recycling of Eurocentric practice while opening ourselves up to alternative histories.26 These alternative histories are opportunities for learning about different ways of seeing the world and

25 I use the concept of Indigenous knowledges as inclusive of language, beliefs, traditions, practices, and worldviews. 26 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 117; Tuhiwai Smith, 178; I use the term Eurocentric practice to describe the narratives of society – including both academic and non-academic communities – that center Europe and European knowledges. In practice, these narratives are communicated through a written tradition and either a positivist paradigm (one that holds the view that there is one expression of truth, which can be determined through scientific verification) / a post-positivist paradigm (considers the biases of people as researchers and acknowledges that objectivity can never be achieved; still believes in one reality or truth) / critical theory (regards reality as more fluid) / constructivist approach (regards the existence of many realities specific to people and places). See Shawn Wilson, Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods, 35-37. Even this range of approaches for building on knowledge and learning about the world remains limited because the methods and practices remained centered on this European way of doing things. Thus, Eurocentric practice is that which is European-descended and European centered. It is the practice of learning about the world and producing knowledge using European methods and understanding about history, people, place, and ideas. 10

ergo provide audiences with opportunities of to transform Settler colonial views of history and

“understand and then act upon history.”27 As we read, write, and learn throughout life, we search for ways of understanding the world, its phenomena, its realities, and our place within it.

Learning from alternative histories diversifies this understanding. For instance, the stories of

Indigenous peoples, which includes First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, are narratives of survivance.

A term defined by Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor, survivance is the active presence, not absence, of Indigenous peoples and their cultures and the rejection of European narratives that victimize and reinforce European dominance and superiority through dichotomies such as colonizer – colonized, central – marginal, white – black, and human – animal, among others.28

Survivance narratives are examples of alternative histories, which Maori scholar, Linda Tuhiwai

Smith encourages her Indigenous audience to engage with in order to resist and transform the colonial view of their own (Indigenous) histories.29 For white Settler scholars such as myself as well as colonizer populations more generally, it is important that we listen to alternative histories and meet Indigenous peoples in places of shared understanding. While steps such as Canada’s

Truth and Reconciliation Commission have been taken in an effort to move forward in this shared understanding, these actions will not prove to be respectful, collaborative, healing, and fruitful until alternative knowledges are acknowledged in a common space where knowledge hierarchies are not permitted.30 In a Settler colonial society that is systemically structured to

27 Tuhiwai Smith, 36. 28 Gerald Vizenor, Native Provenance: The Betrayal of Cultural Creativity (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 31. 29 Tuhiwai Smith, 36. 30 Between 2007 and 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), under the direction of the Government of Canada, was tasked with providing Indigenous peoples impacted by Canada’s Residential School System the “opportunity to share their stories and experiences,” as indicated on the Government of Canada website under the heading “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,” Government of Canada, February 19, 2019, https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525. The TRC’s main responsibility was to 11

privilege certain types of knowledge and reify hierarchies, my question is threefold. Firstly, how can knowledge be produced in space in a way that acknowledges and respects different ideological perspectives or worldviews? Secondly, how can we recognize the validity of these ideological perspectives or worldviews and their importance to social knowledge? And finally, how can these knowledges enter the realm of social knowledge without one view dominating others?

To answer these questions, it is important to first look at the site where knowledge is produced. By locating this site, the social being and consumer of knowledge is exposed to understanding the context of said knowledge production, which is imperative for creating relationships and giving meaning to people, place, and ideas.31 This site occurs in multiple spaces including private domestic space, private cultural space (the collective space private to members of a particular cultural group), and public space (that which is accessible to all peoples in society). For the purpose of this thesis, I will be focusing on the production of knowledge in public space. Here I contend that knowledge production occurs in what may be referred to as liminal space, or the space in-between past knowledge and future knowledge, between the before and after. It is the site where knowledge production occurs through relational interactions between people, places, and ideas. In post-colonial studies, liminality is discussed as first stemming from the Latin word ‘limen,’ which means threshold, used to denote the entrance or

document the histories and experiences of Canada’s Residential School System survivors through oral testimony to be recorded and documented in a final series of reports. For the detailed reports of this commission see http://www.trc.ca/. 31 By social being, I mean the person and individual who learns about the world through its interactions with other people, places, and things in order to form ideas. Through these interactions, the social being develops relationships and is “social.” These relationships expose the social being to knowledge, which is “consumed” or learned and understood through its experiences with it. 12

doorway between two spaces such as the outside and inside.32 The genealogy of this term is employed by scholars studying the impact of colonialism on culture to describe the space where cultural change may occur through its encounter with other cultures.33 Some of the ways in which liminal space is discussed is included in the works of humanities scholar of literature and postcolonial studies, Homi K. Bhabha, and literature and languages scholar, Mary Louise Pratt, both of whom view liminal space as the place where cultures meet and interact with one another.

However, while Bhabha views this space as one that complicates a narrative of culture, Pratt focuses on the liminal in her work as a place where significant cultural change occurs as a result of the formation of unbalanced power relationships.34 In examining the works of these scholars, I will detail how liminal space has previously been mobilized to interpret culture’s encounter with colonialism. I will then offer an expanded view of the production of knowledge in this space which informs my understanding of what happens to different culture’s knowledges and worldviews as they encounter one another. Following, I propose an (anti-hierarchy) non- hierarchical and inclusive system of social knowledges by looking to alternative theories and methodologies as cultures continue to come into contact with one another in the nation-state of

Canada.

2.1 Homi K. Bhabha’s Third Space and Treaty 6 (1876)

To say that a concept or a thought becomes yours is to say that it becomes my thought, my concept; but it is never in my possession, it was never my property,

32 Ashcroft et al., 145. 33 Ibid. 34 I am using “a narrative of culture” to describe what I think Bhabha is trying to accomplish in his use of the Third Space as a place that complicates culture. In other words, there is no single narrative of culture because culture is not fixed, but fluid. Culture cannot be understood through one paradigm of understanding as it is not fixed in time and space. The interactions of one culture with others complicates its relationships with people, places, and ideas because it is through these interactions that culture changes over time; In Pratt’s use of the liminal, cultural change occurs in both cultures of the dominant and non-dominant through their interactions and clashes with one another. 13

because the thought is also yours—it belongs to you, too. To hold, in common, a concept like third space is to begin to see that thinking and writing are acts of translation. Third space, for me, is unthinkable outside of the locality of cultural translation.35

Some of Bhabha’s most impactful scholarship in post-colonial and cultural studies is his concept of hybridity, thoroughly discussed in his text The Location of Culture (1994). The space of hybridity, he says, is a “space of translation,” where culture is characterized by its

“mixedness” or unending potential to be varied because it is interconnected with different groups and other cultures as it encounters them physically and through their worldviews such as by travel and communication.36 For communication between different peoples through their languages, translation is required for meaning and understanding to be produced.37 The site where translation occurs or the “translational space of negotiation” is what Bhabha calls the

Third Space (also the Third Space of enunciation).38 The Third Space exists in-between two or more different cultures and is used to contend with the colonial narrative of binary discourse.39

This space, where translation and hybridity occur, discourages the simplification of culture encountered in colonial narratives and provides an interpretation of cultural difference outside of

Eurocentric thinking about cultural hierarchy.40 As cultures encounter one another in the Third

Space and the process of translation occurs, cultural difference may be rethought as a concept that enables the problematizing of binary divisions and its discourse rather than a part of the

35 Homi K. Bhabha, “In the Cave of Making: Thoughts on Third Space,” in Communicating in the Third Space, eds. Karin Ikas and Gerhard Wagner (New York: Routledge, 2009), ix. 36 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 37. 37 Bhabha, “In the Cave of Making: Thoughts on Third Space,” x. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Ashcroft et al., 145. 14

problem of culture.41 Bhabha articulates, “cultural difference is a process of signification through which statements of culture or on culture differentiate, discriminate and authorize the production of fields of force, reference, applicability and capacity.”42 Placed alternatively, cultural diversity is “a category of comparative ethics,” which makes culture the object of knowledge holding that there exist some kind of pre-conceived ‘uncontaminated’ or ‘pure’ culture(s).43 Arguing against the notion of ‘pure’ culture throughout his scholarship, Bhabha uses “cultural difference” as method of intervention in critiquing histories of colonization. Cultural difference, not cultural diversity, must be deployed when critiquing these histories, because it accounts for alternative histories and complicates culture. This supports the idea which he is trying to emphasize that no culture is truly isolated because it is hybrid and interconnected. It is in the Third Space, this liminal space of encounter, which allows for a method of looking as a way to reconsider the history of the critical theory of culture that colonial and post-colonial studies often writes as fixed in time and space.44 Much of the discussion of these terms by Bhabha in his scholarship takes place within the context of colonial India and its colonization by the British. However, when examining other colonial geographies throughout the world, such as North America, and more specifically, Canada, can the Third Space still operate as a place to challenge Eurocentric ideological perspectives and complicate colonial narratives? Professors of Secondary Education

Ingrid Johnston and George Richardson utilize Bhabha’s concepts of Third Space and cultural difference to reimagine social studies (history, politics, geography) curriculum in Canada.45 In

41 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 51. 42 Ibid, 50. 43 Ibid, 49-51. 44 Ibid, 49. 45 Ingrid Johnston and George Richardson, “Homi Bhabha and Canadian Curriculum Studies: Beyond the Comforts of the Dialectic,” Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies 10, no.1 (2012): 131. 15

doing so, they aim to demonstrate how the Canadian education system can move beyond the teachings of the Eurocentric canon.46 Further, scholar of education Heather Moquin writes about the non-Indigenous scholar conducting research about Inuit peoples. She draws from the postcolonial theory of Bhabha to critique and question the role of the non-Indigenous researcher and their tradition of using the European discourse when conducting research.47 In highlighting

Bhabha’s use of the Third Space to critique Western claims to superiority and cultural fixity,

Moquin notes that the use of these concepts opens up a space for the critical engagement with her own participation in the research process.48 When looking at the histories of colonialism in

Canada, it is likewise important to critically engage with the European discourse and narrative of these histories.

Take for example, the text and site of Treaty 6 (1876), which was negotiated on behalf of the colonial government of the Dominion of Canada by representatives of the Crown between

1871 and 1876 with the Indigenous First Nations whose territory was defined by the limits of this new Numbered Treaty. These Nations included peoples from the Cree, Dene Suliné

(Chipewyan), Nakota Sioux (Assiniboine), and Saulteaux cultural groups.49 Treaty 6 was signed and concluded in August of 1876 (with adhesions added later for the Nations who could not attend the signing) following meetings at the colonial establishments of Fort Carleton, Fort Pitt,

46 Ibid, 123. 47 Heather Moquin, 2007, “Postcolonial Reflections on Research in an Inuit Community,” in Conference Proceedings: Adult Education Research Conference, Halifax, 2007. Manhattan, Kansas: New Prairie Press, https://newprairiepress.org/aerc/2007/papers/73/. 48 Ibid. 49 Treaty 6 (1876) spans the territories of 50 First Nations. See https://www.aadnc- aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100020670/1100100020675#chp3 for a list of Treaty 6 (1876) First Nations in Alberta. See http://www.otc.ca/ckfinder/userfiles/files/fnl_1100100020617_eng.pdf for a list of Treaty 6 (1876) First Nations in Saskatchewan. See https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1418853369350/1418854433358#chp10 for list of Treaty 6 (1876) First Nations in Manitoba. 16

and Battle River. The main purpose of this treaty, like the other Numbered Treaties, was to facilitate the acquisition of Indigenous lands by the colonial government.

The Plain and Wood Cree Tribes of Indians, and all other the Indians inhabiting the district hereinafter described and defined, do hereby cede, release, surrender and yield up to the Government of the Dominion of Canada, for Her Majesty the Queen and Her successors forever, all their rights, titles and privileges, whatsoever, to the lands included within the following limits…50

Upon immediate examination of this text, the wording used demonstrates the preceding view, which is now enunciated on the document of Treaty 6, that a clear hierarchy existed between the colonizing government and the Indigenous peoples from the point of view of this government.

