Language, Authority and Silence: Storytelling and Oral History in Canada

The session will be united by a focus on language, authority, and silence, one of the suggested conference themes. In my paper, I will examine the Canadian government’s handling of oral history in relation to land claims. In particular, I want to look at its creation of an oral history “expert” whose role is to defeat Aboriginal claimants who attempt to advance oral history evidence in court. 

The paper will analyse his depictions of oral history and show how he shapes a story to discredit Aboriginal oral traditions. Roewan Crowe’s paper explores the meanings of the Hollywood Western film, arguing that the collision of colonial history and Hollywood Western narratives creates a space where the popular imaginary and the real blur. The classic Western film has colonized and falsified history, producing a powerful colonial story that has layered itself upon the land and our bodies. In this paper she explores these narrative ghosts, left behind by the death of the western genre, paying particular attention to the counter narratives of the “Anti-western.” She claims and investigates this genre as a site of resistance and as a useful form to mobilize the untold stories of the West – tales of exile, dispossession and trauma.  Kathleen Buddle-Crowe’s paper will discuss the use of oral history to trace Aboriginal women’s creation of social service organizations in Winnipeg.

The 50-Day Expert: Oral History and Land Claims Politics in Canada

Robin Jarvis Brownlie

University of Manitoba (Canada)

Queer Grit: Feminist Encounters with the Hollywood Western

Roewan Crowe

University of Manitoba (Canada)

Identity as an Audible Set of Practices in Urban Aboriginal Women's Oral Histories

Kathleen Buddle-Crowe

University of Manitoba (Canada)

Abstracts/Resumenes de las Ponencias

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