This week, Susan Roy’s These Mysterious People brings another discipline’s relationship to Indigenous peoples and colonialism into view: archaeology. Roy worked for many years doing legal research for xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) before doing her PhD. This book started as her dissertation. Roy now teaches history at the University of Waterloo. Her work continues to be in collaboration with Indigenous communities, at the moment particularly with the shíshálh (Sechelt).
Hi all – here’s my attempt at some questions for this coming week! I need to work on making these more concise so I’m sorry in advance. Looking forward to chatting on Tuesday! – Nicole
Referencing the 1912 McKenna-McBride Commission, Roy discusses how Musqueam people articulated a “cohesive” cultural identity to the state by presenting ethnographic objects (in particular, two house posts of familial significance) in a carefully crafted visual display and in so doing, communicated a historical, territorial claim to the land. In the context of our conversation on “doing” from last week as perhaps being in a complicated relationship with efforts to discard “the master’s tools,” how might we understand and approach these instances of legitimation and (re)claiming that occur in the “language” (the tools) of a non-Indigenous/Western audience (i.e. presenting in a way seen as “authentically” connected to the land in a Western legal perspective)? What are some of the complexities at play here?
Last week we discussed how the discipline of history is complicit in colonialism on the local, national, and global levels. This week, Roy importantly takes note of colonial logics of property that erase forms of land-use and/or relations with the land that do not align with those notions of “improvement” or “progress” (e.g. movement and migration). In what ways does history participate in these colonial logics of property? In what ways do we default to these ideas, such as “ownership,” in the histories we tell? Is there an alternative?
Roy highlights the complexity of “communities” when she quotes Wayne Suttles who articulates the role of class in Musqueam historical knowledge: high class people knew their history and low class people did not (78). Roy’s comment on this–that “[c]learly, heritage was important”–is itself important. However, in what ways might we complicate this? How do we engage with the idea of knowledge of one’s history as a prerequisite for authority, when we meet those “low class people” who might not carry this knowledge in the same way? Whether it’s from state policies of assimilation or displacement, how do we attend to and respect those removed from this type of knowledge? How do we address the complexity of the “community” in this respect?
Hi all – here’s my attempt at some questions for this coming week! I need to work on making these more concise so I’m sorry in advance. Looking forward to chatting on Tuesday! – Nicole
Referencing the 1912 McKenna-McBride Commission, Roy discusses how Musqueam people articulated a “cohesive” cultural identity to the state by presenting ethnographic objects (in particular, two house posts of familial significance) in a carefully crafted visual display and in so doing, communicated a historical, territorial claim to the land. In the context of our conversation on “doing” from last week as perhaps being in a complicated relationship with efforts to discard “the master’s tools,” how might we understand and approach these instances of legitimation and (re)claiming that occur in the “language” (the tools) of a non-Indigenous/Western audience (i.e. presenting in a way seen as “authentically” connected to the land in a Western legal perspective)? What are some of the complexities at play here?
Last week we discussed how the discipline of history is complicit in colonialism on the local, national, and global levels. This week, Roy importantly takes note of colonial logics of property that erase forms of land-use and/or relations with the land that do not align with those notions of “improvement” or “progress” (e.g. movement and migration). In what ways does history participate in these colonial logics of property? In what ways do we default to these ideas, such as “ownership,” in the histories we tell? Is there an alternative?
Roy highlights the complexity of “communities” when she quotes Wayne Suttles who articulates the role of class in Musqueam historical knowledge: high class people knew their history and low class people did not (78). Roy’s comment on this–that “[c]learly, heritage was important”–is itself important. However, in what ways might we complicate this? How do we engage with the idea of knowledge of one’s history as a prerequisite for authority, when we meet those “low class people” who might not carry this knowledge in the same way? Whether it’s from state policies of assimilation or displacement, how do we attend to and respect those removed from this type of knowledge? How do we address the complexity of the “community” in this respect?
1. What does These Mysterious People suggest about the line between political gain and keeping knowledge within a community? How does context decide when “refusal” is not the most advantageous route? I am thinking of the Musqueam’s use of archaeological digs to legitimize their own land claims in the federal court system. Ideally, archaeological digs wouldn’t be necessary to strengthen land claims. But, in this legal scenario, refusal to engage the digs would weaken the Musqueam’s case. Working in a colonial context, it seems that strategically allowing for the appropriation of knowledge can offer benefits. How to deal with this shifting line between refusal and engagement?