The “Indians…yield up to the Government of the Dominion of Canada” shows this linear thinking where the colonizers are placed in a position of superiority in relationship to Indigenous peoples. While it has been argued that the very process of treaty negotiation undertaken by the colonial government demonstrates its desire for good relations and friendship, this government entered into these negotiations with a clear vision of the outcome.51 An outcome that would result in their own best interests regardless of the impacts on Indigenous peoples; not steps a

‘friend’ would take. The decision to use the European written tradition and political process of treaty-making from this particular knowledge system before treaty process would begin, further expresses the belief by the European colonizers that this system, their system, was superior to that of the Indigenous treaty process. While there were elements from both knowledge systems incorporated into the process especially over time as colonial negotiator Alexander Morris’s approach to treaty-making became increasingly informed by Indigenous peoples, it largely relied

50 Canada, Treaty 6, Treaty Series, 1876, no. 6, signed near Carlton on August 23 and 28, 1876, signed at Fort Pitt on September 9, 1876, p. 2. http://www.trcm.ca/wp- content/uploads/PDFsTreaties/Treaty%206%20Text%20and%20Adhesions.pdf. 51 Robert J. Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties: An Intellectual & Political Biography of Alexander Morris (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing Ltd., 2009), 109. 17

on the European system.52 Defined under this system, a treaty is a formal record or legal document that is negotiated between parties, either states or people.53 Alternatively, one view as put forth by Harold Johnson, law scholar and member of Montreal Lake Cree Nation, describes treaties as “adoptions of one nation by another.”54 This is to say that when Indigenous peoples made treaty with the Europeans these Europeans (specifically the Queen and her children as treaties were negotiated on behalf of the Crown) became their relative according to Cree law.55

While the complexities of treaties are vast by both definitions and cannot be parsed down to two simple sentences, the idea that treaties are promises to be kept forever is understood by both

European and Indigenous cultures.56 However, the incident of two different understandings of a concept such as “treaty” demonstrates that different cultures understand different concepts in distinct ways according to their language and knowledge systems. For instance, the concept of ownership is distinct from the European understanding when looking at how it is viewed by

Haudenosaunee Confederacy located within the Great Lakes region through to the Eastern

52 Talbot, 67. With regards to the Numbered Treaties (1871-1921), the earlier of the Treaties (especially Treaties 1 and 2) have fewer clauses than the later ones as First Nations were forced to learn the European treaty process over time. Talbot argues that Alexander Morris, who negotiated Treaties 3-6 on behalf of the Crown and Canadian government changed his negotiation process over time as he learned more about First Nations understanding of treaty terms. However, it is a mistake to assume that this process became fairer over time. There was still a significant imbalance in power between First Nations and the colonial government. As well, the debate over whether or not First Nations had a choice in signing these treaties is also important to note as their way of life, culture, and futures became increasingly threatened by the influx of European Settlers to their lands as well as the colonial governments assimilation tactics (of which treaties are a part of). For example, as more Settlers poured into Indigenous lands, resources became scarcer, such as the buffalo populations, which were slaughtered to the brink of extinction. Indigenous populations were therefore forced into starvation due to the conditions that Settler colonization and colonialism had ensured would reduce these populations (See Crosby, 287-288). These conditions were a major catalyst in forcing First Nations to sign treaties in order to protect their communities. Yet this “protection” was largely defined and controlled by the Settler colonial nation-state that had caused their populations to decline in the first place. 53 J.R. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal Treaty-Making in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 3. 54 Harold Johnson, Two Families: Treaties and Government (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing Ltd., 2007), 13. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid, 28; Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal Treaty-Making in Canada, 3. 18

Woodlands.57 Ownership may be related to the way that spatial relationships are thought of among Haudenosaunee cultures. Mohawk Historian, Susan Hill describes Haudenosaunee societal spheres as representing these spatial relationships to explain how territory is viewed. She notes that these temporal boundaries and realms “build upon each other in terms of identity and understanding one’s place in the world.”58 For example, in a 16th century Haudenosaunee longhouse two families share each fire pit, its maintenance, and its benefits.59 The relationship formed between these two families represents a balance and interdependence between them.60

This in turn informs all relationships “between different clans, between men and women, and between…nations” as a “collection of family fires” based on mutual respect and balanced interactions.61 Further away from the central hearth of the family, the woods edge served as a shared territory between Haudenosaunee villages (like the sharing of the fire pit between families), a sharing space for forest resources, as well as a “determining line for diplomacy” when visitors arrived in these spaces.62 Through treaty-making, Haudenosaunee peoples also agreed upon these types of sharing spaces with other Nations creating safe spaces for hunting as one example.63 As such, the concept of ownership is not about possession of land in this instance, but rather a space that is shared among peoples, villages, and Nations that are in relationship with each other. This is different from the European understanding of ownership,

57 The Six Nations Confederacy comprises the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora Nations. The Tuscarora Nation joined the Confederacy after leaving their traditional territory in North Carolina and Virginia in the early 18th century. Their issues are brought forward through the Cayuga Nation. The Delaware Nation, the Wyendot Nation, and the Tutela Nation also bring their issues forward through the Cayuga Nation. Please see https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/the-league-of-nations/ for more information. 58 Susan M. Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017), 80. 59 Ibid, 80. 60 Ibid, 81. 61 Ibid, 81-82. 62 Ibid, 82. 63 Ibid, 83. 19

which like property is related to “possession.” When examining concepts such as ownership and property within different cultural contexts and understandings, it can inform our understanding of why we should engage critically with documents like the Numbered Treaties. The imbalance of power and failure for shared understanding in treaties continues to be reflected in the system of social knowledge, through cultural interactions, and in politics, economics, and society, which overall may be interpreted as the colonial government’s breaking of these promises.

When historicizing treaty-making in Canada, Cree/Salteaux professor Gina Starblanket cautions that by selecting specific contextual elements of Canada’s treaty history, such as specific events during a treaty process, causes some interpretations to be centered and others made invisible.64 Even my selection of this specific section of text from Treaty 6 as well as this interpretation risks a re-centering of European knowledges. However, for the purpose of this project, I would like to emphasize that it is the language of treaty documents in Canada that are evidence of the privileging of European knowledges over Indigenous knowledges. This is in part because British English, used as the language in treaty writing, was more familiar to the colonial government at the time and so viewed by this government as the best practice for drawing up a treaty. Yet familiarity does not excuse this government as well as the current government of

Canada from imposing its knowledges on Indigenous populations in order to achieve a very specific set of goals such as expansionism through the acquisition of the land and its resources.

The Numbered Treaties, negotiated between 1871 and 1921, still in effect today, were employed

64 Gina Starblanket, “The Numbered Treaties and the Politics of Incoherency,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 52 (2019): 445. 20

as official political agreements to “sustain Indigenous dispossession and marginalization,” as

Starblanket argues.65

I suggest that regardless of the government’s intention, the text of Treaty 6 as evidence of the enunciative process taking place in the Third Space still demonstrates a meeting place of cultures where dichotomies are prevalent. Bhabha would argue that Treaty 6 as a site of translation between two groups (European and Indigenous) represents the construction of a new political object that is neither no longer solely European nor solely Indigenous, but something new and hybrid that occupies both spaces of culture.66 However, does Bhabha’s theory of hybridity account for power imbalances that still arise in the Third Space? When it comes to power, the Third Space calls into question categories of culture, identity, and hierarchical structures that are based on Eurocentric perspectives.67 Therefore, its operation encourages the constant questioning of authority that one culture may try to impose on another based on the false belief that their culture is more superior or ‘pure,’ which the Third Space refutes. In the process of treaty-making and negotiation in the context of colonial Canada, the Third Space does not function to effect hegemony and knowledge hierarchies, but rather provides an alternative for interpreting and exposing the limits of Eurocentric thinking in both theory and practice.

The document of Treaty 6 becomes an example of the general practice of colonial governments to dictate and determine the rules of negotiation and control, the resulting situation thereby ensuring that a system of hierarchy and control is largely maintained in their favour. This tactic results in the uneven distribution of power and creates and supports/reinforces hierarchies

65 Ibid. 66 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 37. 67 Sayyed Rahim Moosavinia and Sayyede Maryam Hosseini, “Liminality, hybridity and the ‘Third Space:’ Bessie Head’s A question of power,” Neohelicon 45 (2018): 336. 21

that refuse to acknowledge the importance or even existence of alternative worldviews and ways of knowing and understanding. Through these actions, knowledge production is limited to a particular view and translated into social knowledge. While the Third Space certainly complicates the colonial narrative and may be utilized to challenge Eurocentric perspectives, the question now is can it be mobilized as a space inclusive of all ideological perspectives before

Settler colonial attitudes seek to control knowledge production in this space? Before the Third

Space as a liminal space can be explored in this way however, it is important that Eurocentric perspectives are understood to be maintained as the dominant system because they are embedded within the structure of society itself. In writer and historian Patrick Wolfe’s scholarship, he discusses settler colonialism as a structure rather than an event.68 He says “claims to authority over Indigenous discourse made from within the settler-colonial academy necessarily participate in the continuing usurpation of Indigenous space (invasion is a structure not an event).”69 In other words, the action of settler-colonial society’s institutions in maintaining their domination and belief in superiority and authority over Indigenous space (land, people, culture) continues the invasion of colonialism within the structures of society. Thus, Settler colonialism is not an event that may be isolated to specific moments in time; rather it is a structure that is continued through the Eurocentric insistence of authority and take over of land, people, and culture. This authority is then re-enacted and maintained every day through this structure. As such, the Third Space provides a way of thinking about how the production of knowledge within the settler colonial structure makes more real and maintains the dominance of the settler nation state (Canada). It

68 Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (New York: Cassell, 1999), 163. 69 Ibid, 3. 22

allows for the questioning of how knowledge is produced and controlled in this space, which likewise facilitates thinking about how to counter-colonize this production of knowledge.

2.2 Mary Louise Pratt’s Contact Zone

Postcolonial scholars during the 1990s increasingly saw liminality as a concept that could be used to talk about the location where cultural change occurs as well as how this change happens. Mary Louise Pratt takes up the liminal in her 1992 text Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Here, liminal space is discussed as a social space where communication and interaction between cultures occurs, a space which she terms the “Contact Zone.”70 The

Contact Zone is first, the place where different cultures meet and clash with one another in a way that often creates unbalanced relationships of domination and subordination.71 Second, it is the place where cultural change occurs through the influx of new or introduced characteristics from another culture also referred to as transculturation,72 And third, the Contact Zone of the colonial encounter is compared to that of the “colonial frontier.”73 When taken together, these features of the Contact Zone “invoke the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historical disjunctures, … whose trajectories now intersect.”74 As such, it is a helpful term when examining the encounter between cultures, especially those affected by colonization and its ideological impacts.

70 Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 6-7. 71 Ibid, 4. 72 Ibid, 6. Transculturation is a term coined by Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz Fernández. It is used to describe the process of cultural transformation as different cultures come into contact with one another. Their contact results in their merging or transference of cultural traits, practices, beliefs, and languages, etc. in a continuous back and forth and in-between fashion. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid, 7. 23

With the arrival of the Europeans and their determination to expand physically and ideologically in North America, the Indigenous encounter with colonialism was one that oscillated back and forth and in between peace and conflict.75 As well, it is important to note that

Indigenous experiences with the Europeans varied immensely because each Nation and cultural group had different protocols when dealing with outsiders. However, regardless of the nature of these relationships and their changes over time, there is no question that as a result of the thinking, ideological perspectives, and objectives of the colonizers through their intention to extend their authority and control over land, people, and resources, an imbalance in power existed and persists between these groups. By examining the Indigenous and European encounter from the “Contact” perspective that Pratt’s scholarship details, the formation of the subject of a culture occurs through its relations and interactions with subjects of other cultures.76 By emphasizing the experience of the subject, the Contact Zone exposes the intersection of cultures going beyond simple narratives of conquest and domination.77 Rather, these narratives are critiqued, complicated, and opened up to alternative histories as the Contact Zone is investigated.

This opening up is possible in this space because understanding the context of cultural encounters allows the reader/viewer/participant in liminal space to think critically about how power is negotiated in this space.

For instance, in the space between cultural encounters, peoples must find ways to communicate with one another in order to create a shared understanding together. During this process, it is inevitable that both cultures will adopt the other’s practices of communication to an

75 J.R. Miller, introduction to Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian-White Relations in Canada, ed. J.R. Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), vii. 76 Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 7. 77 Ibid. 24

extent for understanding to arise. Over time, both cultures are increasingly exposed to the other’s knowledges and become ‘known’ and sometimes incorporated into the other culture.78 This is also referred to as what anthropologist Fernando Ortiz Fernández calls transculturation.

Specifically, transculturation is the “process of transition from one culture to another” that he uses to complicate and combine the anthropological terms acculturation and deculturation.79

While acculturation usually describes the process of acquiring another culture and deculturation, the loss of culture, transculturation covers the transition between these two phases.80

Transculturation is important in colonial studies because it is aimed at complicating the discourse on acculturation and assimilation that tend to focus on cultures under conquest through colonialism.81 Such a discussion has a tendency to reproduce and reinforce the continued push of

Indigenous cultures to the peripheries of social knowledge through focusing on narratives of victimization instead of narratives that present alternative histories and knowledges, which emphasize survivance and the importance of diversity of knowledges.

