The Northwest Territories Reconstruction Project: Telling Our Stories
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THE NORTHWEST TERRITORIES RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT: TELLING OUR STORIES by Elizabeth Jonquil Covello B.A., McMaster University, 1968 M.A., Carleton University, 1973 M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2004 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2009 ©Elizabeth Jonquil Covello, 2009 Abstract Early travellers and adventurers in the Northwest Territories in their struggle to deal with the harshness of the land and the strangeness of the inhabitants were often unable to give a verbal shape to the landscape and the people beyond that of the familiar images of their European background. North became synonymous with alien, hostile, cold, barren, and mysterious and its people were identified alternatively as abject, heathen, filthy and sometimes dangerous savages or as paragons of noble manhood who served as examples for future imperializing ventures. I examine two travel narratives of the Northwest Territories and argue that a discourse of North, that was constructed from an imperialist, Eurocentric perspective failed to take into account the stories, the history and the culture of the indigenous people who lived there. I question the means by which such received history and knowledge becomes validated and empowering, while at the same time, other uncredentialed knowledge and stories which lack authority are lost. Warburton Pike wrote The Barren Ground ofNorthern Canada in 1892 and Agnes Deans Cameron wrote The New North in 1910. These works and others, while contributing to early knowledge of the indigenous people, were instrumental in framing an imaginary north that assumed hegemonic status over the geographical and cultural north that already existed. I then examine the works of two recent indigenous writers, George Blondin and Robert Alexie, who write back to Eurocentric constructions of north to validate their own histories and reclaim their land, not just in the physical sense of land claims but in ways which will give credence to their stories and their culture. I consider the role of stories and their power to preserve or destroy and I conclude with the hope that I can undertake a future work to examine in more detail the wealth of narrative available about the Northwest Territories. 11 Table of Contents Abstract .11 Table of Contents iii List of Figures iv Acknowledgements v Dedication vi Chapter 1. Introduction — Rethinking the Northwest Territories 1 Chapter 2. A Theory of Recovery 15 Chapter 3. Travels in the Land of the Muskox 57 Chapter 4. Constructing the “New North” 112 Chapter 5. A World of Difference 163 Chapter 6. Taking it into the Street 222 Chapter 7. Conclusion 263 Bibliography 276 111 List of Figures Figure 1.Canadain 1870.59 Figure 2.Canadain 1898 59 Figure 3. Area Travelled by Pike and Cameron 60 Figure 4. King Beaulieu 73 Figure 5. Warburton Pike’s Sketch Map of His Travels 103 Figure 6.Agnes Deans Cameron’s Route from Chicago to the Arctic Ocean 117 Figure 7. Agnes Deans Cameron with Her Premier Moose 133 Figure 8. A Slavi Type from Fort Simpson 147 Figure 9. A Slavi Family at Fort Simpson 148 Figure 10. Farthest North Football 149 Figure 11. David Villeneuve Setting His Net 152 Figure 12. Cannibal Louise, Her Little Girl, and Miss Cameron 156 Figure 13. Story Telling with Friends on Great Slave Lake 272 iv Acknowledgements I wish, first of all, to acknowledge the unwavering and always thoughtful support of Lou Covello, my husband, my lifeline and my support. Without him, it would never have happened. Thank you Lou. I also thank my daughter, Katharine, who, with her ever-candid honesty, kept things interesting and in perspective. I acknowledge and thank my committee, Dr. Laurie Ricou, Dr. Barbara Dancygier and Dr. Sherrill Grace. Sherrill, as my supervisor, tirelessly read draft after draft and continued to see value in what I was doing. She was a critic, a mentor, a supervisor and a true friend. I thank the staff in the English Department who were always helpful and friendly. I gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance I received from the English Department, the University of British Columbia, the SSHRC Foundation and the generous support from the Government of the Northwest Territories. v Dedication To all the people who listened and helped, and especially to my dearest friends, Peter, Bev and Don, who supported me through it all and made me laugh so much as we skied and sang and told stories all winter long. vi Chapter 1. Introduction — Rethinking the Northwest Territories Early explorers to the Northwest Territories of Canada (NWT) depicted it as a cold and lonely land of ice and snow inhabited by dangerous animals such as wolves and polar bears, and populated by Indians and Eskimos who roamed the land living in tents and igloos. It was no