Marchel, Alexandra (2016) Unsettling histories from an unsettled past : (re-)storying as performance in Canada's colonial present. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

In 2008, Stephen Harper, then Prime Minister of Canada, delivered an official apology for the Indian Residential School system (1883 to 1996). This was the first formal apology from a prime minister to the generations of Indigenous peoples who suffered and continue to be impacted by the traumatic legacies of this federal policy.

Little more than a year later, however, Harper announced to reporters at a G20 summit in Philadelphia that Canada has “no history of colonialism” (qtd. in Wherry).

The dissertation takes Harper’s claim of colonial denial as its theoretical springboard, asking: What does it mean for Canada to apologise for the residential school system, whilst simultaneously denying the country’s history of colonialism? Investigating this question through a performance studies analytic, I ultimately conclude that Harper’s 2009 statement is indicative of how national identity is constructed by the state; that is, through settler colonial performances of selective forgetting, which serve strategically to undermine Indigenous sovereignty.

The doctoral project unfolds thematically through analysing three principal events between 2008 and 2015: the War of 1812 commemorations; the ‘Idle No More’ protest movement; and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

I have identified two main tasks for this study. First, to query the dominant story/stories of Canada animated in the colonial present. Second, to investigate Indigenous interventions that destabilise mythologies of settler benevolence through a ‘re-storying’ of Canada; a term I use to denote counter-narratives and embodied practices unsettling the country’s past that are, by definition, separate from those stories that reify narratives of national innocence.

By exploring both official stories and re-stories through a performance studies framework, moored in a self-reflexive methodology informed by my fieldwork, the dissertation offers a critical investigation of Canada’s refusal to reckon with its uncomfortable histories in an age of ostensible reconciliation.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	F History United States, Canada, Latin America > F1001 Canada (General)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Canada -- Ethnic relations, Canada -- Race relations, Self-determination, National -- Canada, Indians of North America -- Cultural assimilation -- Canada, Indians of North America -- Canada -- Social conditions, Off-reservation boarding schools -- Canada
Official Date:	November 2016
Dates:	Date Event November 2016 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Gluhovic, Milija, 1971- ; Hutchison, Yvette
Sponsors:	University of Warwick. Chancellor International Scholarship ; Foundation for Canadian Studies in the United Kingdom
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	xvi, 376 pages
Language:	eng

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