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Image from the Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park website.

Professor Ron Rudin has recently launched a new website: Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park. The website relates a story from the east coast of New Brunswick, where in the late 1960s more than 1200
people (mostly Acadians) were removed from their lands so that nature could be displayed to park visitors without the distraction of a human presence.

The Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park project is designed to return the residents’ voices to their lands by way of 26 video portraits that are embedded into the map that was created for their removal. Many of the interviews were done on the lands from which the residents were removed over 40 years ago, and the mobile version of the website (available at the same URL) makes it possible to hear these stories while on the same lands.

To read more about the Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park project click here.

Image from the Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park website.

Professeur Rudin a également écrit une version en français pour Qu’est-ce qui se passe.

In 1969 the Canadian and New Brunswick governments agreed to create Kouchibouguac National Park along the east coast of the province. At the time, establishment of a national park required removing the people who resided there, in the belief that nature should be exhibited to visitors without signs of any human presence. Over 1200 individuals, 260 families living in seven separate communities, were uprooted, having been told that their lives were worthless and that they could only be helped by being forced to move. While these individuals were far from wealthy, they had built lives that they valued, based upon the resources of the region–the forests, the land, and especially the waters that they fished. The government statistics that led to the conclusion that they were impoverished could not take into account either the fish and farm products that they consumed or the barter that often took place between families. Conveniently written off as worthless, the residents were offered little compensation and sent off to fend for themselves elsewhere.

But government officials had not taken into account how this particular case of forced removal would be viewed by the residents, most of whom were Acadians, a people with a strong memory of having been removed once before. This memory of the grand dérangement and the sense that the creation of Kouchibouguac constituted “une deuxième déportation” helped fuel large-scale resistance that resulted in the park being shut down on several occasion. As for the leader of the resistance, Jackie Vautour, he refused to leave his land, remaining there until his house was bulldozed in 1976, only to return two years later, where he remains — a squatter — to this day.

Parks Canada drew from its experience at Kouchibouguac that there were better ways of creating new parks, and so the practice of forced removal came to an end. Nevertheless, the Kouchibouguac story remains important for Acadians, whose artists have produced novels, music, poetry, sculpture, paintings, and theatre inspired by this experience of removal and resistance. The story has also been told by way of two documentary films: Kouchibouguac (1979) and Kouchibouguac: L’histoire de Jackie Vautour et des expropriés (2006).

Through these various tellings of the Kouchibouguac saga, it became understood as a story of resistance. And the opponents to the creation of the park became symbols of a greater assertiveness among Acadians who were experiencing their own révolution tranquille at the time. However, in this emphasis upon the dramatic conflict between aggrieved residents and government officials, the experience of the vast majority of the expropriés was lost. While the story of resistance was part of what happened at Kouchibouguac, there was also the experience of most families which simply and quietly left their lands to create new lives, often within kilometres of the borders of the park. In collaboration with the Montreal-based multimedia producer Philip Lichti, I have developed the website Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park to tell a wide range of stories inspired by the experiences of the residents.

The central feature of the site is the presentation of 26 video portraits drawn from interviews with former residents, who often told their stories while standing on the lands where they once lived, an experience that was not always easy for them. Visitors to the site are encouraged to interact with the map that was created at the time of the expropriation to facilitate the process. Here, however, the map is used as a navigational device to return the voices of the residents to their lands, as visitors are encouraged to click on those properties for which there are stories to be seen and heard. The expropriation map has been superimposed on the current landscape so that visitors can learn about the impact of the park upon both the former residents and the land itself.

Along the way, visitors will encounter stories that span the full spectrum of human emotions. There were residents who told us stories, still filled with anger. Take, for instance, the case of Norma Doucet who told us how her father had served in World War II only to return and have his land taken away: “Papa, he’d gone to war to save his country… but… when he came back, he wanted to raise his family and he says he was pushed out to go and live somewhere else … They felt their freedom had been taken from them. Like prisoners.” Others reflected on lives of great value that had been destroyed. Norma Doucet’s brother Félix observed: ” We had everything. It was a good life.” Still others appreciated the jobs that came from the park. Howard Vautour observed: ” I cannot say anything bad about it … myself … because I worked in the park since 1980. Most of my family did … I think about where I would be today if it hadn’t been for the park … probably be in the United States or Alberta.”

But government officials had not taken into account how this particular case of forced removal would be viewed by the residents, most of whom were Acadians, a people with a strong memory of having been removed once before. This memory of the grand dérangement and the sense that the creation of Kouchibouguac constituted “une deuxième déportation” helped fuel large-scale resistance that resulted in the park being shut down on several occasion. As for the leader of the resistance, Jackie Vautour, he refused to leave his land, remaining there until his house was bulldozed in 1976, only to return two years later, where he remains — a squatter — to this day.

