Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes

Art, Heritage, and Settler Colonial Studies

Our assessment of works by Decter, Hoàng Nguyễn, and Monnet foregrounds the complexities of Canada's settler society. This study probes topics including art, heritage, and nationalism, and is located at the intersection of several disciplines. Accordingly, we ground our discussion in three main bodies of literature: settler colonialism, critical heritage studies, and art activism. Through these fields, we advance our argument for the ways in which art practice can activate concepts of Indigenous sovereignty and settler responsibility, contributing to a critical examination of [End Page 311] reconciliation. Our analysis of the works and the ongoing contributions made by artists toward decolonizing efforts is rooted in our shared commitment to activate strong critique of settler colonialism and to make visible the processes that maintain inequities rooted in neo-liberal white supremacy. Fundamentally, Canada is a project of colonial amnesia that requires ongoing platforms to perpetuate nationalist narratives and erasures (McKay 1998). Heritage has played a key role in the ongoing systematic erasure of Indigenous lived experience, sovereignty, and cultural autonomy as well as colonial violence, genocide, and assimilist legislations such as IRS. For these reasons, Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) identifies remembrance as one of the central principles of decolonizing projects for Indigenous communities. We posit that art plays an essential role in activating sites from which to bear witness to histories, memories, and stories from multiple perspectives. This is significant, since under settler colonialism settler's memories and ideologies become the history and foundations upon which a country, such as Canada, is established (Tuck and Ree 2013, 642). To that end, our discussions here are informed by both leading Indigenous scholars and scholars of settler colonialism, and they are guided by principles laid out by Chickasaw scholar Jodi Byrd, who asserts that "Indigenous peoples must be central to any theorizations of the conditions of post-coloniality, empire, and the death dealing regimes that arise out of Indigenous land. We are long-memoried peoples, and we remember what happened the last time the world was flat" (2011, xiv).

Scholarship has firmly established settler colonialism as a distinct formation from colonialism.⁶ Indigenous scholars Glen Coulthard (Dene) and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) argue that settler colonialism dispossesses Indigenous peoples and lands by forcefully transforming forms of life into forms of property (2016, 251). Furthermore, Lorenzo Veracini explains, "settler colonialism constitutes a circumstance where the colonising effort is exercised from within the bounds of a settler colonising political entity, [whereas] colonialism is driven by an expanding metropole that remains permanently distinct from it" (2010, 6). Through immigration and repopulation, settlers' claims to the land become naturalized, eliding Indigenous land claims. Speaking to this dynamic between Indigenous and settler communities, Veracini explains the shift from colonizer to settler that occurs in settler colonialism: "Colonisers cease being colonisers if and when they become the majority of the population. Conversely, and even more perplexingly, Indigenous people only need to become a minority in order to cease being colonized" (5). Rather than a reduction of colonialism, Veracini argues that this shift, which naturalizes settlers' legitimacy, is in fact a process that further solidifies colonial structures. "Settler independence constitutes an acceleration," he explains, "not a discontinuation or diminution, of colonial practices. I define this circumstance as deep colonizing: [End Page 312] a situation in which the very attempt to bring forward the supersession of colonial practices actually entrenches their operation" (2011, 172).

Addressing the dynamics of settler states in North America, Mackey employs the term settled expectations to underscore the entrenched and naturalized entitlement to land created by legal, institutional, and cultural processes (2016, 8). This privileged certainty that the state or Crown has justified authority over seized and occupied lands results in what Mackey identifies as "fantasies of entitlement" (10). More importantly, however, these claims affect a clear and "repeated denial of Indigenous sovereignty" (11). Veracini terms this naturalization of settler presence the "resilience of settler colonialism," and affirms Mackey's position that it does continual damage to Indigenous communities, while buttressing the state's claims to land (Veracini 2010, 95).⁹ The connection between colonialism and settler colonialism is obscured by the emphasis placed on the rupture or so-called independence achieved from colonial powers. But, as Veracini contends, "settler independence discontinued one type of political subordination but enhanced the subordination of Indigenous communities and sovereignties" (2011, 184). Speaking to the power relationship between settlers and Indigenous peoples, Corey Snelgrove, Rita Kaur Dhamoon, and Jeff Corntassel (Tsalagi) explain:

"To settle" involves both subject formation and governance. Settlers have to be made and power relations between and among settlers and Indigenous peoples have to be reproduced in order for settler colonialism to extend temporally and spatially. Part of this subject formation involves disavowal of the processes of dispossession and disavowal of Indigenous governance structures.

(2014, 5)

Denaturalizing the dynamics of settler colonialism and critically interrogating them is key to processes of reconciliation, as it is only through acknowledgement of these pervasive systems that Indigenous sovereignty and claims to land can be understood, and, more so, can be actualized. This work must be undertaken by settler communities, whose narratives of belonging do much to erase and discredit the rights of Indigenous communities. In fact, Roger Epp identifies the "settler problem" at the heart of reconciliation, asking, "Whose work is reconciliation?" (2003, 227). He argues that reconciliation projects are limited by the lack of recognition of Indigenous claims to the land, buttressed by the naturalization of settler colonialism. "Solemn offers of reconciliation, however sincere, however eloquent," he explains, "are still framed within a liberal, settler political culture" (228). At present, the onus of reconciliation is firmly placed on Indigenous communities (Erasmus 2011, vii–viii).¹⁰ In Epp's words, "the imperatives of reconciliation are not distributed equally" (2003, [End Page 313] 228). Read in this light, state-led moves toward reconciliation can be understood as a continuation of settler colonialism, in that they do not attempt redress, reparations, or reciprocity (Veracini 2011, 184).⁷

To surmount this inequality and achieve full reconciliation, settler scholar Paulette Regan argues that a new relationship must be struck between settlers and Indigenous communities.⁸ Reflecting on the 2008 formal apology of the Canadian government for Indian Residential Schools, Regan argues that it is the collective duty of Canadian citizens to take on this task, stating, "as Canadian citizens, we are ultimately responsible for the past and present actions of our government" (2010, 4). Here, Regan positions the apology as the beginning of a new relationship, rather than a conclusion or final settling of wrongs. She states, "I think of the apology not as the closing of what is commonly referred to as a dark, sad chapter in Canada's history but rather as an opening for all Canadians to fundamentally rethink our past and its implications for our past and future relations" (4). This orientation toward the future and argument for a new framework on which to build community, seeks to break the constraints of the dominance and pervasiveness of the settler colonialism framework.

This is difficult terrain to negotiate and requires settler unlearning. Discomfort is key to this process. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang make clear, settlers must acknowledge their benefit from the subjugation of Indigenous people, which can be challenging. In their words, "directly and indirectly benefitting from the erasure and assimilation of Indigenous peoples is a difficult reality for settlers to accept. The weight of this reality is uncomfortable; the misery of guilt makes one hurry toward any reprieve" (Tuck and Yang 2012, 9). Regan calls for a "pedagogy of discomfort" that aims to unsettle settlers from a state of apathy and denial into a state of responsibility (2005, 52). She also notes the need for disquiet in order to truly decolonize:

It seems to me that there is power in this place of "not knowing" that may hold a key to decolonization for non-Indigenous people. As members of the dominant culture, we have to be willing to be uncomfortable, to be disquieted at a disturbing level—and to understand our own history, if we are to transform our colonial relationship with Indigenous peoples.

