Full Description
Popularly thought of as a recreational vehicle and one of the key ingredients of an ideal wilderness getaway, the canoe is also a political vessel. A potent symbol and practice of Indigenous cultures and traditions, the canoe has also been adopted to assert conservation ideals, feminist empowerment, citizenship practices, and multicultural goals. Documenting many of these various uses, this book asserts that the canoe is not merely a matter of leisure and pleasure; it is folded into many facets of our political life. Taking a critical stance on the canoe, The Politics of the Canoe expands and enlarges the stories that we tell about the canoe's relationship to, for example, colonialism, nationalism, environmentalism, and resource politics. To think about the canoe as a political vessel is to recognize how intertwined canoes are in the public life, governance, authority, social conditions, and ideologies of particular cultures, nations, and states. Almost everywhere we turn, and any way we look at it, the canoe both affects and is affected by complex political and cultural histories. Across Canada and the U.S., canoeing cultures have been born of activism and resistance as much as of adherence to the mythologies of wilderness and nation building. The essays in this volume show that canoes can enhance how we engage with and interpret not only our physical environments, but also our histories and present-day societies.
Contents
Chapter 1 Tribal Canoe Journeys and Indigenous Cultural Resurgence: A Story from the Heiltsuk Nation
Chapter 2 'This is What Makes Us Strong': Canoe Revitalization, Reciprocal Heritage, and the Chinook Indian Nation
Chapter 3 Wha Dǫ Ehtǫ K'è
Chapter 4 Listening to Model Canoes: Language and Survivance in E. Tappan Adney's Ethnography
Chapter 5 Ginawaydaganuc, Algonquin Teachings of the Birch Bark Canoe: The Canoe in Indigenous Community Revitalization and Reconciliation
Chapter 6 Pathways to the Forest: Meditations on the Colonial Landscape
Chapter 7 Beyond Birch Bark: How Lahontan's Images of Unfamiliar Canoes Confirm His Remarkable Western Expedition of 1688
Chapter 8 Monumental Trip: Don Starkell's Canoe Voyage from Winnipeg to the Mouth of the Amazon
Chapter 9 The Dam that Wasn't: How the Canoe Became Political on the Petawawa River
Chapter 10 Unpacking and Repacking the Canoe: Canoe as Research Vessel