Parks Canada drew from its experience at Kouchibouguac that there were better ways of creating new parks, and so the practice of forced removal came to an end. Nevertheless, the Kouchibouguac story remains important for Acadians, whose artists have produced novels, music, poetry, sculpture, paintings, and theatre inspired by this experience of removal and resistance. The story has also been told by way of two documentary films: Kouchibouguac (1979) and Kouchibouguac: L’histoire de Jackie Vautour et des expropriés (2006).

Through these various tellings of the Kouchibouguac saga, it became understood as a story of resistance. And the opponents to the creation of the park became symbols of a greater assertiveness among Acadians who were experiencing their own révolution tranquille at the time. However, in this emphasis upon the dramatic conflict between aggrieved residents and government officials, the experience of the vast majority of the expropriés was lost. While the story of resistance was part of what happened at Kouchibouguac, there was also the experience of most families which simply and quietly left their lands to create new lives, often within kilometres of the borders of the park. In collaboration with the Montreal-based multimedia producer Philip Lichti, I have developed the website Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park to tell a wide range of stories inspired by the experiences of the residents.

The central feature of the site is the presentation of 26 video portraits drawn from interviews with former residents, who often told their stories while standing on the lands where they once lived, an experience that was not always easy for them. Visitors to the site are encouraged to interact with the map that was created at the time of the expropriation to facilitate the process. Here, however, the map is used as a navigational device to return the voices of the residents to their lands, as visitors are encouraged to click on those properties for which there are stories to be seen and heard. The expropriation map has been superimposed on the current landscape so that visitors can learn about the impact of the park upon both the former residents and the land itself.

Along the way, visitors will encounter stories that span the full spectrum of human emotions. There were residents who told us stories, still filled with anger. Take, for instance, the case of Norma Doucet who told us how her father had served in World War II only to return and have his land taken away: “Papa, he’d gone to war to save his country… but… when he came back, he wanted to raise his family and he says he was pushed out to go and live somewhere else … They felt their freedom had been taken from them. Like prisoners.” Others reflected on lives of great value that had been destroyed. Norma Doucet’s brother Félix observed: ” We had everything. It was a good life.” Still others appreciated the jobs that came from the park. Howard Vautour observed: ” I cannot say anything bad about it … myself … because I worked in the park since 1980. Most of my family did … I think about where I would be today if it hadn’t been for the park … probably be in the United States or Alberta.”

But government officials had not taken into account how this particular case of forced removal would be viewed by the residents, most of whom were Acadians, a people with a strong memory of having been removed once before. This memory of the grand dérangement and the sense that the creation of Kouchibouguac constituted “une deuxième déportation” helped fuel large-scale resistance that resulted in the park being shut down on several occasion. As for the leader of the resistance, Jackie Vautour, he refused to leave his land, remaining there until his house was bulldozed in 1976, only to return two years later, where he remains — a squatter — to this day.

Parks Canada drew from its experience at Kouchibouguac that there were better ways of creating new parks, and so the practice of forced removal came to an end. Nevertheless, the Kouchibouguac story remains important for Acadians, whose artists have produced novels, music, poetry, sculpture, paintings, and theatre inspired by this experience of removal and resistance. The story has also been told by way of two documentary films: Kouchibouguac (1979) and Kouchibouguac: L’histoire de Jackie Vautour et des expropriés (2006).

Through these various tellings of the Kouchibouguac saga, it became understood as a story of resistance. And the opponents to the creation of the park became symbols of a greater assertiveness among Acadians who were experiencing their own révolution tranquille at the time. However, in this emphasis upon the dramatic conflict between aggrieved residents and government officials, the experience of the vast majority of the expropriés was lost. While the story of resistance was part of what happened at Kouchibouguac, there was also the experience of most families which simply and quietly left their lands to create new lives, often within kilometres of the borders of the park. In collaboration with the Montreal-based multimedia producer Philip Lichti, I have developed the website Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park to tell a wide range of stories inspired by the experiences of the residents.

The central feature of the site is the presentation of 26 video portraits drawn from interviews with former residents, who often told their stories while standing on the lands where they once lived, an experience that was not always easy for them. Visitors to the site are encouraged to interact with the map that was created at the time of the expropriation to facilitate the process. Here, however, the map is used as a navigational device to return the voices of the residents to their lands, as visitors are encouraged to click on those properties for which there are stories to be seen and heard. The expropriation map has been superimposed on the current landscape so that visitors can learn about the impact of the park upon both the former residents and the land itself.

