It doesn’t take much prodding to convince a student of history that history matters. That our actions in the past, our long-standing conceptual frameworks, and ideas about our place within historical narratives, inform our lives in the present. Neither is it difficult to see the value of historical knowledge in understanding the roots inequality and injustice in contemporary society.
It is not, however, enough to acknowledge the importance of historical knowledge; historians and collaborators must also consider the how, the why, and the ‘to what end?’ of their efforts to raise historical consciousness.
For this week’s topic, Katie, Jesse and I have reflected on the importance of historical knowledge in understanding violence against Indigenous women in Canada (MMIW) as well as explored different ways to communicate both a history of marginalization and a contemporary crisis of injustice. In particular, as English and cultural studies professor Amber Dean explored with the the Canadian Museum of Human Rights as well as the work of artists Pamela Masik and Rebecca Belmore[1], I want to explore various “modes of address”[2] in order to consider the impact of particular methodologies and reflect on how institutions, artists, and filmmakers can foster transformative relationships and positive outcomes of healing.
What History?
Before a consideration of how to convey historical knowledge it is important to briefly reflect on what history needs to be told. Jesse in his post this week (Women and the Indian Act) already explored how the implementation of the Indian Act in 1876 pushed Indigenous women to the margins of community and placed them in positions of vulnerability. Another important element to remember is the endurance of stereotypical images of Indigenous women rooted in colonial ideology. Two of the most persistent of these imaginings are the “Indian Princess” or the “squaw,” each hypersexualized constructions of Indigenous women that wrongly portray them as primitive and open to conquest or as unworthy of the respect afforded to their Euro-Canadian counterparts.[3] Throughout the late 19th and into the 20th century, such stereotypes remained in public consciousness for the usefulness to colonial projects. If Indigenous women were the “dissolute, dangerous, and sinister”[4] beings that colonial imaginings purported them to be then Euro-Canadian incursion into Indigenous life and land could not only be justified but encouraged. Far from being “old news,” scholar Kristen Gilchrist has demonstrated how these perceptions of the inferiority of Indigenous women continue to manifest themselves in violent action and societal apathy through disproportionate rates of missing and murdered Indigenous women and value-laden judgements of which victims are “newsworthy.”[5] (see it here) That these stereotypes that have lingered and seem to soften societal outrage to MMIW creates an important space for historical knowledge to offer crucial insights into manifestations and persistence of injustice today
Modes of Address
In her thoughtful and compelling article, “The CMHR and the Ongoing Crisis of Murdered or Missing Indigenous Women: Do Museums Have a Responsibility to Care?”( See it here) scholar Amber Dean asked “could museums offer a public space through which to stage encounters with this particular form of difficult knowledge [on-going colonial violence] that might better support and encourage people to resist such quick translations to the more lovely and familiar versions [colonialism as benevolent betterment]?”[6] In her attempt to answer this question, Dean examined artist Pamela Masik’s work, The Forgotten, a project that consisted of “enormous 8 foot by 10 foot portraits of sixty-nine women murdered or reported missing for Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside,”[7] (More about the show) In her analysis, Dean described how The Forgotten rested on the assumption that violence persists in Canadian society as a result of a largely ignorant public. Therefore, the pieces of art were meant to viscerally and emotionally shock an uniformed or dismissive public into action. Dean, however, questioned the efficacy of such a project to create sustained and meaningful conversations. Instead, she argued that violence persists against Indigenous women not because of ignorance of violence but rather, “a normalization of violence against bodies gendered and racialized in particular ways […] that cultivates indifference.”[8] If racialized imaginings truly are at the roots of indifference, and I would argue they are, a meaningful dismantlement of systems of violence requires consciousness of how historical processes and visualizations have placed Indigenous women in positions of increased vulnerability in Canadian society.
“What is it about numbers?” Christine Welsh’s Finding Dawn
From the mid-twentieth century’s cowboys and Indians films of Hollywood to Disney’s 1995 rendition of Pocahontas, film has and continues to serve as a means to sustain false constructions and damaging representations of Indigenous people to North America; a reality that scholar Keristin Knopf described as an “array of dehumanizing, humiliating and romanticizing stereotypes.”[9] The medium itself, however, remains a tool for expression of both the colonizer and the colonized. Métis filmmaker Christine Welsh’s Finding Dawn is a potent example of the ability of filmmakers to use the medium to raise awareness of the experience of Indigenous people with their own voices. In the context of this week’s thematic focus on violence against Indigenous women, Welsh offers a mode of address that shares a subject matter with The Forgotten, the crisis of MMIW, but her medium and methodological choices offer the viewer of different experience and space of engagement.
