The iconic north: cultural constructions of Aboriginal life in postwar Canada

Abstract

"From 19th century exploration narratives to twentieth century screenings of Nanook of the North, Canada's far North has always commanded a strong fascination, tinged with romanticism and exoticism, for non-Aboriginal peoples. Contact Zones explores a range of Canadian textual and visual depictions of northern Aboriginal life, gender and family relations in the post-World War II period, asking how and why certain images and understandings of Aboriginal life came to dominate, while others were marginalized or suppressed. A critical analysis of the dominant and competing ideological assumptions about northern Aboriginal peoples that circulated through Canadian culture is particularly important for the post-World War II period, as the far North was increasingly occupied by Euro-Canadians, targeted as frontier of economic development, and Aboriginal lives were managed far more intensely by the state than ever before. Images of the Indigenous North were also integral to nation-building efforts which attempted to integrate Aboriginal peoples into an expanded version of Canadian history and citizenship, though still on terms that were ultimately racialized, gendered, and colonial. The resilient and changing constructions of Northern Aboriginal life are explored in Contact Zones through an analysis of television and documentary film, as well as textual sources such as women's travel narratives, popular anthropology and history, fictional writing, and northern testimony from the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. Grounded in archival and documentary research, and informed by interdisciplinary writing on culture, Contact Zones argues that these forms of cultural production must be seen as both instruments and reflections of colonial consolidation. Images of the Aboriginal North tell us more about the viewer than the viewed, yet they still illuminate how the evolving relations of colonial encounter were understood, rationalized, and legitimized. Moreover, the cultural politics of the postwar period left an important legacy for the present, and thus continue to have an impact on Aboriginal lives in the North."--