(7)⁹

The politics of listening is a fundamental action in decolonizing settler societies. Learning to listen to Indigenous voices, histories, and knowledges, as well as to difficult knowledges of colonial violence, will support transformation toward accountability. But with this learning to listen comes a significant cautionary call. Stó:lō scholar Dylan Robinson recently introduced the concept of hungry listening as [End Page 314] a notion essential to understanding dialogue between settler and Indigenous peoples (Ravensbergen 2016; Robinson 2017). In his words:

"Xwelitem" is the Halq'emeylem word Stó:lō people use to say "non-Indigenous person" (or "Xwenitem" in Squamish, Muqeuam, Tsleil-Waututh communities). As I understand it, these words came into use because, when settlers first arrived in our territory, they were starving. They were starving literally, for food, but starving also for gold. This hunger for resources has not abated with time, indeed it has only grown—a hunger for the resources of our land: the rocks, the trees, the water, the land itself. Each has been thirsted after, each has been consumed.

(as quoted in Ravensbergen 2016)

Robinson's theorization of settler listening as "hungry" exposes the ways in which many settler scholars and societies more broadly have listened and witnessed the sharing of Indigenous knowledges to consume or rather to own them. Settler society must unlearn hungry listening in order to fully participate in reconciliation. As Robinson explains, "[this] settler mode of perception driven by hunger … [as] perceive[ing] knowledge with a voracious appetite that devours without consideration of those who have cultivated, harvested, and prepared the food of thought" (2017, 97).

A decolonized listening, or a critical settler listening, is one that is driven by a commitment to be accountable, to reciprocate, and fundamentally to be a better human being and guest on Indigenous lands. Further, Métis artist and scholar David Garneau argues that a process of conciliation would be preferable to reconciliation, because it would be a transformative course. For Garneau, it is the potential of such a process that makes it the best way forward. In his words, "we can begin by reframing the contemporary dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people as one of conciliation. … Thinking, making, collaborating, and exhibiting within sites of perpetual conciliation has the potential to transform rather than contain" (2016, 24). It is precisely this ability to trouble, unsettle, and disquiet the framework of settler colonialism that we find in the artworks we address in this article.

Employing symbols, images, and narratives associated with Canadian heritage, the projects by Decter, Hoàng Nguyễn, and Monnet that we assess are necessarily grounded in literature on critical heritage studies. This field of research denaturalizes heritage, taking it as an invented tradition: that is, understanding heritage as a socially constructed category that holds significant implications for narratives of inclusion. Following this approach, heritage objects are used to construct history as lieux de mémoire, or "sites of memory," a term coined by Pierre Nora (1989). Examining the use of heritage objects and institutions in Canadian national narratives, settler scholar Andrea Terry explains that they function as "evidentiary artifacts that [End Page 315] perform." This evidentiary function is key because it allows heritage to mediate relations, in Terry's words, "[to] not only address but also manage issues associated with past and present-day concerns such as ethnicity and diversity, memory, veneration, and identity" (2016, 158). This use of heritage, specific to Indigenous culture, exemplifies what Indigenous scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson has termed "white possessions." Here, she means that Indigenous histories, knowledges, material culture, and art are absorbed by the settler nation as a mechanism to reaffirm and reproduce settler colonial order based on principles of power and property. As Moreton-Robinson argues, this functions as "possessiveness through a process of perpetual Indigenous dispossession, ranging from the refusal of Indigenous sovereignty …" (2015, xi). In doing so, Canada takes ownership of Indigenous heritage, such as that displayed in Canadian museum collections, understood as the property of the state and the people of Canada. Mohawk scholar and curator Doxtator's critique of Canadian nationalism and notions of conservation of Indigenous material culture in museums draws similar conclusions, explaining heritage supports national narratives. Or, as Doxtator put it in 1994, museum exhibitions present "the history of someone else fitting me into their history" (Doxtator 1996, 58). Indigenous heritage is distinct from Canadian heritage and is connected to living archives of Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, stories, and memories, as well as objects (some of which are understood as art, and others as ancestral beings). Understanding the colonial roots of the mechanisms of heritage brings forth the following questions: Which communities does Canadian heritage serve? And whose memories are presented as heritage on a national stage? In most instances, until recently, heritage projects in Canada have not foregrounded Indigenous histories and stories nor have they honoured or generated space for Indigenous self-determination, a foundational principle of Indigenous sovereignty. White-settler memory, history, and perspective have been privileged and mobilized in order to nurture a national narrative of colonial amnesia and a remembrance of celebratory moments in the nation's history.

In thinking through three specific works of contemporary art that engage heritage in different ways, we suggest that a flexible approach that takes heritage as an ongoing site of relationship building is key. Here, we draw on research by Indigenous scholar Julie Nagam, as she argues that work on heritage is an ongoing process and site of multiple relationships. Nagam, in this instance speaking about the canoe, explains that national iconographies are not static objects, but rather "a process and an infinite set of relations" (Nagam 2014, 71). It is precisely in this way that we see contemporary artists employing heritage in their work, as a means to rearticulate particular narratives and objects, and affirm or shift communities normatively associated with these aspects of heritage. [End Page 316]

Our approach to heritage is also firmly aligned with Lucie K. Morisset's definition of the term as a "perlocutionary narrative." Heritage, she explains, is a speech act, a tool, and a means to convey narratives that can mobilize communities to a variety of ends (2016). Moreover, heritage contributes to the formation of community memory. As Alan Gordon argues, heritage can be mobilized through lived experience to articulate narratives that become part of a community consciousness (2001, 7). This understanding of heritage, we suggest, makes clear the need to critically interrogate the use of heritage, because multiple constituencies—institutions, governments, citizens, community groups, artists, and more—mobilize heritage for specific ends.

Many scholars have begun to examine how contemporary artists are employing heritage. For instance, Terry points to the role of art production to unsettle dominant narratives. Artist-history interventions, she argues, "disrupt authoritative experiences of the past to cultivate a unified global citizenry" (2016, 158). Our approach seeks to build on scholarship such as Terry's, which addresses contemporary art in relation to heritage. In making arguments for the impact of such projects, we also draw on literature on art activism, which articulates the necessity and power of contemporary art practice to prompt social change. Here, we acknowledge the ways that culture is also appropriated toward neo-liberal ends—what J. Keri Cronin and Kirsty Robertson identify as the "heady mixture of art and capitalism" of the present moment (2011, 7). Despite this "expediency of culture," we make our claims building on scholarship that advances contemporary art as a means to critique, unsettle, and resist dominant systems (Yúdice 2003, 9). That is not to say that this field of literature is united, as debates about efficacy of art as resistance have been prominent in recent years (for instance, among Claire Bishop and Grant Kester). However, a critical assessment of visual culture (encompassing contemporary art and heritage) is key to any analysis of hegemony and contemporary social relations. As Cronin and Robertson explain, "the politics of power … cannot be understood, described, analyzed, or resisted, without an understanding of visual culture" (2011, 8).

The Canoe

Leah Decter is a contemporary artist whose work addresses settler-colonial relations in Canada. Based in Treaty 1 territory (Winnipeg), Decter identifies as an intermedia artist and produces work employing video, audio, digital media, installation, and textiles, among other media. She creates work in collaboration and her broad-based practice also encompasses critical and scholarly writing, as well as curating. In many works, Decter uses performance in public spaces, an approach that allows her to embody an activist stance in order to engage the public in recognizing the dominance of settler colonialism [End Page 317] in the present, as well as our shared complicity in these dynamics. Identifying as a white-settler artist/scholar, the artist acknowledges her subjectivity as "part of intersection collectivities that inherently benefit from the theft of Indigenous lands and the enactment of race thinking, regardless of my actions as an individual" (2016, 37).