The third way in which Pratt discusses the Contact Zone is through its relationship with the idea of the colonial frontier. The frontier in colonial and post-colonial studies is the boundary that distinguishes between one people or space and another.82 The frontier when represented in colonial cartography demonstrates that space was as much invented as it was documented in

78 By becoming ‘known’ I mean that through the encounter of different cultures, each culture is exposed to the others system of knowledge including language, beliefs, values, traditions, visual culture, etc. Through this exposure they begin to ‘know’ these knowledges, which become a part of individual and group understanding about another culture. However, even through this exposure I would argue that someone from outside of another culture (an outsider) can never truly ‘know’ that culture and its knowledges because as an outsider, you lack the experiences and therefore understanding that an insider of another culture has. 79 Fernando Ortiz Fernández, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, trans. Harriet de Onís (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 102. 80 Ibid. 81 Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession (1991): 36. 82 Ashcroft et al., 122. 25

order for Empire to create an image of its self as the superior, civilized, and white colonizer society.83 However, the only way in which it could achieve this image was by having another, an other, by which its self-image could be defined and compared.84 This other inhabits the space on the other side of the colonial frontier, which Pratt notes is grounded within an expansionist perspective where “the frontier is a frontier only with respect to Europe.”85

Expansionism is a major component of the project of Empire building through colonization and imperialism. For instance, in a map authored by Scottish cartographer John

Pinkerton and engraver L. Hebert between 1758 and 1826, titled British Possessions of North

America, we see a representation of the land from a British point of view (Figure 1). The land is represented as a “possession” to be owned as indicated by the title of the map as well as the

European presence, which appears to be extending toward the west with the clustering of place names in the east and their decline moving westward. This Eurocentric thinking about expansion and the frontier is evidenced through these maps. Demonstrating the view where Europe, and specifically Great Britain at the heart of Empire, is perceived as the center to which everything else is compared to. As Empire expands outward, the edges of this expansion are the frontier.

The area at its peripheries and beyond the frontier is the “wild,” and “empty” or terra nullius space, unknown to the European explorer and naturalized by him as a space for resource extraction and profit. This particular map was created at the time that the Industrial Revolution was in full swing during the later half of the 18th century and the early 19th century. While resource extraction is not specifically mapped out here, this process was a driving force in

83 Afaf Ahmed Hasan Al-Saidi, “Post-colonialism Literature the Concept of self and the other in Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians: An Analytical Approach,” Journal of Language Teaching and Research 5, no.1 (2014): 95-96. 84 The other (small ‘o’) in postcolonial scholarship is the colonized persons who are treated as peripheral or marginalized by colonial and imperial discourse; Ashcroft et al., 123. 85 Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 7. 26

colonial expansion.86 When described as “possession” or property, the land is associated with profit and material gain, something to be taken advantage of for the human benefit of [a] specific group(s) and society. Property as defined under an English European and liberal capitalist understanding refers to the legal terms governing access to land, material objects, and intellectual products.87 Once these terms have been met, the land or object becomes controlled by either individuals or the collective who enters into a legal agreement that transfers ownership over these properties from one body to another. However, as Indigenous feminist scholar and activist

Aileen Moreton-Robinson notes, whiteness is also a form of property through its accumulation of capital and social appreciation as “white people are recognized within the law primarily as property-owning subjects.”88 In this sense and by this definition, Indigenous peoples as having

“ownership” of property is controlled by the settler colonial structure that reifies the dispossession of Indigenous lands through this structure. As I have noted, this definition is a

European view of land as property and something that can be ‘owned’ and ‘controlled.’ This definition does not take into account that the concept of land does not fall into a category of possession or ownership from Indigenous perspectives. For example, Wilson notes that

“knowledge cannot be owned or discovered but is merely a set of relationships that may be given a visible form.”89 As knowledge is held in the relationships with the land, the land also cannot be considered as a possession because of its relational quality. Therefore, the use of the term

86 Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe 900-1900, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), xviii. 87 Brenna Bhandar, Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 3-5. Bhandar discusses property law as the means through which the colonial power realizes its power through the possession of land. The definition I provide here is a summation of property in the general capitalistic sense of the term. 88 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), xix. 89 Wilson, 127. 27

“possession” on this map communicates a European view of land and space, which is then imposed upon Indigenous peoples through the structure of settler colonialism that insists and imposes its authority over Indigenous space.

Furthermore, while the Indigenous presence is not absent on this map, as there are place names that are signified by Indigenous languages, this presence is represented through the eyes of Empire or as understood by the British cartographers who have charted this space. As such the knowledge that is transmitted to the viewers is particular to the European ideological perspective.

The cartographers that have produced this map and those like it are assuming the European position that mapping territory legitimizes its “ownership” by those who are represented in the mapped space. This demonstrates the reinforcement and imposition of settler colonial authority over Indigenous populations through the dispossession of their lands; evidence of their lack of understanding of Indigenous concepts of land and territory as well as their unwillingness to learn about these concepts that they lay claim to from cultures outside of their own.90 Further, depending on how maps are distributed and what their intended use is, their production will become part of social knowledge significantly impacting the way populations view land and space. However, as I have demonstrated, this view is particular to a Eurocentric, European- descended understanding. Thus, at the intersection of European and Indigenous cultures at the colonial frontier, this non-Indigenous perspective maintains binary discourse as representations are made that reference back to Europe. Through the use of the Contact Zone in Pratt’s

90 For a discussion of settler colonial land ownership and Indigenous land dispossession see Eric Morton, “White settler death drives: settler statecraft, white possession, and multiple colonialisms under Treaty 6,” Cultural Studies 33, no.3 (2019): 437-459. 28

scholarship, she aims to move beyond the limited perspective of the colonial frontier to point to the copresence of peoples in a space whose cultures are meeting one another.91

These theories of liminal space demonstrate the use of liminality as a framework for understanding and critiquing the narrative of the colonial encounter, which is often oversimplified as it is historicized in scholarly writing. As such, the works of Bhabha and Pratt emphasize that the historical account of colonization continues the practices of colonialism through its continued marginalization of minority voices and maintaining the rhetoric of binary discourse. While these scholars have explored what happens to culture and its knowledges when it comes into contact with other cultures, their works do not focus on how to think about ways knowledge systems can work together in order not to dominate one another when they come into contact.

Furthermore, there is a difference between learning about others and learning from others. I would suggest that the former is consistent with the mentality and approach that we

Europeans and Settler descendants tend to take when setting off to “explore the unknown.” Yet, in this mindset, we are never open to changing our thinking about certain knowledges that we think we know and understand, which ultimately keeps us contained within a very specific ideological perspective or worldview. In other words, when encountering other cultures and their worldviews, we tend to bring expectations with us that are informed by the European understanding of the world. We then impose our expectations and understanding upon these cultures and make them into what “we want” to confirm and reify our knowledge. If we are to encounter cultures and learn from them, we must enter into relationships with others prepared to

91 Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 7. 29

listen to their voices, understanding that we cannot know them from our own knowledge. We can only try to know them through their own knowledges. How then do we create a system of social knowledges that is not reliant on one worldview or system of understanding culture? How do we engage both of our eyes and their peripheries equally before binaries and practices of domination, superiority, and hierarchy form? To answer these questions, I turn to the methodology of three Indigenous scholars and knowledge keepers whose works provide a pathway for examining alternative ways of learning and understanding cultural knowledges by exploring relationships and fields of vision.

2.3 Relationality and Albert and Murdena Marshall’s Two-Eyed Seeing

Within an Indigenous research epistemology and ontology is the recognition that research and thinking need to be (and are) culturally based. Of course, all philosophy is based on a culture, a time, a place…We need to recognize that this is an important part of how all people think and know (not just Indigenous people). Once we recognize the importance of the relational quality of knowledge and knowing, then we recognize that all knowledge is cultural knowledge. The foundations of this cultural knowledge guide the way that our societies come to be formed….92

In Wilson’s 2008 book Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods, he discusses the importance of relationality and relationships when conducting research, especially for Indigenous scholars. Relationality is described as the view that “we are the relationships that we hold and are a part of.”93 In other words, relational research is about the interconnections and interrelationships between people, environment, land, spirituality (the cosmos), and ideas while being accountable to who or what the research may impact through its topic, method, and presentation.94

92 Wilson, 91. 93 Ibid, 80. 94 Ibid, 97-125. See section beginning on page 97 “Relational Accountability.” 30

Child-care Settler researcher Alison Gerlach asserts that research practices taking a relational approach can actually support a theory of knowledge that decolonizes research.95

While I would agree that relational research is necessary for critiquing the limits, biases, and binarism of Eurocentric system of social knowledge put into practice in institutions such as the university, I would caution the often over-used term “decolonization.” Decolonization implies the dismantling of the colonist power.96 However, cultural studies Settler scholar Soenke

Biermann suggests that because decolonization has largely been discussed through a Eurocentric framework, this practice in settler states like Canada does not question the traditions of colonial governance.97 If we are to deconstruct the hierarchical system of social knowledge and educate relationally, then these practices are more likely to act as counter-colonial initiatives. While decolonizing speaks to a dismantling of colonial authority and ideological perspectives, in order to decenter Eurocentric structures and rhetoric without the centering or re-centering of their knowledges, a counter-colonial process through relational method and practice must be implemented. In working to “counter” or resist the colonial structure and system, this process serves to reiterate the telling of Indigenous narratives and knowledges from their own perspective.98 In doing so, these knowledges are respected, preserved, framed, and situated according to an Indigenous way of knowing; not according to narratives of victimization,

95 Alison Gerlach, “Thinking and Researching Relationally: Enacting Decolonizing Methodologies with an Indigenous Early Childhood Program in Canada,” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 17 (2018): 6. 96 Ashcroft et al., 73. 97 Soenke Biermann, “Knowledge, Power and Decolonization: Implication for NonIndigenous Scholars, Researchers and Educators,” in Indigenous Philosophies and Critical Education: A Reader, ed. George J. Sefa Dei (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2011), 393. 98 Gwilym Lucas Eades, Maps and Memes: Redrawing Culture, Place, and Identity in Indigenous Communities (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 75. I view Eades’s discussion of counter-mapping as a counter-colonial process that resists colonial structures of power that are built into social knowledge in society. In his discussion he talks about counter-mapping as a way to frame narrative around particular places. This allows for a resistance to the centering of European voices and turns the viewer’s attention back toward Indigenous cultures but in a way that celebrates their cultures and knowledges as well as the preservation of them. 31

dominance, and superiority that European ways of knowing impose upon cultures outside of their own. This then works to counter-balance the unequal and hierarchical structure of settler colonialism.

For instance, the work of Mi’kmaq elders Murdena and Albert Marshall offers a visualization of a kind of counter-colonial process that could be applied in various institutions and systems throughout society. Picture your two eyes. There is your left eye and there is your right eye. If you close or cover your right eye, your left sees everything on the left side of your field of vision. Likewise, if you close or cover your left eye, your right eye sees everything on the right side of your field of vision. Alone, each eye only has vision in either your left or right field. The left eye cannot see the peripheries of the right and the right eye cannot see the peripheries of the left. Therefore, alone, each eye has access to its own field of view, only a specific vision and set of information. It is only when your two eyes see together that a wider field of view is possible. This is what Murdena and Albert Marshall call two-eyed seeing.

The practice of two-eyed seeing describes a process of the encounter of two different knowledge systems. When these systems meet, they do not merge.99 They each exist independently within their own field of view. Yet, together both eyes share in a wider field of vision, allowing for recognition of their positions, differences, and alternative ways of doing and knowing. This creates a condition that is open to interfusing or weaving with one another, building relationships, respecting past and present knowledge, and is open to the pursuit of new knowledges together.100

99 Iwama et al., 5. 100 Ibid. 32

With this methodology and practice in mind, I return to the signing of Treaty 6 (1876).

The signing of Treaty 6 and its physical document reflecting the epistemological views of the

British, demonstrates the failure of the treaty process which “lacked the flexibility to accommodate the viewpoints and wishes of Indian people [because] the terms had been predetermined…”101 Only one eye was engaged and continues to be used by the colonial state and settler colonial peoples as well as the structures of their system of social knowledge.

