Student strike continues here. There was a brief period of negotiations between the ministre de l'education Line Beauchamp and some of the student groups who had agreed to renounce violence. But the acronyms for various student organizations: FEUQ, CLASSE, etc. are a real alphabet soup and it has been impossible to get them all in line together.
In the english-language Montreal daily, The Gazette, I read this op-ed article which I found really interesting. The author asserts that the student movement is appropriating slogans from the nationalist movement of the Quiet Revolution, such as "maîtres chez nous" for their own student movement. She critiques the exclusionary nature of these slogans. If the nous includes only native born Quebecois, then are they ignoring the presence of African and native students in their classes? A video of a demonstration, she says, included only white faces among the protestors. The students attempt to evoke Pierre Vallières' notorious essay "les Negres blancs d'Amérique" which claimed the Quebecois suffered the same kind of discrimination from white Anglophones as blacks were suffering in the American south. It was hyperbole but it resonated with the radical-chic of the moment. The phrase also reminds me of the film about the Irish blues band that covered soul hits and declared that "the Irish are the blacks of Europe!"
The student movement does appear to dovetail with the Quebec separatist movement. It is little surprise that students from other provinces (of whom there are very few at Laval) or from other countries (including the Haitians I have met in the CELAT program) are not supporting the strikes. If one intends to move out of Quebec after earning one's degree, why would one wish to sacrifice an entire term of credits in order to preserve lower tuition for future undergraduates here in Quebec?
Another op-ed in the same paper examined how the Parti Quebecois leader has taken to wearing the red square, symbol of the student movement, on her lapel. Will this be a successful strategy for the PQ? I'm not sure, but there is an obvious resonance. The strikers attack the Liberal party provincial government and demand to be "maîtres chez nous" as if the liberals and the university rectors are their anglophone oppressors.
mercredi 25 avril 2012
mardi 24 avril 2012
Portland Timbers vs. Montréal Impact
The only possible meeting between Oregon and Québec teams in major sports will take place this coming Saturday 2 pm at Stade Olympique in Montréal. Portland Timbers vs. Montreal Impact. I'd love to go. It would be my first MLS soccer game and the second time at the Olympic Stadium. I saw the Expos play there in 1993!
samedi 21 avril 2012
Je veux que les Inuit soient libres de nouveau
Last weekend I went to a poetry reading called Les Bruits du Monde connected with the Salon du Livre book fair here. It featured 20 different poets in less than two hours, and nearly all of them were memorable. Several of the readers were Haitian, including Dany Laferrière who is one of Canada's best known contemporary authors, and I think four were Native authors, or Autochthones as they like to say here in Quebec. Louis-Karl Picard-Sioui, a Wendat writer and part of the important Sioui family, was one and Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau, a Cree métisse painter and writer, was another.
Native authors who publish in French and in an autochthonous language are interesting, and I'm sure are very little known to the US scholarly community in Native American Literature. I'd like to pursue this a little and try to read some of their works, and perhaps try to publish something on it if I find a writer I enjoy reading.
As a first step I began reading the autobiography of Taamusi Qumaq, Je veux que les Inuit soient libres de nouveau. Taamusi lived from 1914 to 1993, and also wrote an ethnographic and historical encyclopedia, in the Inuit language. His work alongside Louis-Jacques Dorais, translator of the autobiography, was instrumental for the creation of a dictionary of the language as well. But Taamusi spoke and wrote only Inuktitut, so this is an "as-told-to" autobiography. And like the works of that type in the 19th and early 20th century, such as Black Hawk's autobiography, it describes the enormous changes that colonization and modernity brought to his people, all within one lifetime. Until the early 1950s, Qumaq writes, there were no airplane flights to the villages of northern Quebec, only a resupply ship that arrived once every summer. The people lived in igloos all winter and in tents in the summer. Qumaq travelled by dogsled to fetch the mail for his community. They trapped fox and sold the pelts to traders from Revillon Freres or the Hudson Bay Company, and with the proceeds purchased only tea, ammunition, tobacco and flour.
