REWRITING HOMELAND(S): INDIGENOUS NARRATIVE AESTHETICS AND ECOCRITIAL ACTIVISM by Amelia Chaney A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Summer 2020 ©2020 Amelia Chaney All Rights Reserved REWRITING HOMELAND(S): INDIGENOUS NARRATIVE AESTHETICS AND ECOCRITIAL ACTIVISM by Amelia Chaney Approved: __________________________________________________________ John Ernest, Ph.D. Chair of the Department of English Approved: __________________________________________________________ John Pelesko, Ph.D. Dean of the College of College Name Approved: __________________________________________________________ Douglas J. Doren, Ph.D. Interim Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education and Dean of the Graduate College I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: __________________________________________________________ Emily S. Davis, Ph.D. Professor in charge of dissertation I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: __________________________________________________________ Siobhan Carroll, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: __________________________________________________________ Brooke J. Stanley, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: __________________________________________________________ Lindsay Naylor, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special thanks to Emily Davis for her continual intellectual advice and emotional support throughout the development of this project from an independent study to a complete dissertation and to Siobhan Carroll for introducing me to ecocritical theory in her classes and honing my project from the bibliography essay to its final product. I wish to thank Brooke Stanley and Lindsay Naylor for their generosity and helpful feedback as dissertation committee members. I am grateful for the help of the fellow graduate students who assisted me with editing advice throughout various stages of this process especially Michael Harris-Peyton and the members of my Environmental Graduate Group (Samantha Nystrom, Rebecca Olsen, Meghan O’Donnell, and Kacey Stewart). Our inspiring sessions talking through argumentative structure and big ideas over delicious luncheons were invaluable to me. Thanks to all my fellow panel participants and respondents in conferences over the last five years especially Rebecca Weaver-Hightower and Yuting Huang whose assistance as co-moderators of a panel on settler colonialism helped to advance the early portions of the dissertation and Kyle Bladow whose feedback and encouragement at the 2017 ASLE indigenous studies panel developed my thinking on narrative as activism. This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, my first storytellers, without whose love and encouragement I could never have pursued this project. Thank you for helping iv me to travel through the world of literary imaginings and Antipodean research and for accompanying me on this journey. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………..viii ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………...ix Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………..1 1.1. Where Ecocritical Meets Postcolonial……………………………………..,.4 1.2. Indigenous Texts as Ecocritical Activism…………………………………...8 1.3. Eco-media as Genre Adaptation……………………………………………14 2. GENDERING THE WILDERNESS SETTLEMENT NARRATIVE: DOMESTIC LABOR AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY IN THE COLONIAL BUSH……………………………………………………18 2.1. Writing Against the Pastoral Grain: Colonial Landscape and Racial Violence……………………………………………………………………23 2.2. Waking to the Nightmare: Struggling for Survival in the Canadian Wilderness…………………………………………………………………27 2.3. Laboring in the Bush: Gender Politics and Resource Consumption………………………………………………………………39 3. NARRATIVE FLOW AS ECOCRITICAL RESISTANCE IN INDIGENOUS WATER FICTION………………………………………...58 3.1. Maori Eco-narratives: Storytelling as Transhuman Communal Art Form…………………………………………………………………….....64 3.2. Undamming the Narrative: Reimagining Ecology through Indigenous Bricolage…………………………………………………………………..78 4. REWRITING THE POLITICS OF PLACE: SCREEN TOURISM AND THE RISE OF DOCUMENTARY FOURTH CINEMA………………100 4.1. New Zealand as Middle-Earth Travelogue: Book, to Film, to Tourist Attraction, and Back Again……………………………………105 4.2. Fourth Cinema as Indigenous Activism: Documenting Violence on the Ground……………………………………………….....................121 4.3. Framing Indigenous Experience: Spatial Relations in Obomsawin’s Documentaries……………………………………………………………128 vi 5. WILDERNESS AND “WILDERPEOPLE”: REIMAGINING THE SURVIVALIST ECO-DRAMA FOR A MULTICULTURAL NEW ZEALAND…………….142 5.1. Eco-Survivalist Adventure as Film Genre………………………….........145 5.2. Barry Crump and New Zealand’s Man Alone Myth…………………….149 5.3. Hunt for the Wilderpeople: An Indigenous Comedy of Cultural Relations…………………………………………………………….,,….153 5.4. Adapting Wild Pork and Watercress as Escapist Eco-adventure…..........164 BIBLOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………........174 vii LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1 New Zealand as Pop-up book in 2013 traveling exhibit……………………116 Fig. 2 Oka Golf course as seen from cemetery in the pines……………………….130 Fig. 3 Obomsawin in the journalist lines with soldiers in front of shot holding…..131 confiscated film rolls Fig. 4 Mother comforting child in Kanehsatake…………………………………..133 Fig. 5 Passing food supplies for Mohawks across the barrier in Kanehsatake……135 Fig. 6 Caring for Spudwrench in Treatment Center after beating…………………135 Fig. 7 Lisa Marie Linklater with children folding laundry………………………..139 Fig. 8 Film still of Uncle Hec’s introduction……………………………………...156 Fig. 9 “Crumpy” off-roading in Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)………………164 Fig. 10 Raging Boar in Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)………………………..168 viii ABSTRACT My dissertation makes an intervention in the emergent study of post-colonial ecocriticism by examining how indigenous writers and filmmakers in Canada and New Zealand have adapted storytelling forms as a means of socio-political resistance to economic and racial inequalities. This work builds on Rob Nixon’s framing of the environmental vulnerabilities experienced by marginalized peoples of color across the globe. However, whereas scholars like Nixon question the value of literature as a vehicle for social change, I argue that narratives can function both as tools of direct political intervention and ideological opposition to engrained modes of thinking. By placing print and filmic sources in dialogue with the history of real-world disputes between governments, commercial interests, and native peoples over land usage, I analyze how storytelling practices participate in a larger discourse about indigenous sovereignty and cultural reclamation. In combining literary criticism on narrative aesthetics with more explicitly politically oriented readings, I highlight what these texts can teach us about the best methods of negotiating ideological conflicts over environmental practices in our ongoing eco-crisis. This project also makes an intervention in the emergent field of eco- media by tracing narrative adaptations across mediums to illustrate how creators have drawn upon and or reimagined the conventions of environmental adventure and travel fiction rooted in the colonial period. In reading these films in relation to their production history and reception, I demonstrate how such texts continue to shape modern cultural narratives about settler nations through contemporary travel advertisements and the ix establishment of tourist destinations like Hobbiton. I argue that this process of adaptation not only builds upon a diverse foundation of prior storytelling and site-specific environmental histories, but in turn continues to shape the economic and ecological realities of indigenous communities. x Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Towards the end of Ravensong, Lee Maracle’s acclaimed novel about the barriers to communication between first nations and white hegemonic culture, her conflicted teenage protagonist, Stacey, wonders about the efficacy of trying to earn a university degree in 1950s Canada. Is it worth leaving her Sto:lo community and struggling to enter a world that fails to understand or value her? Will be she be able to use her higher education to help her people? The social and emotional ostracization she has experienced attending the local public school in the “white town” has led her to doubt the potential for acceptance among those outside her community. Into this moment of despair steps Raven, who sends her the words of her deceased grandmother in a dream, warning “We will never escape sickness until we learn how it is we are to live with these people. We will always die until the mystery of their being is altered” (192). The sickness referred to is at once literal and metaphorical. The novel centers on