The colonial frontier and expansionist perspective likewise center the narrative on Europe and its empires, but in doing so is unable to fully engage with its peripheries. Its constant looking back to the heart of the Empire (London, in the case of the British Empire) maintains a pushing through and over Indigenous cultures rather than a looking forward with them. Cree Law scholar,

Johnson reiterates this idea that the European worldview lacks a willingness to engage with alternative histories and knowledges. He expresses these ideas, which maintain a similarity with the two-eyed seeing practice and ideas of Albert and Murdena Marshall in his statement:

Kiciwamanawak, you have two eyes so that you can perceive depth. Because your eyes are slightly apart, you can better judge distance. Imagine if you had many eyes, all focused on the same object from different directions, how clear and complete your vision might be. From your single view you perceive yourself as the greatest race on earth…”102

The failure of the Eurocentric system of social knowledge is that its view is so limited; so much so that it is unable to consider and understand alternative perspectives. If we are to hold

101 Neal McLeod, Cree Narrative Memory: From Treaties to Contemporary Times (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing Ltd., 2007), 41. 102 Johnson, 74. Harold Johnson writes on behalf of his people, the Montreal Lake Cree Nation. He uses the Cree word “Kiciwamanawak” throughout his writing, which is endorsed by Chief Lionel Bird as Johnson takes the role of “speaker for all of us to you.” “Kiciwamanawak” means “my cousin” referencing his audience (specifically the Crown/Queen and her descendents), whom he speaks to directly throughout this book, narrating his story, the story of his people. More generally, his use of this term speaks to the non-Indigenous settler person whose system of knowledge descends from European ideologies. 33

alternative histories and by extension alternative knowledges that Tuhiwai Smith calls for, we must engage both of our eyes (and many more).

In order to look at how two-eyed seeing and relational theory can be put into practice I turn to the site- and land-specific installation artworks of two contemporary artists. Their works reflect these methodologies and theories in practice as well as demonstrate what inclusive system of social knowledges can look like.

34

Chapter 3: Pehonan, Tiffany Shaw-Collinge

To only think in one way is restrictive. That’s why I don’t think I have to think only from an Indigenous standpoint. It’s nice to think in both worlds so that I can have a better understanding of how things could work and how solutions can move forward.103

In an interview with Métis artist and architect Tiffany Shaw-Collinge, she describes her view about creating spaces that allow people to “take in their environment and have a moment to pause.”104 A space that invites and encourages this human-environment interaction, her work

Pehonan (2018) is situated specifically in a public park on Métis ᐄᓃᐤ ÎNÎW River Lot 11, on the traditional lands of the Cree; and more generally on the traditional lands of the Dene

(Chipewyan), Blackfoot, Stoney, Nakota Sioux (Assiniboine), and Saulteaux cultural groups as part of Treaty 6 (1876) territory in Edmonton, Alberta.

The site-specific installation entitled Pehonon, which means “waiting place” in Cree, consists of a circle bordered by four tiered steps resembling curvilinear amphitheatre-style seating (Figure 2). The circle, functions as a reference to a sacred space and form that occurs in many Plains Indigenous cultures. Usually this sacred space is delineated by a collection of stones or rocks formed in a circle on the ground. This space is entered from the East, where the sun rises, and is a spiritual, ceremonial, and sharing space for Plains peoples.105 The amphitheatre referencing a European, specifically Roman history of theatre design, is likewise a space for gathering together, but in a different context. It consists of a series of tiered steps for seating in a space so that a performance may be viewed. However, its application by Shaw-Collinge is more

103 Tiffany Shaw-Collinge (artist) in discussion with the author, August 11, 2020. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 35

organic so as to maintain its relationship to the curvilinear lines of Indigenous forms. This combination of two distinct yet interrelated cultural structures provides the public with a place to sit, think, and learn.106

Through the bringing together of Indigenous and European forms and language to create a space for learning, knowledge, and reflection, Shaw-Collinge’s site-specific installation demonstrates a “coming together” or meeting place between different cultures and by extension, their worldviews or ideological perspectives. The work is specifically located and connected to place. As such, my investigation emphasizes the importance of understanding place and context in order to recognize this installation’s significance to the histories and intersections of cultures in this place. It is through this emphasis on context that the work’s relationship to the land, people, and ideas can be better understood by its audience. This in turn encourages the audience to reflect on their own situatedness in their encounter with the work in this space. In my inquiry and learning about Pehonan, I argue that it provides an example for how the method and practice of two-eyed seeing and relationality can be mobilized and in turn encourage the development of an inclusive system of social knowledges; one that considers many perspectives and knowledges when they meet in the same place, which can then spread to other places and spaces. I will consider three aspects of this work in my analysis: the location or site of the work; the physical forms that have been brought together; and the use of Indigenous and European languages.

Permeating each of these three ideas is their relationship to time, which is a major theme for

Shaw-Collinge in this work.

106 Ibid. When talking about how the title came about, Shaw-Collinge notes that it materialized out of conversations with Cree elder Jerry Saddleback who referred to the site of the Indigenous Art Park as the “waiting place.” Being Métis Cree, Shaw-Collinge chose to use the Cree word as a way of expressing her own personal connection to the Cree language 36

Furthermore, while Pehonan has its own function within the space in which it is situated, it is also part of a larger collection of installation works exhibited in the Indigenous Art Park, curated by scholar and curator Candice Hopkins (Carcross Tagish First Nation, Gaanax.âdi clan).

Created through the collaboration and partnership between the City of Edmonton, the

Confederacy of Treaty 6 First Nations, the Métis Nation of Alberta, the Edmonton Arts Council and Indigenous artists, the Indigenous Art Park is designed to reflect the past, present, and future relationships between Indigenous peoples and the lands here. The collection of works includes those by the Indigenous artists Amy Malbeuf (Rich Lake, Alberta), Duane Linklater (Moose

Cree First Nation, Ontario), Jerry Whitehead (James Smith First Nation, Ontario), Mary Anne

Barkhouse Nimpkish Band, Kwakiutl First Nation), Marianne Nicolson (Dzawada’enuxw

Nation), and Tiffany Shaw-Collinge (Métis, Edmonton, Alberta).107 Like Shaw-Collinge’s work, the other installations relate to the land upon which they are situated as part of Treaty 6 territory, the historical river lot of Métis land-owner Joseph McDonald, and traditional Plains Cree territory. Through their interconnectedness with the land upon which they are situated, these works reflect on the historical relationship between Indigenous peoples and European settlers.

While each work has its own unique themes and forms, the collection of the works as a whole situated in one area or environment establishes a dialogue between them. As the viewer(s)/audience move through the Indigenous Art Park, they are confronted with various cultures and Indigenous communal knowledge. Through this exposure, the audience experiences differing interpretations and historical perspectives, all contributing to a collection of knowledges that is produced in the process of walking through the park. The experience is a

107 List of Works in the Indigenous Art Park: iskotew, Amy Malbeuf; mikikwan, Duane Linklater; mamohkamatowin (Helping Each Other), Jerry Whitehead; Reign, Mary Anne Barkhouse; Preparing to Cross the Sacred River, Marianne Nicolson; Pehonan, Tiffany Shaw-Collinge. 37

relational one. A relational encounter between people and objects, between people and environment, between people and ideas, and of course between peoples. In-between these relationships knowledge is being produced through cultural encounters and interactions.

However, by looking at these encounters as relational, meaning and knowledge is produced without privileging one perspective over others. By making visible Indigenous voices, that have always been present in this space through their deep relationship to the land, the Indigenous Art

Park demonstrates that while structures and systems of Settler colonialism now reproduced through neocolonial and neoimperial political, economic, and social institutions may continue to dominate and impose their order on marginalized cultures, Indigenous peoples and their voices will endure. Shaw-Collinge speaks to the character of these voices when talking about the curation of the Park:

There is not a lot of visibility in the city for Indigenous people. There are very little reminders of what this area was before it became Edmonton and this park was a way to respond to that. It was created to be a space to celebrate Indigeneity in the city and to remind people that we are still here. People actually think we’re historic, but we’re still here.108

While all of the works in this space invoke and emphasize the continued presence of Indigenous peoples and their cultures on the land, Pehonan’s realization of Métis culture through the meeting of First Nations and European cultures reiterates the continued relationships that exist between different cultures.

3.1 Métis ᐄᓃᐤ ÎNÎW River Lot 11

Like all site-specific installations, Pehonan is designed particular to its location, meaning that if one were to remove the work from this place in which it is situated, its meaning would

108 Tiffany Shaw-Collinge (artist) in discussion with the author, August 11, 2020. 38

change. As a land art object, Pehonan is built-in and integrated directly into the land, which not only affirms its deep connection to the earth, but also strengthens this relationship between the installation and the site at which it is situated. As the visitor encounters Pehonan, their experience with the work will be unique to them individually based on, for instance, what they personally associate with the place in which they are located. For example, this location has many place names. Métis ᐄᓃᐤ ÎNÎW River Lot 11; Treaty 6 Territory; Edmonton, Alberta,

Canada; Indigenous Art Park; Queen Elizabeth Park. The visitor may be familiar with all, a few, or only one of these place names and this knowledge will impact how they experience and understand the work and the history of the place in which it is situated. However, the visitor’s knowledge about this place does not change its history. Rather, their knowledge effects the account of its history.

Métis ᐄᓃᐤ ÎNÎW River Lot 11 is the historic homestead of the Métis land-owner Joseph

McDonald (Figure 3). While little information about him can be found in records, McDonald was a member of the Métis communities that settled on the plains following their travel westward as the fur trade expanded into the west during the 18th and 19th centuries.109 During the 19th century, Métis communities grew across the Plains.110 While their homesteads and culture were largely unrecognized by the federal government and the Hudson’s Bay Company on a legal level with regards to land and trading rights, the Métis played a significant role in the trade networks and economy throughout the land.111 The Métis, as an Indigenous cultural group and Nation, was likewise not officially recognized by this government until 1982 in the

109 Michael Hogue, Metis and the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2015), 3-4. 110 Ibid, 21, 44-45. 111 Ibid, 30. 39

Constitution Act under section 35(2) although the term Métis and the people existed long before legal recognition under the terms of the colonial system.112 Métis writer Chelsea Vowel writes that this was in part the result of government and white settler society’s view that Métis peoples were “half-breeds,” neither Indigenous nor European.113 While Métis peoples had long played critical roles in treaty negotiations, it was not until 1869 that the actions of Louis Riel and the

Red River Métis people impacted the government’s treatment of Métis peoples and their recognition of land claims.114 The treatment of Métis peoples is still very much tied to their identity, an identity that is particular to the lived experiences of Métis peoples, and one that the historical and contemporary colonial government does not seem intent on understanding.115

Before the land became host to the Indigenous Art Park, it was a shared territory between

First Nations and Métis peoples. McDonald’s land lot was a section of Métis territory that is part of First Nations traditional lands and specifically shared with Papaschase First Nation whose reserve was situated to the south before the city of Edmonton seized the land through its expansion. There is little sensitivity and attention attributed to these histories in Canada’s education systems today.116 As such, much of this information is overlooked, continuing to be

112 This section of the Constitution Act can be found at https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-16.html. This section reads “In this Act, “aboriginal peoples of Canada” includes the Indian, Inuit, and Métis peoples of Canada.” 113 Chelsea Vowel, Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada (Winnipeg: Highwater Press, 2016), 38-39. The French word “Métis” translates as “mixed.” 114 Hogue, 67-68, 116. Between 1869 and 1870 the Red River Resistance occurred. Canadian surveyors arrived in the area in October of 1869 before the “proposed transfer of Rupert’s Land to Canada.” Hogue writes that this confirmed the suspicions of the Métis that the Canadian government disregarded Métis land claims and intended to exclude them from the transfer process. Métis leader Louis Riel emerged as the leader of this resistance to Canada’s annexation of Western lands. “The events of the Red River Resistance secured the Canadian government’s recognition of Métis corporate rights as a distinct people whose Indigenous ancestry gave them legal claim to land.” In 1885, the North-West Resistance took place along the South Saskatchewan River following the Canadian government’s failure to recognize Métis land and political rights. The armed conflict “exposed the basic similarities between Canada’s and America’s visions” for the West (172). 115 Vowel, 40-41. 116 Ibid, 68. Vowel writes specifically about Métis identity and how there is no expectation in non- Indigenous/Canadian culture for people to learn about Indigenous cultures and their histories. In my own experience 40

unintegrated by the European-descended written tradition as part of the system of social knowledge. The Indigenous Art Park and its visual art works reignite the Indigenous presence that has been silenced by the Settler colonial histories of this space. The works speak to the

Indigenous histories of place, space, and people and their voices. However, it is important to remember that the integration of these knowledges into the Settler colonial system is not what I am advocating for. Rather, looking to Albert and Murdena Marshalls’ methodology of two-eyed seeing, demonstrates that it is important to recognize alternative histories equally in space without one dominating or absorbing the other. Strongly present in Indigenous oral histories and tradition, Pehonan’s place at this site provides an opportunity for these histories to be heard and witnessed by all peoples (Indigenous, Métis, European, etc.) visiting this space, which allows for alternative histories to be inhabited by their own voices.