Not until the 1960s did Qumaq and the community of Puvirnituq where he lived begin to sense the political forces of Canada. He writes of the "les deux paliers de gouvernement, fédéral et provinciale" and explains that he favored the Quebec authorities. In 1964 Qumaq, in his capacity of chair of the town council, met René Lévesque at a conference of Inuit leaders. At that time Lévesque was ministre des richesses naturelles, and in the midst of his effort to nationalize Hydro-Québec. He also worked to change the language of instruction in schools for Inuit children in Québec from English to French. The ministre said at the meeting that "Les Inuit ne devraient pas perdre leur culture et leur langage. Ils devraient pouvoir travailler dans leur propre langue...Les Blancs qui travaillent dans les collectivités inuit devraient parler l'inuktitut" (94). Those lines could just as easily have been spoken about Quebec and the French language. Qumaq was persuaded, and later even joined the Parti Québecois! This even though the schools recently established in his village demanded that the children to speak only English.
What interests me is the potential validity of an analogy between Quebecois nationalism and sovereignty movements and indigenous ones. Each can claim to be a colonized people whose language and traditions are under threat of assimilation by Anglo-American imperialists. I've begun to study how Quebecois scholars of the colonial period claim an affinity for Indians and even a kind of regional autochthony, or "originarity" to coin a term. Yet within Quebec the first nations peoples are not necessarily any better off than elsewhere in Canada, and some of them are quite annoyed by the way Francohphone Quebec claims to be a "distinct society" with special rights and privileges such as ought to be granted to the true natives of the country.
Native authors who publish in French and in an autochthonous language are interesting, and I'm sure are very little known to the US scholarly community in Native American Literature. I'd like to pursue this a little and try to read some of their works, and perhaps try to publish something on it if I find a writer I enjoy reading.
As a first step I began reading the autobiography of Taamusi Qumaq, Je veux que les Inuit soient libres de nouveau. Taamusi lived from 1914 to 1993, and also wrote an ethnographic and historical encyclopedia, in the Inuit language. His work alongside Louis-Jacques Dorais, translator of the autobiography, was instrumental for the creation of a dictionary of the language as well. But Taamusi spoke and wrote only Inuktitut, so this is an "as-told-to" autobiography. And like the works of that type in the 19th and early 20th century, such as Black Hawk's autobiography, it describes the enormous changes that colonization and modernity brought to his people, all within one lifetime. Until the early 1950s, Qumaq writes, there were no airplane flights to the villages of northern Quebec, only a resupply ship that arrived once every summer. The people lived in igloos all winter and in tents in the summer. Qumaq travelled by dogsled to fetch the mail for his community. They trapped fox and sold the pelts to traders from Revillon Freres or the Hudson Bay Company, and with the proceeds purchased only tea, ammunition, tobacco and flour.
Not until the 1960s did Qumaq and the community of Puvirnituq where he lived begin to sense the political forces of Canada. He writes of the "les deux paliers de gouvernement, fédéral et provinciale" and explains that he favored the Quebec authorities. In 1964 Qumaq, in his capacity of chair of the town council, met René Lévesque at a conference of Inuit leaders. At that time Lévesque was ministre des richesses naturelles, and in the midst of his effort to nationalize Hydro-Québec. He also worked to change the language of instruction in schools for Inuit children in Québec from English to French. The ministre said at the meeting that "Les Inuit ne devraient pas perdre leur culture et leur langage. Ils devraient pouvoir travailler dans leur propre langue...Les Blancs qui travaillent dans les collectivités inuit devraient parler l'inuktitut" (94). Those lines could just as easily have been spoken about Quebec and the French language. Qumaq was persuaded, and later even joined the Parti Québecois! This even though the schools recently established in his village demanded that the children to speak only English.
What interests me is the potential validity of an analogy between Quebecois nationalism and sovereignty movements and indigenous ones. Each can claim to be a colonized people whose language and traditions are under threat of assimilation by Anglo-American imperialists. I've begun to study how Quebecois scholars of the colonial period claim an affinity for Indians and even a kind of regional autochthony, or "originarity" to coin a term. Yet within Quebec the first nations peoples are not necessarily any better off than elsewhere in Canada, and some of them are quite annoyed by the way Francohphone Quebec claims to be a "distinct society" with special rights and privileges such as ought to be granted to the true natives of the country.