Decter plays with heritage narratives and icons to great effect in her work, engaging with the visual culture of Canadian nationalism.¹⁰ The canoe figures prominently in her practice, a symbol associated historically with Indigenous peoples and French voyagers, and, more recently, settler leisure and stereotypes of the Canadian wilderness. The canoe is prominent, for instance, in the 2015 work Founder (Decter and L'Hirondelle 2015), produced with artist, singer, and songwriter Cheryl L'Hirondelle.¹¹ Decter explains that her actions and L'Hirondelle's performance function in conversation with each other. In her words, the performances "honour a continuum of resistance and survivance, highlighting an imperative for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples to undertake critical un/doing and un/learning individually, collectively and collaboratively towards non-colonial futures in this land" (Decter 2017). L'Hirondelle and Decter's actions also make clear the complex terrain of relationships in settler colonial societies. Writing about Indigenous and non-Indigenous alliances, coalitions, and partnerships, Lynne Davis identifies these relationships as a complex, present, and ongoing "vast web of colonial relations" (2010, 8).

This work is a lyrical one-channel digital video that employs performance to address settler colonial relationships with the land. In multiple works—including Fouling, Founder, memoration #2, and unbecoming—Decter engages with the canoe in similar ways: paddling, bailing, sinking, and moving (on land and in water), as well as manipulating the structure: gilding and dismantling. The artist's physical engagement with the Sportspal brand canoe is, as Taunton notes, an act of "embodied decolonizing" (2017, 3). Decter's gestures all foreground the canoe as a meaningful symbol in Canadian national discourse, while also bringing to light the fact of the canoe's ties to Indigenous nations. For Indigenous peoples the canoe was a significant technology, it was also a tool of colonial expansion that facilitated Indigenous-settler relationships, including treaties. The canoe, according to Taunton, "embodies histories of Indigenous presence on, and care of, the land since time immemorial. As a vessel it carries Indigenous knowledges, teachings, stories, and cultural practices" (2017, 3).

Speaking to her ongoing use of and engagement with the canoe, Decter explains her motivations, identifying the canoe as an object of settler appropriation and linking the vessel to histories of power. In her words:

The canoe is one such iconic figure, harnessed in these works as a metaphoric colonial body. The canoe, as a Canadian icon assimilated firmly into [End Page 318] Canadian life, is indicative of the colonial habits of appropriation, erasure and settler dominance. It recalls early Canadian nation-building through associations with "exploration" and the fur trade, while perpetuating colonial values and beliefs in the present through connections to contemporary leisure pursuits and tourism. The canoe resonates with Indigenous knowledge while evoking a proprietary link between wilderness and Canadian identity that works to emplace the white settler on Indigenous land.

(as quoted in Taunton 2017, 3)

Through the canoe, Decter highlights the ongoing appropriation of Indigenous knowledges (including Indigenous material culture) in narratives of the settler state of Canada. This tactic of settler colonialism subsumes Indigenous culture, in this case naturalizing the canoe as a Canadian icon and erasing the specific Indigenous claims to this technology and the knowledges associated with it. In fact, this process of appropriation is inherent in the construction of the settler state, as its creation necessitates the establishment of founding myths and narratives to legitimize claims to and occupation of the land. As Taunton points out, acts of settler appropriation transform Indigenous lands, pointedly, in the words of the Canadian national anthem, in to "Our home and Native land" (2017, 3).

Founder foregrounds performances by Decter and L'Hirondelle in Treaty 3 territory (parts of Northwestern Ontario, Eastern Manitoba) on the Canadian Shield. These performances take place in proximity—L'Hirondelle lakeside on a dock, with Decter within sight out in the midst of the bay in a canoe. Shot on a clear and sunny day, the green tree line stands in contrast against the bright sky and deep blue water. As the video begins, the viewer is immediately situated in the environment. The work opens with an underwater shot, focused on the bottom of the canoe. The audience is oriented to Decter's performance as a yellow pail is quickly submerged toward the camera, the sound of the water's movement prominent while the sunlight from above cuts through the water. The repetitive action of the water being scooped into the canoe is transfixing, as lines of bubbles accompany each dip of the pail as it gathers water from the lake. The video then cuts to a view of the canoe above water, and the viewer can identify a hand holding the yellow pail, a cheap plastic container reinforced with silver duct tape. At this moment, off screen a drumbeat begins and L'Hirondelle starts to sing.

L'Hirondelle voices "kitaskihkanaw," a song written with Joseph Naytowhow, with a melody penned by L'Hirondelle. This piece was created in response to the popular Woody Guthrie folk anthem "This Land Is My Land," a song dating to 1940 that describes the landscape of the United States. The well-known repetition in the [End Page 319] chorus—"This land was made for you and me"—evokes the issues of naturalized settler legitimacy addressed by Veracini and Mackey. L'Hirondelle's homage to Guthrie speaks to the land in what is now Canada, contributing a Cree world view that invokes a very different type of ownership and relationship to territory. L'Hirondelle's performance of this song provides the anchor and soundtrack for Founder, her drumbeat providing a rhythm for Decter's repetitive action to bail water. In a red dress, holding a circular hand drum, L'Hirondelle's performance occupies her whole being; it is active, as she beats the drum and sings she shifts weight back and forth between her feet, her body moving to the beat.

Founder intersperses footage of L'Hirondelle's performance on the dock, with Decter's performance in the canoe in the middle of the bay. Dressed in a black T-shirt and shorts, Decter provides a slow and focused performance as she scoops water into the canoe. As the song builds, the video cuts between both performers until finally they are both visible in the same frame. As the video progresses, footage reveals that the canoe, from a distance of birch construction, is in fact metal. The screws attaching the material together expose its faux birch finish. A zoom shot of the bow of the canoe reveals the pervasiveness of stereotypical representations of Indigenous peoples—a logo for the canoe maker Sportspal ("Light Safe Durable") features the profile of a Plains headdress–clad "Indian Chief" type. As witnesses to this collaborative performance-based video, we began to discuss the role of "bailing out" or rather, in this case, "bailing in" of water. Decter's research-oriented practice deliberately engages with histories of colonial impact, settler denial of colonial violence, and Canadian national identity's embedded relation to settler colonial power structures. And she discusses the action of bailing water in or out as a sense of reprieve, stating, "In the context of my work, one can consider the reprieve in relation to the ways by which dominant Canadian mythologies invoke colonial innocence to absolve the Canadian state and its white settler citizens of responsibility for ongoing inequities" (as quoted in Taunton 2017).

The canoe seems to drift in the midst of the bay; it is directionless, spinning slowly as it is filled with water. Decter's repetitive bailing begins to endanger the stability of the craft and she struggles to balance herself and the canoe, while she continues to fill the boat. The canoe is precarious, its stern and bow tip, then it shifts from side to side. Eventually, the boat succumbs to the water, swiftly slipping and sinking beneath the surface of the lake. Here, the footage slows as Decter is subsumed in the water. Once underwater, neither Dector nor the canoe are visible again; no evidence of their recent presence is seen on the water's surface. Founder concludes with shots of the landscape and the close of L'Hirondelle's song.