Furthermore, the site reflects the passage of time referencing the historical past, the contemporary present, and the contemplative future. By situating Pehonan here and now, Shaw-

Collinge creates a relational space that links this space with time, people, and the environment/land. For example, the use of the circle as a spiritual space for sharing speaks to what Wilson says represents spaces where knowledge itself is held through the relationships and connections made with the surrounding environment.117 He says “by reducing the space between things, we are strengthening the relationship that they share.”118 Therefore, through Pehonan’s connection to place and the surrounding environment, Shaw-Collinge has reduced the space

in the Canadian education system from childhood to adolescence, there was no land acknowledgement nor histories taught beyond the British and French colonization of the land creating the country of Canada as it is referred to today. Indigenous people were often only mentioned as guides for the colonizers or as peoples only existing in the past. It was only in post-secondary education that I learned what treaty territory and First Nations land I was a guest on. The terminology of “guest” is still widely unused by settler cultures. 117 Wilson, 87. 118 Ibid. 41

between the historical, contemporary, and future moments, which strengthen their relationships and people’s encounter with the space, expanding these ever-present relationships. As people take part in these relationships, their experiences and encounters take place within a liminal space where cultural knowledges come into contact with one another. In this meeting and sharing space, the encounter is encouraged to be one that is respectful, safe, open, understanding, and reflective. Thus, Pehonan manifests what Mi’kmaq elders Murdena and Albert Marshall identify as a sharing of knowledge or a “weaving back and forth between knowledges”119 thereby creating a space for the production of social knowledges, that is inclusive of all voices.

3.2 Past, Present, and Future Conditions Reflected through Form

The visual forms of Pehonan reflect the importance of past, present, and future to culture through the use of various materials in the design of the installation. The four steps making up the curved amphitheatre structure in the work are each made with different materials and techniques. The use of various natural materials such as stones and wood are significant to the histories of Métis people in Canada as well as reference a different period of time. The theme of time in this work and others throughout the exhibition in the park, speaks to the importance of understanding the histories of Indigenous peoples in this area. It likewise speaks to importance of the futures of Indigenous peoples who will remain and live on this land in futurity. Starting at the top, prehistoric time is represented through the combination of quartzite stones commonly found in the North Saskatchewan River, as well as more stones that Shaw-Collinge collected from the

Bay of Fundy where her great grandfather was from. This step, referencing the extensive and deep past, pays respect to the extensive trade networks that have existed between Indigenous

119 Iwama et al., 5. 42

cultures since time immemorial as well as what Shaw-Collinge describes as the “quality of nomadicy” that all Indigenous peoples have.120 In bringing stones to Pehonan from the Bay of

Fundy – a place that she has a personal connection with through her family history – Shaw-

Collinge reenacts and reinforces the travel and trade networks and connections existing between

Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. By bringing these stones to the Indigenous Art Park, the space becomes marked with the presence of resources found elsewhere in the land.

Moreover, these stones will continue to hold a presence here in the future, symbolic of the enduring presence of Indigenous peoples, their cultures, and their knowledges. Thus, the top step of Pehonan bridges the distance between all peoples and their knowledges marked in this particular space. In reducing the space between people and place, Shaw-Collinge’s work highlights this relationship and by extension people’s relationship with the land. Thus, she literally “grounds” Indigenous identity, specifically Métis, in liminal space (where knowledge is present and is formed), but also the actual physical environment that is deeply part of Indigenous being.121

The second step from the top employs wood to signify the fort and homestead building that occurred during height of the fur trade (1795-1859). Using a dove-tale-like joint at the corners, Shaw-Collinge brings in details that are specific to her Métis culture that was regularly used when homesteads and cabins were built. As well, the design of this steps pays honour to the innovation of Métis peoples, demonstrating that the idea of “tradition” is not just a word used to

120 Tiffany Shaw-Collinge (artist) in discussion with the author, August 11, 2020. In an interview with the author, Shaw-Collinge provided an example of Indigenous nomadicy as related to her use of stones as the material making up the top step. She notes that stones like labradorite can be found in and around the Edmonton River Valley, yet these materials are not local to the area, which demonstrates the nomadic nature of Indigenous people. Also found elsewhere throughout the land, local and introduced, the occurrence of materials like labradorite demonstrate the extensive contact between Indigenous peoples long before the arrival of colonizers and continuing on presently. 121 Wilson, 88. 43

talk about cultural practices of the past, but tradition as something that carries forward with a people into the present and future.

In discussing her art practice, Shaw-Collinge says, “I am always trying to look at art and architecture as two lenses.”122 Whether intentional or not, her practice here conveys the practice of two-eyed seeing as she brings the encounter between art and architecture together, expressing the strengths of both in one space. Engaging with both worlds of Indigenous and European knowledges, through references to an Indigenous sacred space and a European amphitheatre, not only mirrors the development of Métis culture, but creates an in-between space that celebrates this meeting. The field of view is expanded as both lenses are brought forward.

Moving down, the third step represents contemporary time. The present moment that is characterized by ongoing changes and impacts on Indigenous cultures. Corten steel sheets have been water-cut with a beading pattern design of Shaw-Collinge’s great grandmother (Figure 4).

This is a symbolic reference to the floral beading patterns of Métis people and honouring of their culture. As Shaw-Collinge explains, “The corten steel has a weathered effect that allows the steel to rust over time, which actually adds a protective layer to the steel and makes it stronger unlike regular steel that will decay and become weak through its rusting process.”123 Comparing the effect time and weather have on this kind of steel to Indigenous peoples, Shaw-Collinge notes that its use is emblematic of the current time and the erasure of Indigenous communities. She says:

This metal is in reference to the many steel sculptures created here in the modernist period which were largely in service of rhetoric uplifted by artists and critics such as Anthony Caro and Clement Greenberg – which were largely white and male

122 Tiffany Shaw-Collinge (artist) in discussion with the author, August 11, 2020. 123 Ibid. 44

dominated attitudes. I watercut a beading pattern by my family in the metal to talk about the persistence of our culture despite everyone’s best efforts to erase our culture within the hard steel.124

Moreover, the final step at the base of the tier is made of polished mirrored steel and symbolizes the future condition:

It’s important for Indigenous peoples to see themselves in the work and to help them feel that they are meant to be here. Not only does it reflect you, but it reflects your environment. I think it also looks like a futuristic type of material. As Indigenous people, I don’t think we are regulated by traditional materials. We are innovators. We re-use tools differently. I am interested in what and how we are using them in the past and what are we using tomorrow.125

By reflecting people and the environment, the audience is invited to think about their own place within the space and time they are standing. When sitting at the base, your view of the Edmonton

River Valley is the most limited, mirroring how we cannot see the full view of what the future will look like.126 Together, each step marks the presence of Indigenous peoples on the land signifying for Indigenous peoples that this space is for them and reminding non-Indigenous peoples of their ever-present existence. Together the combination of amphitheatre-style seating from a European design tradition and a circle that references an Indigenous sacred space Shaw-

Collinge has established a new space that bridges the past with the present and looks toward the future. The meeting of cultures through these forms is not only symbolic of Métis culture, but also of the meeting of knowledges absent of hierarchy. A presentation of cultures as they are, in a way for people to learn about the past, understand where they are now, and consider their place tomorrow.

124 Ibid. 125 Ibid. 126 Edmonton Arts Council, ᐄᓃᐤ ÎNÎW River Lot 11 – Edmonton’s Indigenous Art Park, video by Conor McNally, (2018; Edmonton, Edmonton Arts Council, 2018), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzZ_yFcoQBE&feature=youtu.be. 45

3.3 The Language of Relationships

As mentioned, the word Pêhonân is the Cree for “waiting place.” Here it is used to honour the language of the Plains Cree peoples in a space for meeting and gathering together.

Beside the installation, a description panel with text about the work is written in the Cree,

Michif, and English languages. Cree, for the Cree peoples who have lived in this land since time immemorial; Michif, the language of the Métis peoples, so to reclaim their language back into this area; and English, for the European-descended and English-speaking guests of this land who are also a part of the histories of the area. The meeting of these languages as part of culture in liminal space is part of Bhabha’s Third Space of enunciation that is the “in-between space that carries the burden of the meaning of culture.”127 The use of languages as they are, places them equally in relationship with one another without one dominating the others. A theory of knowledge is built within the space of Pehonan that promotes the egalitarianism and inclusiveness, which Wilson calls for in relational methodology and practice.128

The title comes from a way of taking back our language. Cree is the language that my family understands and communicates in [their root language]. It felt honorable to name it Pehonan and to transcribe my text into Cree and Michif as a way to reclaim Michif back in this area.129

The reclaiming of the Métis language Michif that Shaw-Collinge mentions, is also significant of cultural transformation that occurs over time. Michif, which is a hybrid language combining words and structure from both Cree and French, resulted from interactions between the peoples of Cree and French cultures. Bringing it back into this space references its development in the

127 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 56. 128 Wilson, 92. 129 Tiffany Shaw-Collinge (artist) in discussion with the author, August 11, 2020. 46

historical past, asserts its continued presence, and in doing so points to its enduring quality throughout the future of Métis culture.

Pehonan demonstrates the potential for widening the field of vision of knowledge when cultural encounters occur. By transforming a space into a bridging of culture and history, Shaw-

Collinge relates people, land, and time to each other. The knowledge that is being produced, reiterated, and renegotiated is socially constructed and agreed upon through the relationships that are formed and made visible here. As Botswanan post-colonial scholar Bagele Chilisa notes,

“knowing is something that is socially constructed by people who have relationships and connections with each other, the living and nonliving, and the environment.”130 Thus, Pehonan facilitates a process of knowing or understanding different perspectives by bringing together different cultures in one space and revealing the relationships between them. It is important to look back to the histories of a specific area in order to think about how Indigenous and non-

Indigenous peoples will move forward together in the future. Understanding your past is important to making your future. If Settler colonial powers continue to operate through their oppressive hierarchical systems, the future of Indigenous knowledges and their peoples are at risk. Whether this results in the destruction of languages or the loss of traditional sacred sites, these loses are preventable. It is important for different cultural groups to come together to share in an understanding of the importance of cultural histories and worldviews. Through Pehonan,

Shaw-Collinge demonstrates one way in which this “coming together” can occur. Her work emphasizes the strengths of Métis culture through the representation of its history, its contemporary vibrancy, and by looking toward its future conditions. She reveals the deeply

130 Bagele Chilisa, Indigenous Research Methodologies (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2012), 116. 47

embedded relationships Indigenous peoples have with the land, place, and territory as well as creates a space for others to learn from and share in these relationships. By building relationships with one another in specific places through practices such as two-eyed seeing, which encourages bringing together of the strengths of different knowledges, people are exposed to different worldviews. In this way, when our cultural knowledges encounter one another, they may do so levelly, producing a system of social knowledges in liminal space that supports respect, inclusion, innovation, and is anti-hierarchy.