Wal-Mart Quebec
Last Sunday we went to Wal-Mart. I did not think there were any Wal-Marts in Quebec, because I remember news from many years ago that they shut down a store in St. Hyacinthe rather than allow its workers to organize. Nonetheless, there are many Wal-Mart stores in Quebec today. Wal-Mart first found success with stores in smaller towns in the Midwest and South, where people were not affluent and in any case had few retail options. The same holds true for much of Canada outside the major cities. But unlike the US South, Canada does not have anti-Union laws. The United Food and Commercial Workers of Canada has had some success in organizing workers here. Their website does not say which stores or how many workers they represent, but it explains the card-check process that applies in Quebec, which is similar to what we have in Oregon.
Our trip to Walmart, at a huge and hideous Gallerie Mall in suburban Quebec City, entailed waiting for several minutes, through three light cycles, to turn left into the complex. We also had to wait another ten minutes, Hannah and I, just to buy a soccer ball. Walmart was doing plenty of business that day. It was depressing to be stuck in there on a warm and sunny day. Fortunately, when we finally got out and returned to the hockey rink nearby where Josh was having baseball practice, Hannah and I explored the Parc Chauveau next to the rink. The Riviere Saint-Charles flows through the park, and it has lively rapids and small cliffs alongside. The shale there makes stones perfect for skipping, which Hannah loved. This park is part of a "parc linéaire" that runs for 32 kilometers along the St. Charles.
Not only does Quebec City have Wal-Mart, they also have Costco! Our friends the Robichauds who lived for ten years in Georgia before moving back to Quebec three years ago, told me that when they go to Costco, it's like a visit back to the USA. "Even the people are fatter!" Catherine said. But Target is not yet found here, although Louis Robichaud said that Target's parent company has bought out some of the Zeller's stores formerly run by the Hudson's Bay company. The Robichauds would like to see Target in Canada.
Our trip to Walmart, at a huge and hideous Gallerie Mall in suburban Quebec City, entailed waiting for several minutes, through three light cycles, to turn left into the complex. We also had to wait another ten minutes, Hannah and I, just to buy a soccer ball. Walmart was doing plenty of business that day. It was depressing to be stuck in there on a warm and sunny day. Fortunately, when we finally got out and returned to the hockey rink nearby where Josh was having baseball practice, Hannah and I explored the Parc Chauveau next to the rink. The Riviere Saint-Charles flows through the park, and it has lively rapids and small cliffs alongside. The shale there makes stones perfect for skipping, which Hannah loved. This park is part of a "parc linéaire" that runs for 32 kilometers along the St. Charles.
Not only does Quebec City have Wal-Mart, they also have Costco! Our friends the Robichauds who lived for ten years in Georgia before moving back to Quebec three years ago, told me that when they go to Costco, it's like a visit back to the USA. "Even the people are fatter!" Catherine said. But Target is not yet found here, although Louis Robichaud said that Target's parent company has bought out some of the Zeller's stores formerly run by the Hudson's Bay company. The Robichauds would like to see Target in Canada.
jeudi 12 avril 2012
Update on student strike
The strike continues and the two sides harden their resolve. The headline today is that provincial premier Jean Charest accuses the students of using initimidation similar to what occurs in the (Mafia-controlled) construction industry. It's odd he would say this since the bid-rigging and kickbacks cost provicial tax-payers millions, which is perceived to be a major political weakness for Charest.
The newspaper, le Soleil of Quebec City, says that 65% of students are attending classes, but the other 35% seem to be getting more militant. The schools of forestry, medicine and lab sciences at Laval are unaffected by the strike, while the student organizations in Art, literature, and Sociology are very active in it. They were picketing at the city's major artery this morning as we dropped the kids off at school. The symbol of the movement is the red square, and protesters have put red tape over the mouths of some of the many bronze statues of past heroes that one finds all over the centre-ville.
In Quebec, high school ends with the 11th grade (or 5th year of secondary school, as they call it) and then students go to CEGEP for two years before University. This "community college for all" model sounds like a good one to me. The CEGEPs are small but numerous and can be located closer to the remote rural areas than the universities are. Because tuition is low, housing and travel is a major part of the expense for students. What's more, since all students, rich and poor, dimmest to smartest, go to CEGEP, the rigid socioeconomic segregation that exists, for example, between Lane Community College and the U of O, is avoided. And the universities don't have to teach remedial courses.