Founder provides a poetic narrative that is not didactic. It employs a lush landscape and rich audio to address the visual culture of Canadian nationalism. Decter's [End Page 320] performance action speaks to perseverance on a path to destruction—she subverts the action of bailing a boat, a constructive gesture of survival, turning it into a devastating act. L'Hirondelle's song provides another subversion, one created to speak back to the settler fantasies of Guthrie's folk tune. Her song foregrounds a Cree world view in defiance of the trauma inflicted by settler colonialism. As a whole, Founder employs the sublime landscape and its conventional references to settler leisure to address settler-Indigenous relations and unsettle settler expectations and understandings of claims to the land. The work subverts the visual culture of Canadian nationalism—the Northern Ontario landscape, such as that depicted by settler painters the Group of Seven, and the myth of terra nullius, "empty lands" that supported settlers' claims and ownership of sovereign Indigenous territories.

Decter also addresses settler colonialism in a 2015 solo performance work titled memoration #2: constituent parts. In this work the canoe is again employed as a heritage signifier to activate histories of settler colonialism in Canada. The artist created memo-ration #2 for the performance festival Talkin' Back to Johnnie Mac, initiated by Métis curator Erin Sutherland in Kingston, Ontario.¹² This durational performance took place over nine hours, occurring in two sites. It began in the morning in the loggia of Queen's University's Stauffer Library, a high traffic site on campus. The performance concluded at the end of the day only a short distance away in City Park, Kingston, in front of the large statue memorializing Sir John A. Macdonald (who oversaw the Gradual Civilization Act, 1857, and the 1876 Indian Act) (Decter 2016, 38). The work also existed in the journey of artist and audience members between these two sites. The performance can be understood in three parts, corresponding with these distinct locations.

The core component of memoration #2 was the performance in the loggia. This took place during the day, lasting seven hours. Decter was seated, motionless, without expression on an oak chair in the middle of a metal Sportspal canoe, wearing a T-shirt from the 1978 Kinistino, Saskatchewan, rodeo—prominently featuring a cowboy on a bronco. Various props were at hand, including paper, charcoal, tools, and a bucket of water with rocks drawn from nearby Lake Ontario. The canoe was placed in the centre of the loggia, a large atrium surrounded by windows and benches that provides access to the main intersection of campus on three sides. The canoe was oriented between four crowns etched into the stone tiles of the floor. The crowns' silhouettes referenced the university's name and that of Queen Victoria (who granted the school its charter), marking a direct link to the British Empire and its colonial mandate (Decter 2016, 54). The location of the performance at the entrance to the library resulted in a broad and dynamic audience largely comprised of undergraduate students. Some of them were present to experience the work and others experienced it in passing, or chose not to engage. [End Page 321]

Each hour between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., a new individual would assist the artist in the performance by completing two tasks. First, the individual would create a rubbing of the crown, using charcoal and paper. The resulting textured silhouette would then be given to the artist, who would wipe the paper across her chest, marring the drawing and obscuring the cowboy on her T-shirt. Second, the individual would seize the bow of the canoe and purposely rotate the front of the boat several degrees. Over the course of the day the vessel took on the movement of a clock hand, completing a full rotation. This echoed the similar movement of a compass point, an association with colonial preoccupation with charting land and marking land ownership.

At the end of the day, audience members assembled in the loggia and helped Decter to carry the canoe out of the library, as well as to carry the various performance props. Once outside, the canoe was placed on the ground and Decter dragged it by a rope down the sidewalk, across the street, and into City Park, heading down the lawn to the Sir John A. Macdonald statue. The audience following Decter created a procession of sorts; at times, various members actively assisted the artist with the canoe. By the time Decter reached the statue, the canoe bore evidence of journey, scraped and dragged along the way.

The third component of the performance took place beside Macdonald's statue, a representation of a figure the artist considers a founding father of Canada, and, in her words, a "symbol of the settler state" (Decter 2016, 36). Raised high above park visitors, Macdonald surveys the park, the base of the statue inscribed to evidence his ties to the Crown: "A British subject I was born, a British subject I will die."¹³ At this site Decter and Sutherland acknowledged the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabek. Decter placed the oak chair in front of the statue, alluding to a conversation between the absent sitter and the monument. Over the back of the chair, Decter placed her Kinistino rodeo T-shirt, covered in charcoal. Next, Decter distributed the crown rubbings to various audience members who assembled at the site and set about the final task of the piece, to dismantle the canoe. This process was lengthy and difficult for the artist, who cut her hand on the metal. She used tools to cut the skin from the frame, dismantling the craft. Paying particular attention to the faux birch bark finish of the canoe, Decter used the rocks collected from Lake Ontario to mark surface, which she later cleaned with water.

By the end of memoration #2, the bow of the canoe was separated, the frame of the canoe and metal skin disconnected, and the canoe unrecognizable. Decter's performance reflects the numerous associations of the canoe—from exploration and land survey, to contact between Indigenous peoples and early settlers, to histories of settler appropriation of Indigenous technologies and cultural practice, to present day associations of whiteness, class, and privileged leisure. Reflecting on memoration #2, [End Page 322] Decter notes that the canoe is a colonial icon that invokes geographical expansion, resource exploitation, mythologies of settler-Indigenous co-operation, assimilation, transport, leisure, and colonial settlement (2016, 42). Through three distinct moments in the performance (stasis, travel, destruction), Decter employs the canoe as a heritage object to comment on the complicity of settlers within ongoing colonialism in Canada. For Decter, performance and the use of her own body to explore these issues is a key means to foreground settler complicity. She explains that, through icons including the canoe, the crown, and Macdonald, "my body infiltrated architectures of colonial power, knowledge production, and reification to consider how we learn and might consciously and actively unlearn" (58). In this performance and subsequent video installation, the canoe is read as a metaphorical colonial body and it is dismantled to show the pieces or apparatus that have maintained, and continue to maintain, colonial relations in Canada. This includes, for example, the foundational role played by Canada's first prime minister, Macdonald, in establishing the apartheid system of the Indian Act and the assimilist ethnocidal project of residential schools.

Decter's use of the canoe in Founder and memoration #2 gives new meaning to the vessel, transforming it into a symbol for engagement in the legacies of settler colonialism. In bearing witness to Leah Decter's decolonial acts of drilling, sinking, dragging, and dismantling the canoe, we are invited to unsettle Canada from its state of colonialism—of apathy, unawareness, and ambivalence—in order to imagine new decolonized pathways and further collaborative ways of moving forward together as Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. We suggest that through performance actions that foreground her body, Decter employs the canoe to create an affective environment of discomfort and disquiet—the very unsettling that Tuck and Yang, Regan, and Garneau identify as necessary to denaturalizing settler colonialism and decolonizing Canada.

Aliens

"Ca-na-da, we love thee" are the lyrics that begin the upbeat anthem created to celebrate Canada's centennial. The cheerful, catchy tune, "Canada: A Centennial Song," was created by Bobby Gimby in 1967, its lyrics sung by both English and French children's choirs, a tribute to the nation's two dominant founding groups. The song is unabashed in its celebratory nationalism—"Hur-rah! Vive le Ca-na-da! Three cheers, Hip, Hip, Hoo-ray!"—and also alludes to a supposed happy co-operation between French, English, and other groups, with its concluding line emphasizing national unity: "Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, mer-il-ly we roll a-long to-geth-er, all the way." Initially created for a documentary about the 1967 Universal and International Exposition in Montreal, the song was popular across the country during Canada's 100th anniversary of Confederation. [End Page 323]

The song is repurposed to great effect at the end of Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn's 2012 video 1967: A People Kind of Place (20 min.).¹⁴ Hoàng Nguyễn currently lives and works in Stockholm. She has a research-intensive practice that encompasses a range of media. Hoàng Nguyễn's work draws on archival materials, which the artist employs to question a range of topics, including history, politics, multiculturalism, and feminism. A People Kind of Place explores the contradictions of the centennial period, which resonate with contemporary political dynamics. The video focuses on national narratives, touching on topics including immigration, Expo 67, and a specific centenary project by the town of St. Paul, Alberta. The work troubles the rhetoric of benevolence and inclusion that permeate Canadian national myths. In doing so, it provides a complex, multilayered narrative and a rich media and text archive.