place for a European and if one were so unfortunate as to live there he or she would be in constant danger of freezing to death in winter or being driven mad in summer by hordes of mosquitoes and black flies. This is what we know from the historical tales of visitors who have been there and so, of course, it must be true. But is it? Our concept of the Northwest Territories, and indeed of any strange and foreign land that we have not ourselves experienced, is formed by the writings of the people who have witnessed it, and what we understand of the history of foreign lands is shaped by experts who have interpreted it. Post- modern thought teaches us that history is a human construct, that all history is textualized, and we can only know the past through what Linda Hutcheon calls its “textualized remains” (67). If we were not there and did not witness events, we must rely on the testimony of others to explain and interpret them for us and these interpretations are always subject to social, political and cultural bias. Similarly, if we have not actually experienced the physical space of a foreign country we must be guided by the eye-witness reports of others and these too are shaped by personal bias, but we give credence to such reports because the information in them is all we can know until we travel there ourselves. The privileging of a written report over first-hand experience is what Edward Said calls a “textual attitude” to knowledge (Orientalism 94). According to Said, textual attitudes begin in narratives such as travel writings in which people, places and experiences are described; the resulting book or text “acquires a greater authority, and use, even than the actuality it describes” (Orientalism 93). 1 The text becomes the authority on the foreign land and its people, and the knowledge it professes enters into the general discourse about that land. The writings of early explorers, missionaries, travellers, government officials, trappers and traders played an integral part in defining the physical and social space that is now the Northwest Territories of Canada and over time, a “textual attitude” to the north developed. In its most benign form it allowed armchair adventurers opportunities to travel safely through the dangerous arctic wasteland. However, in a more insidious and potentially damaging form such attitudes permitted idealistic, colonizing and ill-informed visionaries to exert their authority to establish policies and programs to change the land and its people in ways that may have seemed reasonable and correct at the time but would have serious, unforeseen consequences in the future. The first part of my thesis will examine the ideology and received history contained in textualized accounts of the Northwest Territories. I will show how travellers’ tales combined to construct a northern discourse of an alien and dangerous land peopled by primitive savages in need of material and spiritual redemption. In the second part, I will show, through analysis of recent indigenous narrative, the consequences of European intervention in the land and the lives of the people, and the strategies that native people have adopted to reclaim their land, their culture and their history. The Englishman, Samuel Heame, was the first white man to travel overland across the barrenlands of northern Canada. He left Fort Prince of Wales on Hudson’s Bay in December 1770 and returned in June 1772 after reaching the Arctic Ocean by way of the Coppermine River. An account of his travels, A Journeyfrom Prince of Wale ‘s Fort in Hudson ‘s Bay to the Northern Ocean, was published in 1795, three years after his death. Hearne was accompanied by Matonabbee, an important Chipewyan chief, and several of his 2 men. His narrative contains a wealth of information on native hunting and travelling methods and cultural practices. Unlike many other explorers of his day, Hearne adopted the travelling style of his native companions and his adaptability, as well as his instinct for observation, his intellectual curiosity, and his critical sense make his story one of the most astute and interesting of all early northern travel narratives. The purpose of Hearne’s travel was dictated by his employer, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), which charged Hearne with investigating reported copper deposits on the Coppermine River and determining the possibility of a passage to the Pacific Ocean by means of a northern river. Later travellers in the north had other agendas such as scientific studies, hunting expeditions, ethnographic studies and adventure and many of them produced detailed narrative accounts of their journeys to inform and entertain their contemporaries at home. Until quite recently these accounts were generally accepted as factual, objective and truthful depictions of the landscape the travellers saw, the indigenous people they encountered and the adventures they experienced.