I've got to admire the organization and resolve of the student leaders. This article outlines their demands to "cut the fat" in information technology and administrators' salaries so that research and instruction can be maintained without tuition hikes. Ben Eckstein has done great work but he doesn't have the back up from the student body to carry off demonstrations that might get traction for his demands, such as for the Athletic dept. to contribute to all students' education.
The newspaper, le Soleil of Quebec City, says that 65% of students are attending classes, but the other 35% seem to be getting more militant. The schools of forestry, medicine and lab sciences at Laval are unaffected by the strike, while the student organizations in Art, literature, and Sociology are very active in it. They were picketing at the city's major artery this morning as we dropped the kids off at school. The symbol of the movement is the red square, and protesters have put red tape over the mouths of some of the many bronze statues of past heroes that one finds all over the centre-ville.
In Quebec, high school ends with the 11th grade (or 5th year of secondary school, as they call it) and then students go to CEGEP for two years before University. This "community college for all" model sounds like a good one to me. The CEGEPs are small but numerous and can be located closer to the remote rural areas than the universities are. Because tuition is low, housing and travel is a major part of the expense for students. What's more, since all students, rich and poor, dimmest to smartest, go to CEGEP, the rigid socioeconomic segregation that exists, for example, between Lane Community College and the U of O, is avoided. And the universities don't have to teach remedial courses.
I've got to admire the organization and resolve of the student leaders. This article outlines their demands to "cut the fat" in information technology and administrators' salaries so that research and instruction can be maintained without tuition hikes. Ben Eckstein has done great work but he doesn't have the back up from the student body to carry off demonstrations that might get traction for his demands, such as for the Athletic dept. to contribute to all students' education.
Denis Vaugeois
Yesterday I had lunch with Denis Vaugeois, the publisher of Septentrion and former minister of culture in the Province of Quebec. I met him at the editorial offices, above his daughter's bookstore in Sillery. Vaugeois is the author of a shelf of different books. In the 1960s and 70s he was part of the separatist movement, and wrote Union of the Two Canadas: a New [English] Conquest?as well as a school textbook on Canadian history emphasizing the Quebecois perspective. More recently he has turned toward history and to books with beautiful color illustrations and design. Some of his publications from Septentrion, such as a lavish coffee-table book about Champlain, an historical atlas The Measure of a Continent (which I reviewed for Common-place). His most recent is a history of The Jews in America, 1760-1860, based upon the Hart family of Montreal. He said the English version will be out in June, and gave me a copy of the French version.
Because of my own nascent research project, I was eager to hear his views of the English conquest of 1759 and the historical legend of Montcalm and Wolfe. Vaugeois explained that the battle on the plains of Abraham was a minor affair that has been enormously exaggerated and mythologized by historians, due to the heroic deaths of its two commanders. Far fewer soldiers died than the historians have claimed. It was less decisive than the battles that preceded it (at Beauport and Montmorency in July 1759) and at Sainte-Foy the following year. Of course, both of those were French victories.
Vaugeois also suggested there is an historiographic divide in Quebec. The "Montreal school" sees the English conquest as a decisive and tragic event for Quebec, while the "Laval school" sees it as less disastrous, and possibly even advantageous for Quebec. Given the American and French revolutions that followed, a speculative history might propose that if the French had held on to Quebec they have been conquered by the American rebels in 1775, or by the British Navy in the 1790s, or handed over to the Americans by Napoleon as Louisiana was in 1803. (Actually Vaugeois did not mention those scenarios but it got me started thinking about it).
Aside from that comment about the two schools of thought on 1759-63, he was withering in his critique of academic historians, at least at Laval, just a half hour walk from his office. He said they are still ruled by the "annales" school, which maintains that there are no events, and no individuals in history, only processes and epistemes. This is a caricature, but it I have noticed that even as Septentrion publishes lots of history books, few of them are by prominent academic historians from Quebec universities. Many are by independent scholars.
Tomorrow I plan to go to the Salon du Livre at the convention center downtown. I hope to visit booths by French and Quebecois publishers there.