In 1967, numerous communities undertook centennial projects. The town of St. Paul, located almost 200 kilometers northeast of Edmonton, became infamous for its project to construct the first UFO landing pad. Realized as a concrete and steel structure of approximately weighed 127 tons, the landing pad was a raised oval with a back barrier, upon which there is a series of flagpoles for provincial flags. Centred in the front is a wide staircase from which to access the platform. This tourist attraction is a tongue-in-cheek symbol intended to represent international (and interplanetary) hospitality. It also reflected the interest in and optimism about space travel in the period, including the US and Soviet efforts to develop space travel technologies. Despite the eccentric, and little known, project at the centre of A People Kind of Place, the video opens by acknowledging the veracity of the story it conveys to viewers.

A People Kind of Place demonstrates the depth of Hoàng Nguyễn's research, including documentation of archival research and interviews with individuals involved in the UFO landing pad. In addition, the video includes more abstract fictional elements to convey its messages, for example, including the perspective of a supposed alien, who is represented through a voice-over with characteristic vocoder modification. The video is comprised of new and found footage, including recreations and fictional material. It functions as a paradocumentary, mining the history of the centennial, Expo 67, and the UFO landing pad, while also incorporating narratives that trouble the found footage and point to the significance of this history in the current moment. Hoàng Nguyễn, draws on a wide range of found audio and video footage from private and public archives, including media sources the NFB, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and CTV Television Network. She also uses intertitles to structure the narrative, which are drawn from writings by key thinkers such as Luis Camnitzer, Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan, Ernst Bloch, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

The beginning of the video references the complex media landscape through which narratives of Canada circulate. Against static sounds, a flickering montage of [End Page 324] images alludes to the simultaneous broadcast of television channels. As voices and images blur together, a voice-over reveals the perspective of the alien: "Sometimes you think you see me. Or if you do, you'd rather not. Who am I? An alien. Approaching earth …" This audio is set against visuals of the moon's surface, with planet earth far in the distance. The upbeat and patriotic nature of the centennial is well represented by footage of New Year's in 1967, the start of the centennial year. Here, bells and carols mark the joy of the occasion as viewers glimpse wholesome scenes of white Canada. Here, the footage resembles home videos, showcasing domestic interiors and holiday celebrations, replete with food, decorations, presents, and families.

The video next addresses St. Paul's centennial project, with an authoritative voice proclaiming the significance of the town and its landing pad: "Across Canada there are literally hundreds of thousands of centennial projects; some big, some small. But undoubtedly, the champions are the citizens of St. Paul, Alberta." In fact, St. Paul was crowned the Centennial Capital of Canada, a significant accomplishment given its small size. The efforts of the federal government to promote Canadian nationalism are also revealed through footage of an announcement by the centennial commissioner John Fisher. His message encouraging citizens to take part in the celebrations makes clear the necessity of citizen involvement: "The success of the centennial will really depend on how many Canadians are genuinely enthused about it." While a gentle call to action, this footage also raises the point that nationalism is not natural, but a constructed process. As well, it underscores the fact of the state's investment in nationalism.

Roland F. Roque, who at the time was president of the local chamber of commerce, explains that the landing pad was conceived in collaboration with the centennial commissioner John Laguessy and local lawyer Hugh Fuller with the intention to "put St. Paul on the map." It certainly did—and the landing pad was inaugurated on 3 June 1967, a ceremony including a speech and ribbon cutting by the minister of defence Paul Hellyer.¹⁵ Hoàng Nguyễn employs footage of the ceremony, with dignitaries and national signifiers. The event is described as a lively ceremony featuring different constituencies: "A fake saucer landed in a puff of smoke, followed by a parade of officials dressed in Martian costumes. Then came the Indian smoke signals and dances. The affair wrapped up with a display of teenage Martian go-go dancers" (Gerson, 2012).

During the artist's research, she engaged Hellyer to re-record his speech from the inauguration, which is used in the video. Hellyer's speech speaks to the air of optimism and future-oriented thinking that prevailed in the period: "While we may look at certain of our far out centennial projects tongue in cheek, we should perhaps stop and think twice about them … for what they symbolize. … There is an important element of seriousness in these projects, in that they symbolize Man's hopes, [End Page 325] imagination, and aspirations." He goes on to describe the landing pad as one of the "most unique centennial projects yet to be reported" and an important and "meaningful symbol of Western hospitality."

Amidst laughter, the landing pad was lauded as a positive initiative with significant implications. This benevolence was explicit, for instance, with a voiceover explaining that "We welcome everybody. And everybody is welcome, no matter who." However, the contradictions of the landing pad quickly become apparent. Hoàng Nguyễn deftly raises the history of Canadian immigration policy, complicating the rhetoric of Canadian inclusivity and diversity. Here, the video notes the exclusions of the quota system, which prioritized specific types of European immigrants to Canada. Hoàng Nguyễn employs a satire television segment to make this point—the clip depicts a customs encounter at the Canadian border, with a supposed alien (off screen) interacting with a customs officer. They go through the typical questions—What is your name? How long are you staying for?—and the customs officer explains Canada's immigration system, stating (amidst audience laugher), "We don't have any quota at all for green people. I'll put you on the waiting list, but that's the best I can do, sir."

A People Kind of Place explains the changes to Canada's immigration system that occurred in the period of the centennial. In 1967, the Canadian government implemented a supposed objective point system to evaluate immigrants, with the aim of creating a dispassionate means of evaluating immigrants, valuing diversity. As the video makes clear, this did not really substantially change the success of specific types of highly skilled European immigrants, who continued to be favoured. The policy, however, became part of Canada's narratives about its openness and diversity. This was further affirmed in 1971, when Pierre Elliot Trudeau implemented multiculturalism as official state policy. In footage of Trudeau speaking to enthusiastic supporters, he explains his vision for an ideal Canada: "Canada must be unified. Canada must be one. Canada must be progressive. And Canada must be a just society." Here Hoàng Nguyễn skilfully points to the reality that existed alongside such rhetoric, including forced residential schooling for Indigenous children.

In particular, the artist uses an interview with St. Paul resident Melanie Desjardins to raise this contradiction. Desjardins recalls the Blue Quills residential school located near St. Paul. She tells of a play the children put on at the time of the centennial that aimed to depict the nationalities of the world. She recalls the portrayal of French, Ukrainian, Irish, and Mexican communities, but not any Indigenous or Métis communities. The stereotypes of national representation are made clear as this story is recounted while the camera pans across a display case of dolls in St. Paul, under the heading "Un chez nous multiculturel / A people kind of place." [End Page 326] Each doll is costumed and labelled in French and English with the nation they represent, including one that depicts a Métis man (Berson 2013).¹⁶

A People Kind of Place also addresses a key part of the centennial celebrations—Montreal's Expo, which was organized around the theme "Man and His World." The video depicts the magnificent and impressive infrastructure of the exposition grounds, revealing the scope and details of the pavilions, exhibitions, and numerous visitors. These include shots of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome, the Mexican pavilion, and the Indians of Canada Pavilion. Here, is it worth discussing the significance of Expo 67 to the history of Indigenous representation. Expo 67 was an important moment in the history of Indigenous art, Indigenous political movements, and Indigenous identity politics. These were advanced through the Indians of Canada Pavilion, which presented colonial histories, legacies, and ongoing oppression of Indigenous peoples for the first time to a domestic and international audience. The profile of the pavilion is distinctive in its reference to the tipi and is identifiable in A People Kind of Place.

