The Humber is a Haunting: Settler Deathscapes, Indigenous Spectres, and the Memorialisation of a Canadian Heritage River

Abstract

This paper argues that state‐sponsored memorialisation is a critical enterprise in creating and maintaining a national cultural identity that softens or erases the ongoing process of death‐making and dispossession wrought by settlers on the land and Indigenous peoples. Drawing on the work of Toronto‐based Cree scholar Karyn Recollet, I further argue that this death‐making is not a given. Indigenous peoples assert their presence and relationships to the Humber River and its adjacent lifeforces alongside and in opposition to official memorialising projects. The 20th anniversary of the Humber River’s designation as a Canada Heritage River in 2019, the first in the era of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action, begs the question as to the role memorial and commemoration ceremonies play in the coalescence of a particular settler colonial story/myth that stabilises geographies as “memorial spaces” while simultaneously narrating Indigenous peoples through erasure, assimilation, and as historical ghosts.

Ancestral Practices for Water and Land Management: Experiences in a Latin American Indigenous Reserve

“…The tools used for information analysis were the following: (i) Specialized software Atlas Ti V.6.0 to analyze of social research data [44] and (ii) a matrix of units and categories of analysis [45]. To fulfill of the objectives of this study, the following variables of analysis were defined in relation to water and land management: (i) stories [46] on myths associated with cultural practices; (ii) rituals, offerings, and sacred places [47]; (iii) community habits and customs [48]; (iv) needs met [49] by water and land in the community; (v) factors of change and loss of ancestral knowledge [50].…”

Longing as Method: A Rant on Yearnings for Our World, Academia, and Utopian Futurities Beyond Liberalism(s)

“…A world where the ongoing processes of deathmaking (Fortier, 2021), dispossession, and wastelanding continue on stolen lands rendering environments and bodies “pollutable,” (Voyles, 2015, p. 9) as extractable resources—humans as inhuman extractable matter -for-profit. A world where accumulating settler deathscapes (Barker, 2018) obscure lines between the living and the dead, conferring peoples and lands as ghosts (Razack, 2012) or hauntings (Dean, 2010); the “unmaking of subjects,” the biopolitical establishment of “non-beings” (Yusoff, 2018, p. 5).…”

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“…Craig Fortier (2021), in his study of the politics surrounding the commemoration of Humber River history, argues that commemoration, especially when sponsored by the colonial state, is an enterprise that plays an important role in maintaining a local and national identity that softens or erases the ongoing processes of dispossession and orchestration of death that comes with the presence of the settlers (2). In a social environment unfavorable to Indigenous peoples, the lack of tangible results from their own dialogues can reinforce the idea that Indigenous peoples are not "proactive."…”