Because of my own nascent research project, I was eager to hear his views of the English conquest of 1759 and the historical legend of Montcalm and Wolfe. Vaugeois explained that the battle on the plains of Abraham was a minor affair that has been enormously exaggerated and mythologized by historians, due to the heroic deaths of its two commanders. Far fewer soldiers died than the historians have claimed. It was less decisive than the battles that preceded it (at Beauport and Montmorency in July 1759) and at Sainte-Foy the following year. Of course, both of those were French victories.
Vaugeois also suggested there is an historiographic divide in Quebec. The "Montreal school" sees the English conquest as a decisive and tragic event for Quebec, while the "Laval school" sees it as less disastrous, and possibly even advantageous for Quebec. Given the American and French revolutions that followed, a speculative history might propose that if the French had held on to Quebec they have been conquered by the American rebels in 1775, or by the British Navy in the 1790s, or handed over to the Americans by Napoleon as Louisiana was in 1803. (Actually Vaugeois did not mention those scenarios but it got me started thinking about it).
Aside from that comment about the two schools of thought on 1759-63, he was withering in his critique of academic historians, at least at Laval, just a half hour walk from his office. He said they are still ruled by the "annales" school, which maintains that there are no events, and no individuals in history, only processes and epistemes. This is a caricature, but it I have noticed that even as Septentrion publishes lots of history books, few of them are by prominent academic historians from Quebec universities. Many are by independent scholars.
Tomorrow I plan to go to the Salon du Livre at the convention center downtown. I hope to visit booths by French and Quebecois publishers there.
jeudi 5 avril 2012
The grave of David Thompson
The explorer David Thompson was the first European to navigate the entire length of the Columbia River. He also mapped much of the Canadian West by surveying and navigating with skills far better than Lewis and Clark, his contemporaries. He also wrote a better narrative than most explorers, and behaved more ethically. He married a metis-Cree woman, Charlotte Small, and rather than leave her in the field and go back to Montreal, he lived out his entire life with her, and raised I forget how many children, until they both died in Montreal in 1857. So I knew that my trip to Montreal had to include a visit to their grave, in Mount Royal cemetery on the back side of the eponymous mountain.
So I set out to run around the mountain and find the grave. It was in the upper 20s F and I had no gloves. This is not something one can complain about when seeking the grave of David Thompson. I looked at a map and got a general idea of how to follow trails through the park in a counter-clockwise direction, and the hotel desk clerk told me where the entrance to the cemetery is. Following gravel and leafy trails I made it to the other side of the mountain, but it was not obvious where to find the entrance. I asked the right person. A blond woman in a gore-tex raincoat with hightop sneakers and a scarf told me in French to head back up hill along the major auto road through the park, then follow a "path" (the only english word) to the right until I saw a "batisse" a building of some sort. I ran along the shoulder of the road and eventually saw the building, a funeral home. But I had missed the path and had to scramble down an embankment. Most of the cemetery is fenced off, but there was opening here. I knew from findagrave.com that his grave was in section C-5, and I was able to find a map at the entrance identifying the sections. I am lucky I asked that woman who had local knowledge, because I'm sure following streets to the formal entrance would have been much farther.
Thompson is buried alongside his wife, and daughter and grand-daughter named Charlotte Londel, as well as a military officer descendant who spelled it Londell. A plaque indicates that the marble column and inscription was installed only in 1927 by J. B. Tyrrell, an editor of Champlain society exploration narratives. I didn't bring my camera, but there is photo on the website I consulted.
My fondness for David Thompson and his narrative also carries over into an admiration for those who have edited and published his work. After editing and translating Dumont I know how hard this is. William Moreau of Toronto has been working on a new edition of Thompson's writings, first issued in a Champlain Society publication. Moreau has finished one volume and we are still waiting for the second.
The trip home was shorter but just as adventurous. I found another hole in the fence at the top of the cemetery, and followed a trail down around a road-cut, then asked a bicyclist who was coming up to the crest of the hill. He told me how to cross the park back to the city side, behind the General Hospital.