Although Expo was heavily saturated with Canadian nationalism and the rhetoric of Canadian identity, in the pavilion there was space, for the first time, for an articulation of Indigenous politics, identities, experiences, stories, cultures, and survival from Indigenous perspectives—in other words, Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty. Indigenous organizational control over the pavilion was obtained through a complex process of negotiations by Indigenous groups and individuals, such as Tom Hill. This resulted in a separate Indian pavilion outside of complete federal government control and doctrine—a development of significant political significance. The frank narratives presented in the pavilion were unexpected. Writing in 1976, Seneca artist and curator Tom Hill noted, "The government really wanted a positive image in that pavilion and what they got was the truth, that's what really shocked them the most" (Phillips and Brydon 2011, 27).

Through an Indigenous art program on the exterior of the pavilion building and the storyline of the interior installation, the complexities of Indigenous histories were exposed and addressed. The art project commissioned for the pavilion brought together Indigenous artists from different nations, from across Canada, and of different generations. This was one of the first contemporary gatherings of Indigenous artists in Canada. Moreover, it is recognized in the history of Indigenous art as a pivotal moment for the recognition of Indigenous artists as artists—not tourist artists or craftsmen. The artists incorporated into the project of the Pavilion were George Clutesi (Nuu cha nulth), Noel Wuttunee (Plains Cree), Gerald Tailfeathers (Blood), Ross Woods (Dakota), Alex Janvier (Dene Suline and Saulteax), Tom Hill (Iroquois/ Six Nations), Norval Morrisseau (Annishinabe), Carl Ray (Annishinabe), Francis Kagige (Odawa), and Jean-Marie Gros-Louis (Huron Quebec). [End Page 327]

The exterior of the pavilion included George Clutesi's painted West Coast, a vertical wall composition of a thunderbird and whale crests, along with Henry and Tony Hunt's monumental sixty-five foot Kwakwakawa totem pole; Anishinaabe painters Norval Morrisseau and his assistant Carl Ray's large graphic style work Earth Mother with Her Children; and Anishinaabe artist Francis Kagige's painting The Land. These works, collectively, presented a very powerful message of cultural continuity in terms of oral traditions and Indigenous spirituality. Speaking to the aesthetic of the works, settler scholars Ruth Phillips and Sherry Brydon argue, "because they were figurative rather than abstract, they were accessible to a broad public; because they appeared 'traditional,' they were among the most recognizably 'Indian' of the commissioned works, inscribing in the Pavilion a primary message of the survival of traditional spirituality" (Phillips and Brydon 2011, 13–14). More abstract works were also included, such as the series of round panel paintings (nine and a half feet in diameter) by Alex Janvier, attached to the sides of the five hexagonal bays surrounding the base of the teepee. Another work that conveyed contemporary Indigenous art and its fusions with history and Indigenous cultural knowledge was Tom Hill's Tree of Peace. This was a collaborative piece by Hill and ceramic artist Gros-Louis. Tree of Peace interpreted this culturally significant Iroquoian symbol, which is a notable part of Iroquois wampum belt iconography.

The pavilion was notable because it marks the beginning of the incorporation of Indigenous art in Canadian galleries and museums, and was the catalyst of decades of struggle and activism staged by Indigenous artists for their rightful place in gallery spaces (Phillips 2004, 102).¹⁷ For example, the coming together of these artists at Expo, as argued by Phillips, "established a powerful precedent for future national Aboriginal artists' organizations (such as the Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry [SCANA]), which have, among other things, lobbied effectively to loosen the exclusive hold of ethnographic museums on contemporary Aboriginal art and to insert it into Canada's art galleries" (104). Phillips further argues that the Expo 67 works spurred politicized art production by Indigenous artists. She states, "works presented at the Expo 67 Indians of Canada Pavilion stand at the beginning of a shift that would lead both Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to produce more explicitly critical, political and spiritual art" (102).

Returning to A People Kind of Place, the video also emphasizes the technological innovation on display at Expo 67, including Fuller's dome, cars, and motors. Through voiceover, the alien notes, "… technological way of life transcends social, national and religious boundaries …," evidencing a desire for technology to overcome social difference. Hoàng Nguyễn further emphasizes this point through intertitles that state, "There are no passengers on spaceship earth" and "We are all crew." The video [End Page 328] concludes with sublime imagery of the Canadian landscape—sweeping vistas, forests, snow-topped mountains, and waterways. This footage speaks to the natural resources of Canada, while a voiceover cautions viewers that the rhetoric of bounty (Canada as the land of "milk and honey") is at odds with the state's treatment of Indigenous peoples. Here, the alien heard at the beginning of the video calls for recognition of this disjuncture between the promotion of Canadian benevolence and unity in the face of the reality of the country's inequalities: "Citizens of the worlds you must transverse the fantasy of unity. It is both a problem of diversity and its solution. Only then can the potential of multiculturalism as radical imaginary and spontaneous emergence be separated from multiculturalism as state policy, management, discipline, and uniformity."

With the announcement that the journey has concluded, the credits start to role and the "Centennial Song" plays in earnest on a record player. Alongside the children's voices, a man's low voice can be heard singing along, not quite in sync with the recording. Partway through the song the recording stops, but the man continues to sing. His low key, slow tempo rendition takes on a disquieting and ominous tone, pointing to something sinister, despite the cheerful lyrics: "They'll be happy times through rain, rain, rain. It's the hundredth anniversary of Confederation, everybody sing together. Ca-na-da. Notre pays …"

An engaging and humorous video, A People kind of Place employs new and found footage to address the Canadian state and its narratives of diversity, benevolence, and inclusion. This is significant given the nostalgia that surrounds Canada's centenary and Expo 67. This reminiscence is at odds with the realities of the Canadian state in the second half of the twentieth century, as well as global conflicts such as the Cold War. The focus on St. Paul's UFO landing pad makes clear the irony of the town's lauded centennial project, welcoming extraterrestrials, while potential immigrants and Indigenous inhabitants encountered anything but hospitality. As settler scholar and curator Amber Berson argues, the landing pad "is symbolic of the blind spots in the Canadian national narrative" (Berson 2013). Weaving a rich history of rhetoric, media, policy, and fictional narratives, Hoàng Nguyễn provides a complex picture of nationalism. Engaging the heritage of the centennial moment, the artist seeks to draw viewers into more complex understandings of the Canadian state.

The Cinematic Archive

While it is a different type of heritage than the icon of the canoe or the specificity of the Canadian centennial, we propose the archive as a third heritage form mobilized by contemporary artists. We focus our discussion on Caroline Monnet's explorations [End Page 329] of the cinematic archive. In a recent work, she employs the holdings of the NFB, a venerated Canadian institution that has created still and moving images of Canada since its founding in 1939.¹⁸

Monnet is an Anishnabe and French artist and filmmaker from Outaouais, Ontario, who is currently based in Montreal. She is a founding member of ITWÉ, a Winnipeg and Montreal contemporary aboriginal artists collective focused on digital technologies, established with Sébastien Aubin and Kevin Lee Burton. Her multidisciplinary practice focuses on issues of Indigenous and bicultural representation. She describes her work as "minimalist" and "emotionally charged," explaining that she is interested in engaging with processes of observation and remembering. In her words, "I like to create an area of intellectual interplay between perception and memory that invites viewers to explore instability in the contemporary age" (Deneault 2017).