In Canada it is estimated that almost 1,200 Indigenous women have disappeared over the past thirty years.[10] In response to the apathy that has greeted shockingly high numbers of missing Indigenous women, at least until recently, the film’s opening scene poses a question that resonates throughout the whole piece, “what is it about numbers?” What is is about numbers that fails to compel outrage and action? As an attempt to engage Canadians to consider the plight of Indigenous women, Christine Welsh puts human face to the issue. Finding Dawn (2006)[11] is a documentary that focuses of the case of Dawn Crey, one of sixty women who have disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. As a member of the Sto:lo First Nation, Dawn’s story is one part of a larger and long lasting experience for Indigenous women who, the film aptly demonstrates, “have been living with the effects of colonial violence for generations.” The slow-moving pace of the film facilitates a space where the viewer can reflect as they are presented with difficult knowledge. In addition to the stories of individual women who have gone missing and the families they have left behind, audiences come to learn about the histories colonization that include the dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ land since the arrival of Europeans, loss of traditional economy, and the persistence of the stereotypes, the effects of which continue into the present. In fact, at one point in the film, it is suggested that at one point or another every Indigenous woman has been called a “squaw.” The content of the film then not only illuminates contemporary patterns of violence but it also informs audiences of how we got there as it seeks to answer a key question for Dawn, and so many women like her, of “how did we lose her?”
The strength of Finding Dawn is not only found in the film’s critical assessment of the continued impact of colonialism in contemporary society but is also in its exploration of the strength of families and Indigenous communities who continue to endure the suffering of these loses and call others to action. For example, the film introduces audiences to Professor Janice Acoose who survived the streets of Regina and now is an passionate advocate and educator as well as the mother of Ramona Wilson who organizes an annual memorial walk along the infamous Highway of Tears to call attention to an ongoing crisis and remember her lost daughter. While it is important that these advocates be much celebrated for their efforts, the film continues to remind its viewers that “stopping the violence is everyone’s responsibility.”
From Address to Redress
Through an examination of different modes of address for the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women, it is clear that knowledge of histories of colonialism and the marginalization of Indigenous women is critical to mitigating the violence perpetrated against Indigenous communities. While the outcome of a show like Pamela Masik’s The Forgotten and Christie Welsh’s Finding Dawn may use different means and have different targets of action, both are a sincere attempt to engage the wider Canadian community in a discussion about an issue that should be important to all of us. Such efforts also encourage others to reflect on how diverse sectors of society can support these goals. For instance, perhaps this aim of engagement is where institutions like universities and museums can play a role; through the creation of spaces that place public and performance in dialogue with one another in environments that support the confluence of knowledge, empathy, and action for social justice.
See the trailer for Finding Dawn
https://www.nfb.ca/film/finding_dawn/embed/player
Finding Dawn by Christine Welsh, National Film Board of Canada
[1] Amber Dean, “The CMHR and the Ongoing Crisis of Murdered or Missing Indigenous Women: Do Museums Have a Responsibility to Care?” The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies Vol 37 (2015): 37-165
[2] Both Amber Dean and my own work draws on the concept of “mode of address” as explored by Elizabeth Ellsworth in her book, Teaching Positions: Difference, Pedagogy and the Power of Address (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997).
[3] Gail Guthrie Valaskakis, “Sacajawea and Her Sisters: Images and Native Women,” The Journal of Native Education. Vol 23:1 (1999): 117-136. See also Jean Barman, “Taming Aboriginal Sexuality: Gender, Power, and Race in British Columbia, 1850-1900,” in In the Days of Our Grandmothers: A Reader in Aboriginal Women’s History in Canada, ed. By Mary-Ellen Kelm and Lorna Townsend, 270-300 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).
[4] Sarah Carter, “Categories and Terrains of Exclusion: Constructing the ‘Indian Woman’ in the Early Settlement Era in Western Canada,” in In the Days of Our Grandmothers: A Reader in Aboriginal Women’s History in Canada, ed. Mary Ellen-Kelm and Lorna Townsend, 146-169 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006): 147.
[5] Kirsten Gilchrist, “’Newsworthy’ Victims?” Feminist Media Studies Vol 10:4 (2010): 373-390.
[6] Dean, 149.
[7] Ibid., 152.
[8] Ibid., 154.
[9] Keristin Knopf, Decolonizing the Lens of Power: Indigenous Film in North America, (New York, Rodopi, 2008): xi.
[10]Tim Fontaine, “New Homicide Statistics No Surprise to Indigenous Women’s Advocate,” CBC News, Date accessed April 6th 2016. http://www.dal.ca/news/2016/03/08/rcmp-taps-dal-prof-for-committee-on-missing-and-murdered-indigen.html
[11] Finding Dawn, directed by Christie Welsh (2006) National Film Board of Canada. https://www.nfb.ca/film/finding_dawn/
History Performs 
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