Treaty Canoe Series

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Treaty Canoe Series

Treaty Canoe Series

Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, a document that established–for good and ill–the ongoing treaty relationship between the Crown and the Indigenous peoples in British North America, Canadian artist Alex McKay is coming to Kent to construct a UK edition of his artwork ‘Treaty Canoe’. In the wake of several key decades of development in Indigenous Rights protections through forums like the UN and the International Labour Organisation, and in light of the grassroots Indigenous Rights movement in Canada known as ‘Idle No More’ this work is both timely and significant in its exploration of the often fraught relationship between Indigenous peoples and settlers in North America. We invite people to interact with the project, talk to the artist, participate in transcribing the treaties that form the skin of the canoe, and reflect on Britain’s role both historically and today in Indigenous Rights.

Timetable of events

DateTime Event Location
7th October 201310am-2pm250th anniversary of the Royal ProclamationLearning Lab, The Beany
9th and 11th October 201312-2pmDrop-In sessionsThe Gulbenkain
Monday 14th October 2013 6pmColl Thrush, University of British ColumbiaGLT2
25th October 6pmLeanne HoweKLT1
30th October 6pmClosing EventKeynes Atrium

‘Drop-In’ sessions at the Beany Institute, Monday 7th October – 10am-2pm

‘Drop-in’ sessions will take place in the to the Learning Lab of the Beaney Institute in Canterbury. As part of the global ‘Idle No More Day of Action’ members of the public will be invited to learn about First Nations and Native American communities today and the legacy of treaties. They will also be invited to read, discuss, and transcribe a portion of a treaty to be used in the artwork.

‘Drop-In’ sessions in the Gulbenkain Cafe Bar, Wednesday 9th October and Friday 11th October – 12pm-2pm

An opportunity to find out more about the Treaty Canoe project and to read, discuss, and transcribe a portion of a treaty to be used in the artwork.

Treaty Canoe II construction begins in Keyens Foyer Monday 14th October

Visit Alex McKay in the Keynes Foyer to find out about the construction of the canoe and to participate.

“London Entangled: Indigenous Histories at/of the Heart of Empire” Coll Thrush, UBC, Monday 14th October GLT2 – 6pm

Coll

Image: London Calling copyright © America Meredith

Prof. Thrush’s talk will be introduced by Dr. Laura Peers (Pitt Rivers Museum and University of Oxford), who will also speak briefly about ‘Treaty Canoe II’ (www.treatycanoe.ca), construction of which will begin that day in Keynes.

Abstract

Urban and Indigenous histories have usually been treated as though they are mutually exclusive. Coll Thrush’s work, however, has argued that the two kinds of history are in fact mutually constitutive. In this presentation, Dr. Thrush will present material from his current book project, a history of London framed through the experiences of Indigenous people who travelled there, willingly or otherwise, from territories that became the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Stories of Inuit captives in the 1570s, Cherokee delegations in the 1760s, Hawaiian royals in the 1820s, and more – as well as the memory of these travellers in present-day communities – show the ways in which London is one ground of Indigenous history and settler colonialism.

About Coll Thrush

A graduate of Fairhaven College at Western Washington University and the University of Washington, Coll Thrush formerly served as historian for the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe in his hometown of Auburn, Washington. He is associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he teaches Indigenous, environmental, cultural, and world history and is part of a faculty working group on Indigenous classroom issues and decolonizing pedagogies.

Coll is the author of Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place, which won the 2007 Washington State Book Award for History/Biography, and co-editor with Colleen Boyd of Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American History & Culture. His article “City of the Changers: Indigenous People and the Transformation of Seattle’s Watersheds” was named Best Article of 2006 by the Urban History Association, and his article “Vancouver the Cannibal: Cuisine, Encounter, and the Dilemma of Difference on the Northwest Coast, 1774-1808” won the Robert F. Heizer prize for best article of 2011 from the American Society for Ethnohistory.

Professor Thrush is currently working on Indigenous London, which examines that city’s history through the experiences of Indigenous travelers – willing or otherwise – from territories that became the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Beginning in the fall of 2013, he will be a visiting fellow at the Institute for Historical Research of the University of London and the Eccles Centre Fellow in North American Studies at the British Library.

After the completion of Indigenous London in 2014, Coll will return to writing about the Northwest Coast of North America with a book project entitled SlaughterTown, a history-memoir examining trauma, memory, silence, and landscape in Coast Salish territories and his hometown of Auburn, Washington – formerly known as Slaughter.

LeAnne Howe – Reading, Friday 25th October, 6pm, KLT1

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The collected stories/essays in Choctalking on Other Realities, by Choctaw author LeAnne Howe, depict, with wry humor, the contradictions and absurdities that transpire in a life lived crossing cultures and borders.  The result is three parts memoir, one part absurdist fiction, and one-part marvelous realism.  The collection begins with Howe’s stint working in the bond business for a Wall Street firm as the only American Indian woman (and ‘out’ Democrat) in the company, then chronicles her subsequent travels, invited as an American Indian representative and guest speaker to indigenous gatherings and academic panels in Jordan, Jerusalem, Romania, and Japan.

Most importantly, the stories are framed by two theoretical essays on what Howe has named “tribalography.”  Here she explores the complex way memories travel in generations of Native storytellers, which culminates in an original literary contribution in how to read indigenous stories.  In his foreword, prominent Native American scholar Dean Rader – besides comparing Howe’s humor to Oklahomian Will Roger’s – writes, “I believe it [tribalography] is the most significant theory of American Indigenous writing to emerge in the last 20- years – maybe ever . . . It bridges the gaps between the most significant approaches to American Indian Studies –nationalism, sovereignty, issues of land and place, history and culture.”

About the LeAnne Howe

LeAnne Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. In December 2012, she received a USA Ford Fellowship from the United States Artists organization of $50,000 for research for her forthcoming novel Memoir of a Choctaw in the Arab Revolts, 1917, 2011.  She was honored in 2012 with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas.  Her fiction has appeared in literary journals and has been translated in France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Her first novel, Shell Shaker, received an American Book Award in 2002 from the Before Columbus Foundation. Equinoxes Rouge, the French translation, was the 2004 finalist for Prix Medici Estranger, one of France’s top literary awards.  Evidence of Red, Salt Publishing, 2005, won an Oklahoma Book Award.  As a 2010-2011 William J. Fulbright Scholar, LeAnne Howe lived in Amman, Jordan and taught at the University of Jordan.  She’s currently Professor of American Indian Studies, English and Theatre at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Treaty Canoe Launch Event – Wednesday 30th October, 6pm, Keynes Foyer

Bringing the series of events to a close this will be an opportunity to speak to Alex and reflect on the month of activities. Click here for the poster of the event.