Along the way, visitors will encounter stories that span the full spectrum of human emotions. There were residents who told us stories, still filled with anger. Take, for instance, the case of Norma Doucet who told us how her father had served in World War II only to return and have his land taken away: “Papa, he’d gone to war to save his country… but… when he came back, he wanted to raise his family and he says he was pushed out to go and live somewhere else … They felt their freedom had been taken from them. Like prisoners.” Others reflected on lives of great value that had been destroyed. Norma Doucet’s brother Félix observed: ” We had everything. It was a good life.” Still others appreciated the jobs that came from the park. Howard Vautour observed: ” I cannot say anything bad about it … myself … because I worked in the park since 1980. Most of my family did … I think about where I would be today if it hadn’t been for the park … probably be in the United States or Alberta.”

Post by Ronald Rudin.

*This post was originally published on The Otter, a Network in Canadian History and Environment (NICHE) Blog.

Banting Postdoctoral fellow Monica Eileen Patterson has just signed a
on for a tenure-track position in Child Studies at Carleton University beginning in 2014.

Carleton has allowed her to defer her start date for a year in order
to complete her Banting tenure here at CEREV.

CEREV is so glad Monica’s staying in Canada!

CEREV
LB 671.10, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd W.
Montreal, QC

Co-sponsored by CEREV, The Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, and the Chaire de Recherche du Canada en mondialisation, citoyenneté er démocratie, QUAM.

The art exhibition CounterMemories highlights the Montreal based
immigrant artists Mona Sharma and Khadija Baker in the exhibition from
Dr. Jill Strauss‘ Fulbright project in Montreal this year. The artists, one Kurdish Syrian and the other South Asian, use their art to raise issues
about current conflicts, displacement, and memories of marginalized
voices.

For this exhibition, Khadija Baker has created an installation
and performance on the ongoing Syrian civil war. Mona Sharma uses
narratives for this ongoing series of graphic drawings that examine
various historical and cultural contexts where the definition of justice
has been stretched.

Montreal-based writer Amber Berson shares her reflections on the workshop titled “The Form of Violence / The Form of Exhibition” presented by Liz Park for Invisible Violence at CEREV (The Centre for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence) at Concordia University on February 27.

“In my time with CEREV (The Centre for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence), I have had the privilege of working with or learning about a wide range of projects dealing with curatorial methods for difficult knowledge. Few, however, have resounded as deeply for me as Liz Park’s Invisible Violence has. Her project is, as its title suggests, about invisible violence, and while its subject matter is of the most difficult type, the artworks that make up the publication neither shock nor ease the viewer. Rather, the goal of the project – to promote intimate contemplation on the subject of mass, as well as personal, violence – is achieved through subtlety and discretion.”

To read Amber’s full reflection, click here.

April 26-27, 2013

Humanities PhD Graduate Student Conference
Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture
Concordia University, Montréal, Canada

Pressing [against] Methods invites graduate and post-doctoral students from all disciplines in the social sciences, fine arts and liberal arts to present on the issue of methods. Presentations can take the form of traditional research papers, as well as artistic, multi-disciplinary and multi-format presentations. Presenters are encouraged to think about how they define, combine, employ, reject, subvert and create methods in their own work. Presenters can address issues related to ethics, politics, epistemology, creativity, disciplinarity, funding, pedagogy, etc.

The conference program is now available here.

This conference will also include opportunities for group discussions on methods, including conversations on methodological pedagogy in graduate programs, research ethics, understanding interdisciplinarity, research-creation, and contemplating the future of research in the university. We encourage presenters who are interested in contributing to these discussions to submit. All participants are encouraged to be creative in their topic selection and choice of presentation style, though priority will be given to proposals most closely associated with the topic of methods.

Interested individuals can submit proposals of 300 words or less in either English or French. Proposals can include a list of up to five key words that define their project. Applicants should also include a brief biography of 100 words or less, which outlines their research areas. Proposals for panel discussions and workshop sessions are also encouraged.

The deadline for submission is March 1, 2013 at midnight. Applications can be sent to humanities.phd@gmail.com

CANCELLED

April 24th, 2013 – 6pm

H-1120 Hall Building – Concordia University (1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West MTL, QC, H3G 1M8)

Co-sponsored by: CEREV & the Sociology-Anthropology Department
 

This lecture uses two senses of the concept and practice of ‘prototype’ in its usual industry and design contexts to explore several experimental strategies in the pursuit and production of ethnographic research in its anthropological tradition. It is argued that the latter tradition of research requires new forms that impinge not so much on its established modes of scholarly communication—the article, the monograph—but on how it establishes the conditions of fieldwork in contemporary multi-sited spaces of complex assemblages and big projects through which ethnography operates and defines its objects of study.