So I set out to run around the mountain and find the grave. It was in the upper 20s F and I had no gloves. This is not something one can complain about when seeking the grave of David Thompson. I looked at a map and got a general idea of how to follow trails through the park in a counter-clockwise direction, and the hotel desk clerk told me where the entrance to the cemetery is. Following gravel and leafy trails I made it to the other side of the mountain, but it was not obvious where to find the entrance. I asked the right person. A blond woman in a gore-tex raincoat with hightop sneakers and a scarf told me in French to head back up hill along the major auto road through the park, then follow a "path" (the only english word) to the right until I saw a "batisse" a building of some sort. I ran along the shoulder of the road and eventually saw the building, a funeral home. But I had missed the path and had to scramble down an embankment. Most of the cemetery is fenced off, but there was opening here. I knew from findagrave.com that his grave was in section C-5, and I was able to find a map at the entrance identifying the sections. I am lucky I asked that woman who had local knowledge, because I'm sure following streets to the formal entrance would have been much farther.
Thompson is buried alongside his wife, and daughter and grand-daughter named Charlotte Londel, as well as a military officer descendant who spelled it Londell. A plaque indicates that the marble column and inscription was installed only in 1927 by J. B. Tyrrell, an editor of Champlain society exploration narratives. I didn't bring my camera, but there is photo on the website I consulted.
My fondness for David Thompson and his narrative also carries over into an admiration for those who have edited and published his work. After editing and translating Dumont I know how hard this is. William Moreau of Toronto has been working on a new edition of Thompson's writings, first issued in a Champlain Society publication. Moreau has finished one volume and we are still waiting for the second.
The trip home was shorter but just as adventurous. I found another hole in the fence at the top of the cemetery, and followed a trail down around a road-cut, then asked a bicyclist who was coming up to the crest of the hill. He told me how to cross the park back to the city side, behind the General Hospital.
Tuition hikes and student strikes
What do Oregon and Quebec have in common? Six letters, beginning with a round thing, and an e in third place. But perhaps not much more. Take the student protest movement that has kept many students away from classes at ULaval (including most of the Quebecois enrolled in the course I was guest-lecturing in last Friday) and led to huge protests in Montreal. The contrast between the students' political movements here and at the UO are very different.
The Quebec provincial gov't has proposed raising tuition (frais de scolarité) by less than $400 in each of the next five years, a total of $1625, bringing tuition up to around $4000/year. Back at the UO, tuition has increased by about 9% each of the last several years, and is now about $8000/yr for instate students. There was no talk of a student strike at the UO, and no picket lines. The state legislature posed no real opposition to the administration's plans for tuition hikes.
Talking with faculty at ULaval and at McGill, they were both sympathetic with the students, and unwilling to cross picket lines to teach their classes, but they also supported the tuition hikes. They said that Quebec universities charge less than those in Ontario and western Canada, and that a longstanding tuition freeze means that costs are actually lower now than they were in 1968.
I also learned that very few students at McGill are staying away from classes or forming picket lines. Most likely because McGill has many non-Quebecois and non-Canadian students, and they already pay higher tuition. I just checked and saw that McGill charges about $3800 for tuition and fees to Quebec residents, and $7500 for other Canadians. Laurier told me that there is no such thing as "out of province" tuition, but the Laval website shows that he was incorrect. Laval charges about $2800 to Quebecois and $6500 to other Canadians. So McGill is only about $1000 more.
The Quebec provincial gov't has proposed raising tuition (frais de scolarité) by less than $400 in each of the next five years, a total of $1625, bringing tuition up to around $4000/year. Back at the UO, tuition has increased by about 9% each of the last several years, and is now about $8000/yr for instate students. There was no talk of a student strike at the UO, and no picket lines. The state legislature posed no real opposition to the administration's plans for tuition hikes.
Talking with faculty at ULaval and at McGill, they were both sympathetic with the students, and unwilling to cross picket lines to teach their classes, but they also supported the tuition hikes. They said that Quebec universities charge less than those in Ontario and western Canada, and that a longstanding tuition freeze means that costs are actually lower now than they were in 1968.