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Chapter 4: Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan, Marina Hulzenga

In-between an inside and outside space, a border or line of separation is represented by a circle, marking the liminal space between two domains (Figure 5). The outermost of four circles opens a site inside the gallery with the question “Where are you from?” As the viewer looks to the center, each circle imparts a phrase and corresponding visuals that open up the space for contemplation and communication about the impacts of borders, the histories of Indigenous peoples on the lands, and alternative ways of seeing the world around us. These conversations are mobilized through the use of the border as a signifier of liminality. In the work of Alberta- based Canadian artist, designer, and curator Marina Hulzenga, spatial surroundings are investigated through the combination of art and design practices. She is interested in how exhibition design is able to narrate specific stories in order for people to engage in social conversations about the places and spaces we occupy.131 Her practice explores “interactions between space, land, history, and environment” as well as “[creating] concepts and experiences that open up a third space for exchange and debate.”132 In her project and exhibition Liminal

Space || Awasitipahaskan (2014-2020), she considers the liminal space of the physical, social, and emotional experience of borders for First Nations communities in what is now referred to as the province of Alberta.133 She defines liminal space as “the space of a threshold from one domain to another.”134 Here, the threshold is the entry point or transition space between two

131 Marina Hulzenga, “Information,” Marina Hulzenga, 2017, http://www.marinahulzenga.com/information.html. 132 Ibid. 133 Hulzenga, “Liminal Space||Awasitipahaskan,” Marina Hulzenga, 2017, http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space----awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html. 134 Ibid. 49

domains (spaces either physical or ideological). While Hulzenga does not consider the project to be site-specific as it has been shown at a number of different locations and gallery spaces throughout Canada and the Netherlands, the content of the work is specific to the First Nations of the lands throughout Treaties 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10 within Alberta.135 Therefore a more appropriate description of this project is that it is land-specific, or directly relating to people’s relationship to the land. The major works in this exhibition consist of a spatial installation, a book or catalogue detailing all aspects of the project, and a collection of deer hide cut-outs portraying the shapes of all 140 of the First Nations reserves located in Alberta. The overall project is concerned with establishing a space for conversation about border issues in specific locations, but also in a way that these conversations can be brought to the global level.136 For the purpose of this chapter, I will be examining the spatial installation component of the project as a case study of the meeting of cultures and their knowledges in liminal space. Hulzenga explains that Liminal Space ||

Awasitipahaskan considers three kinds of borders as in-between space with reference to reserve lands:137 the language border, marking the transition between different cultures and worldviews; the border of territory that represents the shape of the reserve, which is physical, figurative, and ideological; and the physical border around the reserve, such as the gravel roads that marks the start of the reserve when traveling from its outside to its inside. In what follows, I will

135 Marina Hulzenga (artist) in discussion with the author, September 15, 2020. The exhibitions and locations where the work from Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan has been shown include: Design Academy Eindhoven (2014); The Works Art & Design Festival, Vignettes building, Edmonton (2017); Bleeding Heart Art Space, Edmonton (2018); Indigenous Mapping Workshop (Hosted by The Firelight Group), Le Westin Hotel, Montreal (2018); Taking Up Spaces Conference (Simon Fraser University), Native Education College, Vancouver (2019); Our Trails Bring Us Together Conference (Kohklux Map: 150 Years), hosted by Yukon Historical & Museums Association, Kwanlin Dün Cultural Center, Whitehorse (2019); Reconciliation & Resurgence: Heritage Practice in Post-TRC Edmonton, La Cité Francophone, Edmonton (2020). 136 Hulzenga, “Liminal Space||Awasitipahaskan,” http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space---- awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html. 137 Marina Hulzenga (artist) in discussion with the author, September 15, 2020. 50

investigate each of these border spaces as related to how they are discussed by Hulzenga in

Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan. I will also examine how the use of the border in this project acts as a liminal space where people, places, and ideas are shown to be in constant in relationship with each other. The border as a space of relationality demonstrates how it may be mobilized as a conversational space when cultures meet one another. The knowledge that is produced in the border space and also as a result of the existence of these borders is individual, communal, and social resulting from the experiences that people(s) have with them.

I argue that the concept of the border as used by Hulzenga in Liminal Space ||

Awasitipahaskan, which represents the physical and ideological line of separation between cultures, demonstrates a liminal space of conversation. It does this through building relationships rather than dividing people and their positions as Eurocentric discourse tends toward. While borders are often discussed as being problematic due to their interruption in physical space, which in turn impacts cultural space, Hulzenga’s use of borders mobilizes their potential for creating new opportunities for conversation and debate about how different cultures view the world in a way that respects and celebrates these differences. As such, the rhetoric she builds allows for the inclusive meeting and interaction of culture through the equal representation of both personal and collective voices. Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan expresses the method and practice of two-eyed seeing through encouraging the building of relationships, which supports the development of an inclusive system of social knowledges. However, the work is shown in the space of the gallery, a European institution that has a history of excluding the marginalized voices of Indigenous artists. While I argue that Hulzenga’s work does support the development of an inclusive system of social knowledges, it is important to note the presentation of the work in the gallery space that has this history. To demonstrate how the work accomplishes a relational 51

and non-hierarchical experience of knowledge production in the gallery, I will discuss the spatial installation component of the work by describing its form as related to each of the three borders

Hulzenga focuses on. Following, I will consider the Indigenous communities’ involvement throughout the making of this project as related to how people visualize the spaces they occupy and that surround them in order to further the importance of establishing a system of inclusive social knowledges that celebrate the vitality and possibilities of alternative knowledges.

4.1 “How do I get to know my neighbours?”

The first question I had was how do I get to know my neighbours? That was what started this project. I went on this journey recognizing that I am not Indigenous, but I grew up on their [Indigenous peoples] traditional lands. I was searching for answers to the questions, whose land am I on? What does this land mean to me? Do I belong to this land? I wanted to understand this particular space and the land that Indigenous people live on. How does it function? What relationship do they have with the land?138

In an interview with the author, Hulzenga discusses the ideas that began this project.

Growing up in rural Alberta near the Enoch Cree Nation, these are questions that she had begun thinking about from a young age as she realized that “this was a different place, but I knew nothing about it” when talking about the reserve near her home.139 In exploring these questions in Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan she uses the border as a lens to learn about her neighbours, also encouraging the viewer to do the same. In the spatial installation, first shown at Design

Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands as part of her graduation project exhibition in 2014, four circles are laid out before the viewer. Able to move over and through the space, the viewer encounters various “borders” as they cross over the circles, each marked by a phrase that

138 Ibid. 139 Ibid. 52

corresponds to a chapter from the book component of the exhibition.140 These phrases come from conversations Hulzenga had with the First Nations peoples of the communities involved throughout the making of this project. These communities include Enoch Cree Nation, Saddle

Lake Cree Nation, Onion Lake Cree Nation, and the Maskwacis communities of Samson Cree

Nation, Ermineskin Cree Nation, Louis Bull Tribe, and Montana First Nation.141 The outermost circle corresponding to Chapter 1 asks “Where are you from?” Through the use of the circle as a sharing space and drawing from the use of circles in Plains Cree cultures, Hulzenga prompts the audience/viewer to think about situating themselves. In thinking about where we are from and where we are now, we make connections between places and the people and things that occupy them. Whether we intend to or not, these relationships are established by our very being in a place and its space. It is in these spaces and through the relationships that we form there, that knowledge is encountered, shared, and produced. As Wilson says, “knowledge itself is held in the relationships and connections formed with the environment that surrounds us.”142 By situating ourselves in space, we personalize our connection(s) to the place around us or that we occupy. In turn, we are able to relate to others entering these spaces as they also establish or narrate their connection to place. Through these encounters or the meeting place of cultures, our interactions, sharing of stories, and experiencing through old and new relationships produce new knowledges or ways of seeing and understanding the world and each other. As Tuhiwai Smith

140 The book component of Liminal Space||Awasitipahaskan details the phases of the project include its research and design as well as images from the work and community involvement in the project. It also includes images of “one-minute maps,” which were a part of the project that asked members of Enoch Cree Nation to draw their reserve and territory or space they occupied from memory. Images from the book can be found at: http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space----awasitipahaskan-book.html. 141 Hulzenga, “Liminal Space||Awasitipahaskan,” http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space---- awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html. 142 Wilson, 87. 53

notes, “to create something new through that process of sharing is to recreate the old, to reconnect relationships and to recreate our humanness.”143 Thus, knowledges are shared and formed in an interwoven system of systems that constantly move back and forth and in-between people, places, and ideas over time. This system of systems constantly produces new knowledges as relationships are built and supported.

As the viewer of the spatial installation of Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan enters into relationship with the object by crossing the border of each circle, they move to the second circle marked as “The world artefact insinuates it is dead.” This border includes several definitions that are associated with and used to label the space within and surrounding the reserves (Figure 6).

English definitions depicted through written text represent the European voice from the outside.

The Indigenous voice is represented in corresponding audio recordings in the Cree language as the voice on the inside. By representing both written and oral traditions, Marina engages with two methods of producing and disseminating knowledge within this liminal space of knowledge production. This circle and border represents the border of languages. The language border in- between the insider and outsider of the reserve is characterized by the meeting of two positions and worldviews. These positions, while diverse, demonstrate the unique perspectives of individuals within their own cultural groups based on what they have experienced, what relationships they are in, and the ideas that they have as related to their cultural knowledge and social knowledge. For instance, Hulzenga references her conversations with First Nations community members throughout the course of her project:

Through our discussions and conversations, they were sharing with me definitions of words that were related to space, place, landscape, and territory. Words such as

143 Tuhiwai Smith, 110. 54

border, landscape, reserve, contact, and identity came up. What I noticed was that their definition was different from the one that I knew or grew up knowing, and had heard in other spheres. My definitions were coming more from the European body of knowledge and history. I noticed that there was this difference in language. The idea that languages have a border, but don’t necessarily come to meet one another has existed since contact. We still have this difference today. For instance, even if we are both speaking the same language, such as English, the meanings of these words are very different depending on where you are coming from.144

The idea that words and concepts have different meanings to different peoples and groups is not new, but perhaps one that is overlooked. Especially by the current system of social knowledge, descending from European ideological perspectives, which while claiming to support the freedom of individuals, in reality only supports these peoples if they in turn are conducting their thinking in alignment with its systems beliefs and values.145 However, regardless of what the colonial structure and system characterizing Canadian society projects and imposes on mass, individuals bring their own meaning to place, people, society, and language. This may be related to what Russian scholar and language theorist Mikhail Bakhtin refers to as heteroglossia in language or the way meaning in language is diverse and varied according to specific points of view “each characterized by its own objects, meaning, and values.”146 More broadly it refers to the character of a single language as having many voices. Meaning in language is so varied because it reflects the way individuals and groups experience and conceptualize the world. For example, the title of the work through the use of both the English and Cree languages

144 Marina Hulzenga (artist) in discussion with the author, September 15, 2020. 145 The idea of individual freedom in “liberal” society exists only insofar as its relationship to other people. According to John Stuart Mill, Freedom of opinion and freedom of action are considered separate. Each is limited according to the harm it may cause to others. However, the level or effect of “harm” is regulated by the system that individuals and society operate in. In Canada, this system comes out of a history of colonialism, Eurocentric thought, and neocolonial and neoimperial ideologies, which are hierarchical and marginalizing of specific groups. As such, different groups in society are afforded different freedoms or levels of freedom. See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, eds. David Bromwich and George Kateb (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 121. 146 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 291-292. 55

demonstrates this as well. While I have noted that Hulzenga defines liminal space as the

“threshold from one domain to another,” the closest term that is related to this concept in Cree was determined to be “awasitipahaskan.”147 The term “awasitipahaskan” translates to “across the borderline” in English.148 Thus, in her use of these two words in the title, Hulzenga points to the idea that different words and concepts have different meanings and understandings in different cultures. The space between these words and by extension the cultures of their origin, is visually marked by two || in order to emphasize the liminality of the border line. In the second circle and border of Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan, these ideas are shown and celebrated through their representation as they are, through oral and written traditions. This idea of representing the way different cultures understand different concepts “as they are” according to the context and understanding of those cultures is emphasized by Hulzenga to be an important aspect of the design and realization of the project:

It was important for me to not show that one was wrong, or one was right. It was very much about laying it out and displaying what exists, what is there, how it’s working, how it functions, and how we are encountering these borders. What are the words we are using around these borders? How do we talk about these borders? The realization of what the border is was up to the viewer to discover when they were participating and encountering the spatial installation.149

The in-between space at the language border marks the variation of meaning and understanding when cultures come into contact with one another, but also within a specific culture. If we think of the meeting between the English and Cree languages as one of each of the eyes in two-eyed

147 Hulzenga, “Liminal Space||Awasitipahaskan,” Marina Hulzenga, 2017, http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space----awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html. Marina Hulzenga (artist) in discussion with the author, September 15, 2020. Hulzenga noted that this term was learned through discussions with elders of Enoch Cree Nation. The term as a concept also contains within it a “warning” that cautions the individual crossing the border line to “be careful with what is one the other side.” 148 Marina Hulzenga (artist) in discussion with the author, September 15, 2020. 149 Ibid. 56

seeing practice, it is only when they are in a space together that they have a larger field of vision which includes the peripheries of what they see. When brought together in this way in the same space, as Hulzenga has done, the diversity of meaning of words and concepts can be experienced by viewers coming from many different places and backgrounds. The liminal space in-between the eyes or languages of Indigenous and European cultures as the language border weaves the diversity of meaning about space and land together. The meeting place of cultures through its languages equally and respectfully in the space of the gallery reflects how knowledges can come together and learn from one another inclusively and as they are. In other words, the genuine form of language represented in the tradition of each culture (English in the written tradition and Cree in the oral tradition) prevents one from imposing its own modus operandi on the other. In this circle, both oral and written words in Cree and English language are brought into the space for the Indigenous person, for the non-Indigenous person, for the viewer to experience, learn from, and relate to, all the while creating a space for knowledges to come together in celebration.

