SPECTACLE, SPECTRALITY, AND THE EVERYDAY: SETTLER COLONIALISM, ABORIGINAL ALTERITY, AND INCLUSION IN VANCOUVER by NATALIE J. K. BALOY B.A. Honours, Eastern Michigan University, 2006 M.A., The University of British Columbia, 2008 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Anthropology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2014 © Natalie J. K. Baloy, 2014 Abstract This dissertation examines everyday social relations in the settler colonial city of Vancouver. Its contemporary ethnographic focus updates and reworks historical and political analyses that currently comprise the growing body of scholarship on settler colonialism as a distinct socio-political phenomenon. I investigate how non-Aboriginal residents construct and relate to Aboriginal alterity. The study is situated in three ethnographic sites, united by their emphasis on “including” the Aboriginal Other: (1) the 2010 Winter Olympics, which featured high-profile forms of Aboriginal participation (and protest); (2) the Mount Pleasant public library branch, which displays a prominent Aboriginal collection and whose staff works closely with the urban Aboriginal community; and (3) BladeRunners, an inner-city construction program that trains and places Aboriginal street youth in the local construction industry. Participants in this research include non-Aboriginal “inclusion workers” as well as non-Aboriginal patrons at the library, construction workers on a BladeRunners construction placement site, and audiences at Aboriginal Olympic events. I explore how my participants’ affective knowledges shape and are shaped by spatial and racializing processes in the emergent settler colonial present. My analysis reveals how everyday encounters with Aboriginal alterity are produced and experienced through spectacular representations and spectral (or haunting) Aboriginal presence, absence, and possibility in the city. In relation to inclusion initiatives, I argue that discourses of Aboriginal inclusion work to manage and circumscribe Aboriginal difference even as they enable interaction across difference. Ultimately, I suggest that social projects aimed at addressing Aboriginal marginality and recognition must actively engage with and critique non-Aboriginal ideologies, discourses, and practices around racialization, meaning-making, and settler privilege, while working within and against a spectacular and spectralized milieu. This research demonstrates how critical ethnography can be leveraged productively to analyse settler participation in the reproduction and transformation of the colonial project. ii Preface This research was approved by the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board: Certificate Number H09-03044 ; Principal Investigator: Dr. Jennifer Kramer iii Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................................. ii Preface ................................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................. iv List of Figures ....................................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................. vii Dedication ............................................................................................................................................. xi Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Othering Aboriginality and Including the Aboriginal Other ............................................................... 5 Unsettling Social Locations ............................................................................................................... 10 Spectacle, Spectrality, and the Everyday ........................................................................................... 19 Spectacle ....................................................................................................................................... 20 Spectrality ..................................................................................................................................... 26 The “Everyday” ............................................................................................................................ 32 Chapter 2: Including Encounters – Fieldwork in the Interstices of Settler Colonial Vancouver .............................................................................................................................................................. 35 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 35 Ethnographic Influences: Site Selection and Methodological Practice ............................................. 36 “The World’s Biggest Potlatch”: Spectacular Anthropology ............................................................ 38 Working Relationships: BladeRunners .............................................................................................. 48 Aboriginal Titles: Mount Pleasant Library and Urban Aboriginal Community Development ......... 59 Locally Multi-Sited Ethnography: Encounters and Discursive Practices in Settler Colonial Middle Grounds ............................................................................................................................................. 70 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 74 Chapter 3: Spectacular and Spectral Spaces .................................................................................... 77 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 77 Stanley Park ....................................................................................................................................... 80 From Xwayxway to Stanley Park: Indigenous “Squatters” on Park Lands .................................. 86 Stanley Park’s Totem Poles: “Indigeneity Got from Elsewhere” ................................................. 88 From Stanley Park to Xwayxway: Re-Indigenizing the Landscape ............................................. 92 The A/Effects of Renaming vs. “Just Colours” ............................................................................ 94 The Downtown Eastside .................................................................................................................. 100 A “Photogenic Spectacle”: Drive-by Encounters and Mechanisms of Marginalization ............. 103 Haunting Encounters ................................................................................................................... 105 Resisting Representations and Other Processes of Reckoning ................................................... 108 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 112 Chapter 4: Olympic (G)hosts ........................................................................................................... 115 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 115 Setting the Stage: Spectacles of Aboriginality, Spectres of Indigeneity ......................................... 116 Four Host First Nations on Stolen Native Land .............................................................................. 118 Olympic Aboriginalia ...................................................................................................................... 126 Spectacles and Spectres within the Generalized Spectacle: Aboriginal Olympic Performances .... 135 The 2010 Olympics Opening Ceremony: The Same Old Song and Dance? ................................... 140 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 157 Chapter 5: Inclusion at Work .......................................................................................................... 159 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 159 iv Laying the Foundation ..................................................................................................................... 160 Rugged Individuals .......................................................................................................................... 167 Always a BladeRunner and/or Just One of the Guys ....................................................................... 175 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 181 Chapter 6: Aboriginal Alterity and its (Dis)contents ....................................................................