Monnet's 2015 video Mobilize (3 min.) was commissioned as part of the NFB's Souvenir series. The series of four three-minute films includes work by Kent Monk-man, Jeff Barnaby, and Michelle Latimer, all of which take on Indigenous identity through recovery and examination of the NFB film archive.¹⁹ To create the work Monnet employed a range of footage from numerous NFB titles. She sampled clips from films including well known titles such as Cree Hunters of Mistassini (1974), César et son canot d'écorce / César's Bark Canoe (1970), High Steel (1965), Indian Memento (1967) (Janisse 2015). In working with the archive, Monnet employs techniques of montage and pastiche to intercut, juxtapose, and deconstruct archival footage, as well as playing with timing to speed up and down the original footage. Here, Monnet's use of archival footage parallels Hoàng Nguyễn's use of the CBC archives in A People Kind of Place.

Mobilize foregrounds labour and movement through the juxtaposition of footage to create an open-ended and ambiguous narrative. In Mobilize, movement is both literal and metaphorical—evidenced through clips of snowshoes, canoes, boats, planes, and subways, as well as the move between the rural northern climate and the urbanized south. The idea of progression and futurity is addressed through footage of the skilled creation of heritage objects, including snowshoes and canoes. The work is a positive, upbeat and quick-paced short that brings together a range of archival footage in a manner that invokes a journey. The film employs footage that emphasizes the rhythms of and knowledge derived from the land (Janisse 2015).

A key element of the video is the soundtrack; the footage is set to "Uja," a song by Polaris Prize–winning Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq, featured on her 2014 album Animism. "Uja" is an enthralling, rhythmic song with an increasing beat. Tagaq's pulsating, quick breath sounds give Mobilize a sense of urgency, and the pacing of [End Page 330] the song also echoes the physical exertion of the individuals depicted. In describing Mobilize, Monnet emphasizes the experiential nature of the work, noting of audiences that "their heart will start pounding, they'll be out of breath and they'll be bombarded by information" (Dam 2015). Monnet's use of a song by a contemporary Indigenous artist, Tagaq, who employs Inuk throat singing, also helps to foreground an Indigenous world view in the video. In this way, Monnet employs sound to great effect, and in a similar manner to L'Hirondelle's song in Founder.

The pace of Mobilize is apparent from the very beginning of the film. Against a quick beat, the work opens with a focused shot of hands, grasping the frame of a snowshoe as they bind the wood together, lacing it. The footage quickly jumps to a scene of a figure shot from the knees down, walking on finished snowshoes. The video jumps back and forth between hands and use, making, moving, all flashing by in pace with the increasing tempo of the beat. Slowly the focus zooms out so that the face of the female maker and the body of the snowshoe-clad figure are visible. This emphasis on bodies and the shift between the representation of skill and mobility repeats throughout the video.

Subsequently, the viewer is presented with footage of physical labour in the woods, tasks including chopping a tree, removing bark, framing a birch bark canoe, all intercut with footage of a man paddling a canoe. Here, the vantage point of the footage is dynamic, changing from the bow of the boat (looking toward the figure), to a sightline from the perspective of the man navigating waterways (looking outwards at the water). These perspectives are fragmented because different clips have been edited together. Nonetheless, the choppy footage gives a sense that the viewer is in the boat and moving forward.

Mobilize quickly covers ground from the wooded location and waterways. Next, footage shows a motorized boat approaching a northern community by water. A snowmobile covers territory on the ground as we see houses in a rural community, with clean laundry hanging on lines between the homes. Footage shows children at play, enjoying string games. Subsequently the video is intercut with images of wolves in a snowy landscape, evoking wilderness. Then we are brought back to the waterway with footage of the canoe, a disjointed journey sped up to an impossible speed, as the canoe deftly navigates the water.

As Tagaq's song peaks, the video depicts a more urban setting evidenced by footage of ironworkers constructing a skyscraper and shots of Inuktitut syllabics being used on a typewriter. A floatplane arrives and then takes off. The now frantic pace of the song resonates with the footage of the Montreal subway, with cars arriving and departing as the clips flicker in a disjointed fashion. Near the end of the work, we see the final protagonist of the film, a young Indigenous woman with a modern short [End Page 331] haircut, dressed in a 1960s style green dress. The woman is, in fact, one of the 14 Indigenous women from across Canada who were trained as the hostesses for the Indians of Canada Pavilion—depicted in Indian Memento. Her inclusion is a reference to the pavilion's history as a key site for Indigenous self-representation, activism, and social justice. She alludes to the modernity and optimism of the exposition, as well as the nostalgia and ceremony imbued in the Canadian centennial. She walks the streets of Montreal, her path interspersed with clips of urban transportation—the streets, cars, subways, all revealing the movement and vitality of the city. As the work concludes, the video slows, focusing on the woman's contemplative face in the city.

Describing Mobilize, Monnet recounts the video as urgent and intense (Janisse 2015). In employing footage of Indigenous peoples from the NFB archives, Monnet recontextualizes representations that have lost resonance in the contemporary moment. In doing so, she creates a new narrative that speaks to possibility and futurity. Monnet explains the importance of the contemporary in Mobilize: "This is what I wanted to create: a film where people feel that Indigenous people are very much alive, moving forward, anchored in today's reality, vibrant and contemporary" (Dam 2015). Specifically, Monnet explains Mobilize as a "call for action," noting that skilled cultural production like the creation of snowshoes in the video is a means to mobilize skills, as well as bodies. In her words, "… It's also about being capable of movement, mobilizing ourselves to keep moving forward and encouraging people to act for political and social change" (Janisse 2015).

Monnet's work reframes footage and foregrounds an Indigenous perspective in a manner that is positive and expresses potential and possibility. Mobilize is an example of employing heritage in its broadest sense—a cinematic heritage associated with Canadian nationalism. This reworking or rather decolonizing of NFB archival footage plays with nostalgia for representations of Canada and reworks memories of location, transportation, and craft into an open-ended narrative connected to the current moment. Monnet explains that this tension between past and present is key to the work:

I wanted to speak about a people moving forward, a people that mobilizes itself and that is far from being stagnant. We are contemporary, culturally rooted and constantly on the move. I thought it was interesting to use old footage to speak about the future, to express an idea of contemporaneity while still honouring the past.

(Janisse 2015)

The aesthetic of the footage used in the video is also central to Monnet's play with the past, as the work evidences the texture of 16 mm film, evoking earlier media technologies despite its contemporary production. [End Page 332]

We suggest the archive as a third type of heritage mobilized in contemporary art practice to unsettle conventional heritage narratives and rethink Indigenous-settler relations in the current moment. Monnet animates the archive—conventionally understood as a static repository of information—and she turns it into a portal for reimagining the current moment and troubling the past. In employing the heritage of the NFB cinematic archives, Monnet has selected clips that also allude to broader categories of heritage, namely, material culture, such as the skilled labour involved in the production of snowshoes and canoes. In doing so, Mobilize also makes the case for cultural continuity between historic and contemporary Indigenous practices. It also is a powerful example of self-determined Indigenous representation whereby Indigenous perspectives are privileged and the Eurocentric voice and lens is dismantled.