The third inner circle, “Lifelong tenants on crown land,” consists of 140 deer hide leather cut-outs of the reserve lands that reside in Alberta (Figure 7). These areas are placed along the line of the third circle in the direction of their actual position relative to the orientation of the gallery space and are to scale in relation to one another. A significant component of the

Numbered Treaties (1871-1921) was the inclusion of “reserve” land set aside for Indigenous

First Nations. These lands, although always a part of the traditional territory of Indigenous First

Nations, were viewed by the colonial government of British North America as compensation in

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return for Indigenous peoples surrender of their lands.150 In reality the “space was appropriated from indigenous cultures and then ‘gifted back’ as reservations, reserved pockets of land for indigenous people who once possessed all of it” writes Tuhiwai Smith.151 While the history and narratives about reserve lands is complicated as well as widely discussed among both Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, the reserve lands as represented in Liminal Space ||

Awasitipahaskan are laid out by Hulzenga, like the language border, as they are.152 The border space she negotiates through the shape of the reserves is just that. Their actual form which also reveals a significant amount of information about these lands. For instance, Hulzenga notes how the actual lines making the shapes of these spaces speak directly to the history of treaty-making and the intentional colonial practice of cutting Indigenous communities off from life-giving resources such as water.

What you start to see is that the majority of the lines are straight hard edges. Every now and then there will be some curvy organic lines. What you can conclude from this is that the straight lines usually indicate roads and the curvy organic lines represent water. When you see them all together on mass, you see how little organic line there is and how much more straight lines there are. This gets into the deeper story of how these communities were cut off from water, which is a source of life for them. That was another intentional part of colonialism and you can see it represented in the landscape in the shapes of these reserves. This is what it is. These are what the reserves look like.153

Policies of assimilation and dispossession are not just something that is isolated to the past. They continue to be reflected in the present and demonstrate the unequal balance that exists between

150 John Leonard Taylor, “Canada’s North-West Indian Policy in the 1870s: Traditional Premises and Necessary Innovations,” in Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian-White Relations in Canada, ed. J.R. Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 1991), 207. 151 Tuhiwai Smith, 54. 152 For scholarship on reserve lands in Canada see, John Leonard Taylor, “Canada’s North-West Indian Policy in the 1870s: Traditional Premises and Necessary Innovations,” in Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian-White Relations in Canada, ed. J.R. Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 1991), 207-211; Harold Johnson, Two Families: Treaties and Government (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing Ltd., 2007), 59-68, among others. 153 Marina Hulzenga (artist) in discussion with the author, September 15, 2020. 58

Indigenous and Settler colonial cultures. When brought into a space by an installation such as this, it allows for open conversations about these histories that continue to impact present realities and lived experiences of Indigenous communities. It is equally important to acknowledge that while reserve space may be discussed in constant reference to colonialism, these spaces are also the homes of many First Nations peoples. The border of territory represents an inside outside space, but rather than solely an in-between space of separation, it is a space for feeling at home to the people who live there and relate culturally to these spaces and places. This is a theme that is further developed when the viewer reaches the circle closest to the center of the work.

In the innermost circle, “Driving on gravel roads makes me feel home,” concrete tiles filled with gravel from reserve roads around Alberta mark both the symbolic and real distinction between the reserve inside and the outside space along its border crossing (Figure 8).154 This physical change between two spaces speaks specifically to the actual presence of a “border” marking the separation between the inside and outside of the reserve. The land, materially altered with gravel roads indicates this physical separation, but it is also an ideologically separation as people who live inside and outside the reserve, distinguish between the two spaces.

The idea is that this border is a space into itself, which is the liminal space, this in- between space. The border is not just a line, it’s wider than that. It felt natural and right to create a space for the audience to physically walk into, to be in and amongst. This way, it was not just something you could be outside of, but something you had to put your body into.155

154 Ibid. The titles of each circle and border line in the spatial installation came out of conversations with members of Enoch Cree Nation. For example, “driving on gravel roads makes me feel home,” arose in a conversation with a member of Enoch Cree Nation while driving on the gravel roads at the border line of the reserve. Hulzenga brings these phrases into the work as one way to bring the Indigenous voice and experience to the exhibition space. 155 Ibid. 59

By using gravel collected from the roads lining the border of Enoch Cree Nation, Hulzenga brings part of the material border into the gallery. As the viewer walks into the space of the installation, they meet with the actual border, but also encounter the concept of home. The gravel as a signifier of home for the communities who live on many reserves throughout Alberta is brought into the space to be shared. Placed in the center of the installation, the circle of gravel symbolizes this deep connection to having a home in particular places. It is this idea of home that

Hulzenga employs as a method for building relationality because home is a concept that everyone can relate to. As Hulzenga reflects, “the feeling of home is universal. It’s something we can all share and it is placed in the center or heart of the installation because that is where home belongs.”156 When creating spaces for conversations about historical, contemporary, and future issues such as the impacts of colonialism and neocolonialism on marginalized communities and their knowledges, it is important to build connections and relationships so that people have a way to enter and access these conversations openly. By bringing the concept of home into her work,

Hulzenga has provided this entry point for viewers to both physically and ideologically enter the space. In thinking about home, these viewers (Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples) begin these conversations through first establishing a relationship to place. Nêhiyaw and Saulteaux scholar Margaret Kovach points out that in Indigenous methodological practice in research when telling stories of place or home in this case, it is a way to “show self in relation to others.”157

“Presenting the data in this way allows readers to interpret the conversations from their own particular vantage points and take from the teachings what they need.”158 When this thinking is

156 Ibid. 157 Margaret Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2009), 53. 158 Ibid. 60

combined with Wilson’s method of relational research practice, it demonstrates the importance of relating self and place and self and people, which are really, not mutually distinct from one another. “The relationship between people or between people and their environment” are a part of what constitutes space in this context and are interconnected ideas, always in relationship with one another.159 As such, since this reality of how the world operates is based upon relationships,

“then judgement of another’s viewpoint is inconceivable.”160 As people enter the spatial installation and relate to the work through concepts like home, more and more relationships enter the space and are created through the experience of the work. The relationality of Liminal Space

|| Awasitipahaskan reveals what Wilson describes as “one person cannot possibly know all of the relationships that brought about another’s ideas. Making judgements of others’ worth or values then is impossible. Hierarchy in belief systems, social structure, and thought are totally foreign to this way of viewing the world.”161 If we move toward working within paradigms of relationality such as is demonstrated by Hulzenga in this work, then it is inevitable that an inclusive system of social knowledges follows. Hierarchies do not operate in a way that encourages the building of relationships because they are structured in such a way as to place people, places, and ideas according to their value or importance. Relationships exist regardless of what our cultural, political, economic, and social systems say and do. There is no room for hierarchy because relationships are built through inclusion and egalitarianism. As such, a concept like home has no hierarchy. It is embedded within individuals and their cultural groups through their relationships with one another and by extension, place and environment or land.

159 Wilson, 87. 160 Ibid, 92. 161 Ibid. 61

Moreover, while liminal space is utilized to explain the clash between cultures and point out their unbalanced relationships by scholars like Pratt, this concept must now be mobilized to consider and encourage a move towards how cultural encounters can without a doubt occur parallel, inclusively, and equally integrative. In Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan the outside and inside positions in combination with the border spaces in-between show the encounter between Indigenous and Settler colonial knowledges. This encounter is represented without laying judgement in order to present each view, language, line, border as they are operating in the same space together by being in constant relationship with one another. While each culture may represent an eye or way of seeing the world, it is only when they come together face to face, that their ways of seeing are expanded as they welcome one into knowledge thereby create a new space of social knowledges.

In addition, the gallery is a traditional European institution that has historically been unwelcoming to the visual culture and artistic practices of Indigenous peoples and other communities marginalized by the settler colonial structure and its institutions. This history requires us to ask whether the choice to display these stories in the gallery repositions the

Eurocentric worldview and system of knowledge as an authority over these knowledges. Does the “housing” of culture reinforce hierarchies of knowledge that European culture normalizes through their educational, political, economic, religious, and cultural systems? As this project is planned and executed through collaboration with Indigenous communities and through a building of relationships between people, place, and land, it works to counter colonize the space of the gallery. Hulzenga’s methodology of representation and negotiating these border spaces demonstrates a way for alternative narratives to become interventions in spaces traditionally dominated by Eurocentric narratives. Thus, the display of this project in the gallery transforms 62

the space into a meeting of cultures as they are, not how the settler colonial narrative would have them seen. By creating a space for the realization of the interconnectivity of people, places, and ideas, Hulzenga encourages viewers to resist the colonial narrative. Relationality becomes the method of counter colonizing spaces and the liminal space of knowledge production.

4.2 Visualizing Space, Building Community

A significant component of this project was the involvement of First Nations communities from reserves around Alberta. Hulzenga notes that “this project would not have happened without the involvement, interest, and investment from the communities and people’s that I worked with and were so gracious to share with me their land, their landscape, and their lives.”162 The relationship Hulzenga built through her working with these communities and individuals is detailed in the book shown in the exhibition as part of the body of work. When talking about the different stages of the project Hulzenga was excited to share the experience of having members of Enoch Cree Nation and as well as non-Indigenous Settler from around the area create “one-minute maps:”

I asked everyone I encountered at Enoch to draw a map of the reserve from memory in one minute. As a design-research tool, this activity shows what part of a space is likely the most important to that person. These maps gave them the space to share through their own eyes and in their own handwriting and voice what a current person living on the reserve experiences. These maps were a view, a portal, a piece of the project that was for them. Completely theirs and for them to share.163

162 Marina Hulzenga (artist) in discussion with the author, September 15, 2020. In discussing the community (specifically Enoch Cree Nation) involvement and collaboration on this project, Hulzenga notes that it was important for the “process to lead the project.” There was no goal in mind when the project was started. She emphasizes that her art practice in this project was about learning from the community, not defining how the community participated. While the process leading to the creation of Liminal Space||Awasitipahaskan may be said to be complete, this project is an ongoing conversation that continues. Hulzenga notes that her work continues to involve people from the Enoch Cree Nation rather than being something “completed” once the project materializes. The relationships she has built with these communities continues. 163 Ibid. While the participating First Nations bands were identified in this exhibition and accompanying book, it is unknown as to whether individuals were identified specifically by name. 63

Hulzenga emphasizes the importance of letting the process inform the course of the inquiry and how the project develops.164 Here, the drawing of maps came about throughout the process.

However, it is important to note that while this project was not initially defined per se, as questions like “how do I get to know my neighbours?” came about, the course of the project was informed by this inquiry. By tasking Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants to draw these maps, Hulzenga does define how these people participate in the project. Tuhiwai Smith notes that it is important to having a critical understanding of what informs research practice.165 While

Hulzenga’s project was not defined as one of “research,” her inquiry into the border space and its meaning for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples asks questions about this space and determining the answers to these questions are informed by her art and design practice. For example, she notes that drawing a one-minute map is a “design research tool.”166 By employing this tool in this part of the project, Hulzenga determines what kind of information she is looking for participants to draw. She determines the space of what should be drawn, but she does not define the information that is drawn. That is left up to the participants to determine for themselves. I have stressed that Hulzenga’s art practice throughout the making of Liminal Space

|| Awasitipahaskan is one that emphasizes collaboration with Indigenous peoples and the respect of their knowledges and spaces. Yet, it is important to address that collaboration and knowledge sharing should be defined and determined by Indigenous peoples when their communities, spaces, knowledges, and cultures are part of a course of inquiry. As Tuhiwai Smith notes,

“sharing knowledge is a long-term commitment.”167 In other words, when knowledge is imparted

164 Marina Hulzenga (artist) in discussion with the author, September 15, 2020. 165 Tuhiwai Smith, 21. 166 Marina Hulzenga (artist) in discussion with the author, September 15, 2020. 167 Tuhiwai Smith, 16. 64

and shared between peoples, the groups and individuals that learn new knowledge become responsible for its care and treatment respectfully and according to the wishes of the culture from where it stems from.168 Also part of sharing knowledge is the sharing of what informs the way knowledge is being constructed and represented.169 In Hulzenga’s project, the knowledge that is produced is determined by the questions that are asked and the processes that take place throughout its development. However, for the majority of the project, this knowledge is defined according to the participants as well as the viewers who encounter the work in the exhibition spaces. By asking questions such as what does the border space represent to different people, the line of inquiry is determined. The answers and meanings are determined by Hulzenga and the

Indigenous people involved in the project and then brought to viewers in the exhibition space.170

While Hulzenga was open to the Indigenous people she worked with about what information she was interested in, it is important to reflect on the role of the Settler when working with

Indigenous people. As the Settler colonial structure permeates the system of social knowledge and its seeking to expand this knowledge on its own terms, caution must be taken when exploring alternative narratives and understandings of concepts like space. Is the process of inquiry re-centering a Settler colonial narrative and interpretation of Indigenous space? Or is this narrative informed by Indigenous peoples from the start and stemming from their own voices?