These forms are conceived as ‘third spaces’, materialized as staged occasions, studios, labs, established alongside the traditional serendipitous path of fieldwork, and involving explicit intellectual partnerships with persons who might otherwise be viewed as facilitators or subjects of research. These third spaces produce prototypes as accessible alternative products of contemporary ethnographic experiments. The author’s recent experiments with collaborative research at the World Trade Organization are explored in these terms.

George E. Marcus is Chancellor’s Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, where he is director of the Center for Ethnography. He is co-editor of Fieldwork Is Not What It Used To Be (2009), and co-author of Designs For an Anthropology of the Contemporary (2008).

To find out more about “This Situation” click here.

February 28 marked the first day of a three-day symposium on contemporary Indigenous film, media arts and exhibitionary practice, TRANSMISSIONS: Sharing Indigenous Knowledge and Histories in the Digital Era. Through workshops, a film screening, an interactive art installation and a public symposium, Concordia students and faculty joined the Canadian Aboriginal creative and intellectual community in a dialogue on sharing Indigenous knowledge and histories in the digital era. This workshop was a production of Concordia’s CEREV lab, organized by Department of Art History faculty member and CEREV affiliate Heather Igloliorte, and generously sponsored by CEREV, the Department of Art History, the Faculty of Fine Arts, the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, the Inuit Art Research Group, and AbTec (Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace).

On Thursday, February 28, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril presented a workshop on her work in progress, Angry Inuk in which she examines how the impact of the global animal rights movement and the boycott of seal products on the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic, who depend on the seal for food and income.

On Friday March 1, Ruth Phillips gave a talk titled Museum Utopias, Museum Dystopias: The Dawning of the Age of Hybridity and the Canadian Museum of History in which she discussed changes in the museum world, and the need for promoting hybridity by providing new kinds of contexts in exhibitions, supporting collaborative processes, and blurring the typologies of the museum systems. Phillips discussed different approaches by museums to decolonize museum practices and accepting multiple alternative perspectives.

Photo by Dayna Danger

Following the Phillips’ discussion, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril presented her documentary Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos in which she documented her personal journey to revive the ancient tradition of Inuit face and body tattooing. The film culminated with her decision to get her own traditional tattoos. For the artist, exploring these aspects of Inuit culture was a part of a healing process, as well as a continuation of her culture.

At six in the evening, Jordan Bennett presented his installation Skull Stories. In his interactive sculpture, Bennett used plastic casts of four animal skulls – bear, coyote, rabbit, and beaver – with USB ports that initiated a short film related to each animal when plugged in. There was an interesting connecting between Bennett’s work and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, because while each artist commented on the importance of the connection to the land and its animals, Bennett’s sculpture asks the visitors to literally connect with the animals by plugging in a cord into each skull in order to access the knowledge each animal possesses.

On Saturday March 2, Heather Igloliorte welcomed all speakers and guests at 9am. The symposium got underway with the first panel discussion entitled Current and Continuous: Indigenous Knowledge and High-Tech Media Arts moderated by Amber Berson. Jason Edward Lewis, Skawennati and Scott Benesiinaabandan talked of the importance of collaboration and community connections. The three speakers stressed the importance of educating Aboriginal people in digital media production, as a way of telling old stories with new media and as an expression of the continuity of culture.

The second panel was titled A New Language: Creating and Exhibiting Indigenous Visual Culture in the Digital Era, moderated by Carla Taunton. Ryan Rice, Jordan Bennett and Steven Loft discussed new media as the language for preserving traditions and languages, and the need for Aboriginal artists, curators and writers to reclaim and rewrite their stories.

After a lunch break, the symposium resumed with the third panel, Indigenous Rights and Activism: Museums, Film and Media Arts, moderated by Monica Patterson. Tricia Logan (http://humanrightsmuseum.ca/home), Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and Julie Nagam stressed the need to decolonize the way Indigenous peoples are seen and presented in galleries and museums, and to move beyond the binaries of traditional versus contemporary, colonized versus colonizer, in order to move towards an acceptance of multiple worldviews and beliefs.

Photo by Dayna Danger

The final panel, Indigenizing the Archive: The Aboriginal Art History Project, was hosted by the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective. Sherry Farrell Racette, Jason Baerg, Cathy Mattes, Guy Sioui-Durand and Dayna Danger discussed the necessity of building an Aboriginal art archive that is not modelled on the Western paradigm of the linear progression of ‘genius’, the need for interaction and collaboration, and moving beyond thinking of the archive as a physical space. TRANSMISSIONS explored the interface of Indigenous knowledge and oral history with digital technologies, experimental museology, and new communicative forms in twenty-first century exhibition and artistic practice.

Post By Zofia Krivdova

Photo by Dayna Danger