Decolonial Aesthetics in Contemporary Video and Performance Art: What Can Heritage Do?

Heritage is largely mobilized to support hegemonic narratives of settler colonialism in Canada, employed by museums, communities, and government actors. In this article, we highlight how heritage is also being used by contemporary artists and used to critically engage with these narratives in Canada and complicate understandings of settler-Indigenous relations. Through assessment of recent works by Decter, Hoàng Nguyễn, and Monnet, we propose these artists demonstrate the ways in which contemporary art can employ heritage to diverse ends, mobilizing historic objects, information, aesthetics, and narratives. We identify this use as a form of decolonial aesthetics. This conceptual approach is a means of using heritage that opens up typically closed narratives of hegemonic power to prompt self-reflexive and critical understanding.

This stream of decolonial actions and aesthetics in art production is vital, given the larger context of the Canadian sesquicentennial celebrations. As previously identified, heritage has been at the fore of many Canada 150 initiatives. Moreover, many heritage institutions have used the sesquicentennial as a platform for new cultural programming, including, in 2017, the restaged Indigenous and Canadian galleries at the National Gallery of Canada and the reopening of the Canadian Museum of History, which features a reinstallation of its permanent collection. Decolonial aesthetics re/uses heritage to prompt reflection, make visible new ideas, and foreground undercurrents subsumed or obscured by conventional heritage mobilizations. We argue that Decter's, Hoàng Nguyễn's, and Monnet's decolonial aesthetics demonstrates how heritage—from the canoe, the "Centennial Song," and the archive—can unpack the complexities of the Canadian state in order to imagine a new way forward. [End Page 333]

In terms of the politics of display, the works addressed in this article are broadly categorized within the realm of professional art production—and are largely viewed within public museums in Canada. That said, two works are outliers here: Decter's performance memoration #2 and Monet's work Mobilize. The former took place in a public library at Queen's University, as well in City Park in Kingston. While documentation of memoration #2 has been displayed in professional contexts—for instance, in 2017 at the Campbell River Art Gallery—the fact that the original performance was situated in two distinct public spaces outside of the conventional gallery context means that the work was seen and engaged in by diverse audiences, beyond that of the typical art viewer. Mobilize has a different facet of visibility, in that it is accessible online via the NFB website. The flexibility of the work, owed in part to its medium, is such that it premiered at TIFF in 2015, was recently installed at the Ryerson Image Centre entryway, and is part of the National Gallery of Canada's Contemporary Galleries rehang, which opened in the summer of 2017.

Both Decter and Monet's works have been exhibited in many sites, thus engaging with diverse audiences and providing increased access to decolonial arts strategies and visual languages. Our arguments in this article are based on the consideration and analysis of the representational messages in the works by Decter, Hoàng Nguyễn, and Monnet, rather than specific ways that audiences function in relation to these works of art. That is, we do not engage with the broad question of the reception of art and how this functions. We do, however, acknowledge that there are multifaceted ways that viewers can engage with the artworks addressed in this study. Moreover, we argue that these works all invite audiences to witness decolonizing methodologies and to critically consider understandings of Canadian heritage.

Of course, the works will resonate with different viewers in a variety of ways, due to their own personal value systems and ancestral and cultural heritage, among other social conditions, such as gender, race, and class. Ultimately, the works assessed in this article invest in activating sites from which audiences of diverse backgrounds can witness decolonial aesthetics/relations: the dual projects of placing Indigenous perspectives and self-determined representation at the forefront and the unearthing of colonial apparatuses and unsettling of settler apathy, privilege, and society. In her recent study of land-right conflicts in Canada and the United States, Mackey calls for settler accountability and acknowledgement of Indigenous sovereignty—predicated, she argues, on a "fundamental shift in settler common-sense frameworks, a shift in concepts for thinking about and experiencing relations of power within spaces" (Mackey 2016, 11, 12). Decolonial aesthetics, we suggest, is one way to activate discussions around settler accountability that Mackey calls for. Moreover, decolonial aesthetics provides an affective means to shift discussions—including accountability—around settler colonial relationships in Canada. [End Page 334]

In the 2013 special issue of FUSE on decolonial aesthetics, Decter and Taunton conclude by advocating for the potential of heritage. In their words, "Just as Canadian visual culture and aesthetics have clearly played a powerful role in perpetuating colonial paradigms, they have significant potential to contribute to these conversations as a vital catalyst in encountering and unsettling settler colonialism" (39). In the same issue of the magazine, Garneau argues for the necessity of engagement with complex processes of colonialism: "Cultural decolonization is the perpetual struggle to make both Indigenous and settler peoples aware of the complexity of our shared colonial condition, and this legacy informs every person and institution in these territories" (Garneau 2013). A potential site of activation for cultural decolonization is the gallery or public museum. However, to generate productive decolonial relations and sites from which audience members of diverse ancestry can learn about treaty relations, Indigenous knowledges and perspectives, and processes of colonialism requires fundamental commitments made by institutions to structural and policy changes in every area of governance (including board, management, research, education, and public relations). To not seriously and comprehensively undertake the task of decolonizing Canadian cultural institutions risks further co-option and appropriation of Indigenous labour, knowledges, and methodologies. To date, institutional efforts in Canada to decolonize have been measured. For one prominent example, which has been led by Indigenous curators (Heather Igloliorte, Julie Nagam, and Jaimie Isaac) along with Indigenous knowledge keepers, the Winnipeg Art Gallery recently announced its commitment to Indigenous arts and to decolonization by implementing an Indigenous advisory circle (Turner 2017).

The artists we have addressed in this article are but a small sample of a larger group of contemporary practitioners engaging with heritage as well as generating decolonizing arts-based methodologies/strategies. As we finished writing this text, the exhibition Resurgence/Insurgence opened at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, curated by Isaac (Anishinaabe) and Nagam (Métis/German/Syrian). Nagam and Isaac conclude in their catalogue essay:

The artists have created artworks that explore themes of activism, renewal, refusal, resistance, and survival in cultural, social, and political contexts. These are political, spiritual, and cultural actions towards honouring ancestral continuance and a meaningful connection to the land and land-based practices within the arts and the social and political sphere. Acknowledging and restoring relationships with the land, as well as with all our nations and relations, is paramount for the insurgence and resurgence movement.

(2017, 21) [End Page 335]

Featuring 29 contemporary Indigenous artists from across Turtle Island, the show includes the 2017 work Three Thousand by urban Inuk artist Asinnajaq or Isabella Weetaluktuk. In this short film she presents animations together with footage from the NFB archives (Winnipeg Art Gallery 2017, 29). This active decolonization of Eurocentric representations of Inuit peoples and cultures showcases yet again a critical engagement with Canadian heritage, and at the same time creates new imaginings of past, present, and future Inuit self-determination and visual sovereignty. Addressing this film, Inuk scholar Igloliorte writes that Three Thousand "explores change and connection in the North, showing archival Inuit resilience stretching over a century" (2017, 38). We close with this mention of Asinnajaq's work, as it provides further evidence that contemporary art practice can help us to reconsider the relationships and dynamics with heritage in a settler colonial context, bringing these complicated legacies to bear on the contemporary situation. Furthermore, Asinnajaq's video and the scholarly and curatorial work of Igloliorte, Isaac, and Nagam, among others, showcases the significant contributions made by Indigenous artists, scholars, and thinkers toward Indigenous resurgence, as well as decolonizing the cultural and institutional landscapes of Canada. [End Page 336]