168 When knowledge is shared, it must be shared on the terms of the culture from where it comes from and defined according to this culture. The Settler colonial nation-state and structure tends to view knowledge as something to lay claim to and as such does not partake in that sharing of knowledge, but rather its attempted seizure. 169 Tuhiwai Smith, 17. 170 As some aspects of this project were defined according to Hulzenga, such as the design task of drawing on- minute maps, this can be seen as problematic as a Settler is coming into Indigenous space and determining how Indigenous people participate. Further, I have noted the problems with showing this work in the space of the gallery, which is traditionally a European institution structured according to hierarchies. A question that has not been resolved with these points in mind is how the work may change (contextually and conceptually) if it were exhibited in a space outside of the gallery or space of the Settler colonial institution. 65

Furthermore, as an extension of this project and through her research, Hulzenga also created a hand-painted map using natural pigments from the land from and depicting the territory appearing in this project (Figure 9). However, unlike maps of Canada we see today, which tend to have all of the common markers of municipal, provincial, and federal borders, the borders on this map depict three layers of information. The reserve territory of First Nations, Métis settlements, and treaty territory. One of the most interesting points she makes when describing the non-Indigenous viewer’s encounter with this map is that much of the time, they had no idea where they were situated on the map.171 In other words, when viewing this representation of space, the non-Indigenous viewer was unable to situated themselves by using municipal markers like Edmonton or Calgary, places they regularly see on maps coming out of the European discourse of map-making. “Having them work through this feeling of that was really powerful and allowed them to experience what it would be like to not have your territory or landscape represented on a map.”172 Through experience, people can better relate and connect to one another. To understand the perspective of other cultures and people we have a responsibility to meet them in the places and spaces where their knowledge lies. In the current system of social knowledge, Eurocentric settler colonial systems and practices do not accomplish this as they often make little to no effort to meet other cultures in these spaces.

What these two components of Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan reveal and highlight as overall themes for the project is the idea that different people and cultures view the world in different ways. While a map such as Pinkerton’s and Hebert’s “British Possessions of North

America” shows the British perspective of territories in North America (Figure 1), Hulzenga’s

171 Marina Hulzenga (artist) in discussion with the author, September 15, 2020. 172 Ibid. 66

First Nations Reserves, Métis Settlements, Treaties (2019) map shows a section of these territories focusing on an Indigenous worldview. Neither object reflects a right or wrong way of seeing the world, but each object provides a look into how these cultures think about space, place, territory, and land. It is not my intention to create a binary between them when discussing them together, but rather to show the objects as they are in the same way that Hulzenga negotiates the inside/outside and in-between space of the reserve borders. By examining the border experience, Hulzenga aims to establish a space for conversation regarding border issues in a specific locale, but to be recognized at a global scale. While her work engages significantly with border politics in Canada, by working with the inside/outside as this threshold between physical spaces and cultural knowledges, she is creating a meeting place between culture and knowledge thereby demonstrating the importance of coming together in a manner where people possessing different systems of knowledges can respect and learn from one another.

In closing this chapter, I would like to note Hulzenga’s words as she highlights the goals of her project:

What the intention of this project was and still is, was really meant to look at these spaces, these border spaces, these liminal spaces, from a design perspective and to not put judgement or translate them necessarily. To just let them speak for themselves and to really allow the viewer to find where these borders are in themselves. We all have a different knowledge base about these spaces and history, and different relationships to these spaces; we all come with our own stories, and our own spatial narratives of the places that we live. I want to challenge our spatial knowledge and what we think our spaces are. Show it for what it is because the land speaks for itself. That is what working with these Indigenous communities has taught me from the very beginning. We don’t have to find it, the land will show you. The land has its own stories, the land can tell you it all. It has its own memories and if you just look it’s right there.173

173 Ibid. 67

The border space as a space in-between cultures and their interactions is used as a concept by Hulzenga to explore how different people understand space. These various understandings contribute to the creation of diverse spatial narratives, which speak to how we experience and realize place, land, and territory. By representing different perspectives on these spatial concepts, Hulzenga invites her audience to experience various understandings of them in the gallery space and be exposed to alternative ways of thinking about these concepts. The border is utilized as a bridging space between different ways of seeing and experiencing the world. As such, Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan demonstrates the bringing together of different knowledges in the same space in order to show that different cultures have different perspectives and ways of understanding space.

In demonstrating this, Hulzenga’s work and practice provides an avenue for developing an inclusive system of social knowledges, emphasizing the importance of building relationships between people, between people and land, and between people and ideas.

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Chapter 5: Conclusion

“To hold alternative histories is to hold alternative knowledges.”174 Returning to Tuhiwai

Smith’s words about the importance of revisiting the colonized view of history, it is necessary to revisit the settler colonial structure and history in order to transform it and enable spaces for alternatives views of the world. In doing so we are able to move forward beyond the limits of singular and linear Eurocentric perspectives. This move towards the inclusion of alternative knowledges occurs in the space where knowledge is produced through the encounter and meeting of different cultures. The close examination of this liminal space that is in-between these encounters first reveals the continued practice of merging and absorbing the knowledges of cultures outside of the Eurocentric system that is deemed to be the standard against which all other systems and worldviews are compared; revealing this system as one that operates through binaries, hierarchies, and narratives that center and later continue to re-center the European worldview. Liminal space allows for the complicating of this narrative which Bhabha argues colonial and post-colonial theory and scholarship tends to discuss culture as something that is fixed and unchanging supporting the colonial discourse arguing for superior and pure culture.175

Second, looking at how cultures encounter one another in liminal space provides an example to how this space may be mobilized. The encounters in these liminal spaces may encourage the interaction of people with different ideological perspectives, systems, and ways of thinking about and experiencing the world. Cultural encounters and their sharing of knowledge can occur without the imposition of oppressive and dominating tactics that seek to control and regulate

174 Tuhiwai Smith, 36. 175 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 49. 69

knowledge production and experience. As I have demonstrated through the presentation of scholarship by post-colonial studies academics Bhabha and Pratt, liminal space is the place where cultures meet and can be utilized to disclose the imbalance in power between the colonizer and the colonized. However, their development of this discourse does not focus on how different knowledges can come together without hierarchical systems being imposed upon them at their contact. By turning away from what current institutions know and understand, toward Indigenous methodological and practical theories that work outside of hierarchical frameworks, new avenues for thinking about a system of inclusive social knowledges is opened up.

Combining both Wilson’s relational framework and the Marshall’s concept and practice of two-eyed seeing allows for an emphasis on place in order to engage with alternative histories by seeing these histories in their own right and space without the imposition of the Eurocentric neocolonial organization of knowledge. Considering the meeting of cultures and its resulting production of knowledge in liminal space which opens up conversations and our experience of the world to alterative histories, knowledges, theories, and practice becomes a part of the counter-colonial narrative, as it pushes back against Eurocolonial and Euroimperial systems to counter-balance the uneven distribution of power.

The works of Shaw-Collinge and Hulzenga provide examples of what a relational two- eyed seeing practice can look like in public space. Pehonan’s combination of European and

Indigenous forms and languages at a site where historical and contemporary cultural encounters occur, represents a sharing of knowledges in an effort to understand how past influences present realities, which in turn impacts future conditions. While this meeting of Indigenous and

European cultures and knowledges also reflects the histories of Métis peoples and the formation of their distinct culture as Indigenous peoples, Pehonan also demonstrates the strengths of 70

cultural interaction when they come together in this “waiting place,” this liminal space of knowledge production. A meeting of both “eyes” or worldviews/ideological perspectives, expands the overall field of view that is inclusive of many voices and perspectives. As people enter the field of view, they build relationships with other people and ideas in and with place through their experiences of the world. This relationship-building practice with two-eyed seeing methods is the first step in creating a new system of inclusive social knowledges.

Likewise, Hulzenga’s work from the exhibition Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan provides example of the importance of representing cultures as they are, without refocusing the gaze of the viewer back solely to European narratives of colonialism. By expressing the border experience of Indigenous peoples, she brings the narrative back to the Indigenous voice. Further, she refocuses the narrative toward Indigenous peoples who hold their own voices. The spatial installation which considers the borders of language, the shape of space, and the physical line, uses the concept of the border as a liminal space in-between cultures to bring people together and share in conversations about how our visualization and understanding of space, place, and land, effects our attitudes toward each other as well as our unique positions. In presenting different perspectives as they are, Hulzenga reveals the relationships between Indigenous and European cultures by situating them on the land specific to the context of the project. However, the discussion that begins in this specific locale is broadened to regional, national, and international communities by bringing concepts such as “home” into the project, which everyone can relate to.

Thus, the field of view expands as many “eyes” meet one another in this space, share their knowledges, learn from one another, and relate to each unique position brought into the space.

An inclusive system of social knowledges begins to take shape.

71

While the entrance of knowledges into the realm of social knowledge in a manner in which they all exist on equal or level footing may be argued to be an idealistic view as people will take away what knowledge they believe and choose to accept, whilst leaving or refusing to acknowledge other views altogether, it is nonetheless necessary for societies to prevent their worldviews from consuming or absorbing the knowledge of others. In other words, the diversity of knowledge and its ever-expanding potential does not exist so that it may be destroyed and/or cultivated into one ultimate truth. In speaking to the non-Indigenous persons in Canada, Johnson writes, “I only ask that you realize that other people see the world from different positions and have different perspectives that are equally valid. You have no monopoly on vision.”176 When we understand the importance of connections and relationships between people, place, and ideas and that these relationships are built through the interactions between different cultures and their knowledges, then the social world can understand the value of alternative histories and knowledges. Right now, colonial countries like Canada and their governments still do not place value on alternative knowledges and embracing multiple perspectives. Their vision only employs one eye, which limits the scope of their field of view. This process is as stated, limited but it can change and individuals and groups in society must demand its change. While culture is constantly changing and transforming, the capacity to which it transforms on its own terms or with its own knowledge system and worldview is dependent upon the extent to which other cultures seeking to “dominate” alternative perspectives interfere in its space. In a time when innovation and thinking about alternative ways of seeing the world has never been more imperative, it is necessary that we move away from oppressive neocolonial and neoimperial

176 Johnson, 74. 72

systems whose ideologies are highly rigid, fixed, and hierarchical. To do this, institutions and the public must look to alternative knowledges respectfully and on the terms of the cultures where they come from. In doing so in specific places, these knowledges may be experienced within their own context, which enables the building of relationships between people, places, and ideas.

And it is these relationships that allow people to “relate” to one another, understand each other, and welcome the inclusion of alternative knowledges into social space.

73

Figures

Figure 1. Aaron Arrowsmith and John Pinkerton, British Possessions in North America, July 15, 1814, atlas map, 51 x 69 cm, David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Stanford Library, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America.

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Figure 2. Tiffany Shaw-Collinge, Pehonan, 2018, public art installation, 12.19 m length x 5.49 m diametre x 1.68 m height, Métis ᐄᓃᐤ ÎNÎW River Lot 11 – Indigenous Art Park, Edmonton, AB, Canada, http://www.tiffanyshawcollinge.com/#/pehonan/.

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Figure 3. Department of the Interior Dominion Lands Office, Plan of Edmonton Settlement N.W.T., May 25, 1883, 27.94 x 35.56 cm, City of Edmonton Archives, RG-200, Series 8, EAM- 85, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

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Figure 4. Tiffany Shaw-Collinge, Pehonan - close-up view, 2018, public art installation, 12.19 m length x 5.49 m diametre x 1.68 m height, Métis ᐄᓃᐤ ÎNÎW River Lot 11 – Indigenous Art Park, Edmonton, AB, Canada, http://www.tiffanyshawcollinge.com/#/pehonan/.

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Figure 5. Marina Hulzenga, Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan - spatial installation, 2014-2020, spatial installation, dimensions unknown, Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands, http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space----awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html.

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Figure 6. Marina Hulzenga, Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan - spatial installation (2nd circle), 2014-2020, spatial installation, dimensions unknown, Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands, http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space----awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html.

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Figure 7. Marina Hulzenga, Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan - spatial installation (3rd circle), 2014-2020, spatial installation, dimensions unknown, Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands, http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space----awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html.

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Figure 8. Marina Hulzenga, Liminal Space || Awasitipahaskan - spatial installation (inner circle), 2014-2020, spatial installation, dimensions unknown, Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands, http://www.marinahulzenga.com/liminal-space----awasitipahaskan-exhibit.html.

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Figure 9. Marina Hulzenga, The Territory of Alberta Mapped by: First Nations reserves, Métis settlements and Treaties, 2019, hand-painted map, natural pigments, 50.17 x 69.85 cm, in the possession of the artist. 82

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