I also learned that very few students at McGill are staying away from classes or forming picket lines. Most likely because McGill has many non-Quebecois and non-Canadian students, and they already pay higher tuition. I just checked and saw that McGill charges about $3800 for tuition and fees to Quebec residents, and $7500 for other Canadians. Laurier told me that there is no such thing as "out of province" tuition, but the Laval website shows that he was incorrect. Laval charges about $2800 to Quebecois and $6500 to other Canadians. So McGill is only about $1000 more.
lundi 2 avril 2012
Sovereignty in Quebec and Native America
In the last ten or twenty years scholarship in Native American studies has seen the rise of a separatist or sovereigntist movement. Tribal-affiliated scholars have asserted a right to unique intellectual traditions, and to literary self-determination. The terms "intellectual sovereignty" and "rhetorical sovereignty" often associated with Robert Warrior and Scott Lyons, have become de rigueur citations in books and articles on Native American Literature.
There's another entity that has been asserting sovereigntist and separatist sentiments over this period: Quebecois. Rather like American Indian tribes, Quebecois feel the yoke of being a "domestic dependent nation" within a larger national entity that neglects and condescends toward it. And like the Quebecois, many tribes articulate their distinct identity through speaking a special language. But, like many post-colonial authors, the literary artists working in these languages face a dilemma between seeking a larger audience in English, or sticking to their native tongue.
The claim to original sovereignty relies on a priority, on preexisting the formation of the nation that now subsumes it. Canada was French before it was English. Its founders, Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain, were French.
I believe that as in Quebec, tribal sovereignty is more an intellectual than a political concept. Tribes resent, and yet depend upon, the BIA and its bureaucratic services, just as Quebec relies upon Canada. Quebec has an assemblée nationale, a bibliotheque nationale, etc., yet this is a nominal nationalism, like the Cherokee or Navajo Nation.
Any study I might write using this comparison would have to examine First Nations relations with Quebec, and their colonial origins. French Canadians cherish the ideal of a "génie coloniale"--the idea that French colonists had greater sympathy and understanding toward native nations than the English did. There is a good deal of truth to this. French colonists did not try to claim land from the Indians the way the English did. Patricia Seed's American Pentimento makes an interesting argument about how English colonial law and ideology was all about seizing land rights from the Indians, whereas the Spanish and Portuguese claimed the labor and resources of the Indians, not the land. But sometimes the "génie coloniale" comes off sounding like an effort to assert common cause with the Indians against the English.
One good point I might pursue would be that the Durham report of 1840, following the patriot rebellions of 1837-38, treated the French much like Jacksonian policies treated the American Indians: as primitives without true culture or history, who would have to assimilate or perish in the face of a tide of Anglo-Saxon superiority.
There's another entity that has been asserting sovereigntist and separatist sentiments over this period: Quebecois. Rather like American Indian tribes, Quebecois feel the yoke of being a "domestic dependent nation" within a larger national entity that neglects and condescends toward it. And like the Quebecois, many tribes articulate their distinct identity through speaking a special language. But, like many post-colonial authors, the literary artists working in these languages face a dilemma between seeking a larger audience in English, or sticking to their native tongue.
The claim to original sovereignty relies on a priority, on preexisting the formation of the nation that now subsumes it. Canada was French before it was English. Its founders, Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain, were French.
I believe that as in Quebec, tribal sovereignty is more an intellectual than a political concept. Tribes resent, and yet depend upon, the BIA and its bureaucratic services, just as Quebec relies upon Canada. Quebec has an assemblée nationale, a bibliotheque nationale, etc., yet this is a nominal nationalism, like the Cherokee or Navajo Nation.
Any study I might write using this comparison would have to examine First Nations relations with Quebec, and their colonial origins. French Canadians cherish the ideal of a "génie coloniale"--the idea that French colonists had greater sympathy and understanding toward native nations than the English did. There is a good deal of truth to this. French colonists did not try to claim land from the Indians the way the English did. Patricia Seed's American Pentimento makes an interesting argument about how English colonial law and ideology was all about seizing land rights from the Indians, whereas the Spanish and Portuguese claimed the labor and resources of the Indians, not the land. But sometimes the "génie coloniale" comes off sounding like an effort to assert common cause with the Indians against the English.
One good point I might pursue would be that the Durham report of 1840, following the patriot rebellions of 1837-38, treated the French much like Jacksonian policies treated the American Indians: as primitives without true culture or history, who would have to assimilate or perish in the face of a tide of Anglo-Saxon superiority.
Inscription à :
Articles (Atom)