When writing about an archaeologist, Roy claims “bone collecting was simply part of his work, which he was carrying out for the larger good of scientific knowledge” (43). This sentence, tagged onto the end of a paragraph, seems like a very intentional display of empathy on Roy’s part. It could easily be left out. What does this add? Could her empathetic treatment of archaeologists challenge simple narratives of domination, and comment on more complicated colonial structures? Could it relate to “pain” versus “desire” narratives?
My main thoughts this week kind of circled around voice (Indigenous, community, researcher) – I will try and post some less thematic and more content specific Qs later this evening or tomorrow.
Who has the power to claim the space and set the standards and boundaries for what counts as legitimate inquiry? How does the power to name and categorise contribute to systems/structures of oppression? What standards are to be employed and who is to be believed when it comes to understanding narratives about Indigenous communities? How does authorising knowledge change its social function (this I have borrowed from Julie Cruikshank, 1998). How do the ‘interests’ of academics (historians, anthropologists, archaeologists) relate to the reality of Indigenous communities vs. their own career ‘interests’?
Happy Sunday. Below I’ve listed three discussion questions on “These Mysterious People” by Susan Roy (apologies for being so lengthy).
(1) In Daniel Justice’s piece we read and discussed last week, “A Better World Becoming: Placing Critical Indigenous Studies,” he addressed the difficulties of avoiding the creation of a “Pan-Indigenous” or “Pan-First Nation” perspective when institutionalizing programs that focus on First Nation and Indigenous Studies: “the generally successful institutionalization of Indigenous studies in both Canada and the United states has been the result in part of an evacuation or at least a diminishment of localized specificity in favor of a more generic sense of pan-Native ethnicity” (2017: 28). In “These Mysterious People” Susan Roy discusses this same dilemma. For example, on page 81 she writes, “Cultural objects that at one time represented family prerogative, status, and wealth across a regional network of kinship relations were pulled together to represent a cohesive Musqueam identity (2010:81)” and on page 90 she writes, “Thus, Aboriginal objects were turned towards larger humanistic research questions rather than towards better understanding the specific histories and geographies of Northwest Coast Aboriginal communities” (2010: 90). In what ways does her own work counter these historical, and perhaps pervading, narratives and practices? Is there any way in which it perpetuates them?
(2) How might the way that Susan Roy structures her arguments reflect Indigenous understandings of time and space? How might it counter, or perpetuate, colonial power structures?
(3) Just because this question is in my wheelhouse. On page 149 Susan Roy writes that “This supposedly neutral scientific terminology was, in turn, picked up in the popular discourse of settler society and used to reinforce the view that artifacts, skeletal remains, and archaeological sites were just another “natural resource” and, although associated with Aboriginal peoples, available for extraction and appropriation” (2010: 149). To expand upon Roy’s discussion, even though tangible heritage (i.e. artifacts, objects) and intangible heritage (i.e. language, cultural practices) are inherently interconnected, the ways in which they each historically were, or were not, treated as natural resources could determine how they’re valued, researched, and discussed today. What do you think? Have you encountered this in your own work? What are the implications?
Hi all!
One long question here:
Roy discusses the archeological artifacts recovered at the excavation of c̓əsnaʔəm as circulating through “orbits of value,” taking on different meanings (monetary, spiritual, etc.) as they enter different cultural spheres (such as the museum). For Roy, the significance of objects/artifacts/belongings is deeply entrenched in the specificities of its context; as Roy puts it, “meaning and value are produced through exchange and within different historical and cultural milieus” (Roy 9).
My question here, then, is how can we understand the significance of artifacts as not just a reflection of its surroundings? In other words, what does the removal and re-contextualization of such artifacts do? Can artifacts be neutralized in the space of the museum display with their original historical and cultural meaning replaced by the imposition of the settler-colonial museum space? Or can these objects produce their own meanings, even within the sterile/colonial walls of either the archival or collections storage room or the museum display? That is, how do we understand the negotiation of an object’s power and agency as both produced within the cultural logic of its contexts as well as, potentially, independent of its contexts.