In this dissertation, I chart the conflicting and shifting
assertions of meaning for Northwest Coast objects in Canada
through a series of representational projects implemented between
1922 and 1961, beginning in January 1922, with the prosecution by
the Department of Indian Affairs of participants in the Cranmer
potlatch. The intersection between the concept of the 'fatal
impact' or death of First Nations societies under European
modernization, federal assimilationist policies, the government's
exercise of disciplinary control, and the expansion of public
museum collections was explicitly illustrated when the Lekwiltok,
Mamalillikulla, and the Nimpkish peoples surrendered over
seventeen cases of ceremonial objects in exchange for suspended
sentences for violating the potlatch ban.
The dissertation concludes by examining the Gitanyow
agreement, engineered between 1958 and 1961, in which Gitanyow
laws, histories and territories would be published by the
government of British Columbia in exchange for the removal and
replication of four crest poles. The raising of the poles'
replicas in 1961 coincided with Canadian parliament's approval of
the enfranchisement of First Nations people, the theoretical end
to the era of assimilation in Canada.
These events bookend a period in which representation
continued to be entwined with politica and social conditions
created by the Indian Act that depended on promulgating views
that First Nations lifeways were vanishing. However, production
of Northwest Coast objects retained significance throughout this
period, such objects playing complex and multifaceted roles. Because of the symbolic and financial value many Euro-Canadians
attached to First Nations objects, "art" proved an avenue for
communicating First Nations-related social, political and
economic issues.
The objects produced or displayed between 1922 and 1961
operated through the projects I describe in the intertwined
transformative processes of identity construction and boundary
marking among individual First Nations groups and within Canadian
national identity. Through these projects, important steps were
taken in formulating two major characteristics of the post-1960
period: 1. a burgeoning market in Northwest Coast objects
constructed as "traditional;" and 2. First Nations activism for
land claims and self-determination using "tradition" and "art" as
a platform in activism for land claims and self-determination. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/9487 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Hawker, Ronald W. |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 39712321 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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