Afterword: Historical geographies of colonialism: comments on the intergenerational bridge

Abstract

Bonheur de ces ouvrages de critique americaine qui ne denigrent pas, ne denoncent pas, mais plongent dans la problematique de l'oeuvre critiquee, cherchent a la rendre la plus consistante possible, a en degager toutes les possibilites pour que le travail effectue puisse s'inscrire dans une histoire cumulative. (Francois Ewald, >, Magazine litteraire, no 219, 1984, p. 70). When Caroline Desbiens invited me to participate as a discussant at a Canadian Association of Geographers session entitled 'Historical Geography: Emerging Themes and Continuities' (London, Ontario, June 2005), (1) my first reaction was to tell myself that I would be more inspired to listen than to comment. However, the invitation was so kind and wishful as to its benefits to the young Canadian generation of historical geographers that I finally accepted, in the hope that my contribution would serve the cause to which it was intended. And indeed, while the general purpose of the session was to explore how historical geography has been enriched through exchange with other disciplines, and how these exchanges have contributed to reinforcing historical geography as a body of know-how and knowledge, I was to pinpoint the orientations of the emerging historical geography, and to say in what ways it was similar or different to that of former generations. One way I had to answer these questions was to find common issues between the papers and to put them in a larger perspective in order to trace their more general trends. One clear conclusion I reached while listening to the papers that were presented was that this new historical geography is greatly interested in people who have been forgotten by history (>), that is to say, those who were marginalized by political, economical and social systems. For example, during the colonial period (the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), and again during the colonization era (1815-1930) in Canada, most propagandists tried to reassure potential immigrants of the need not to fear the Native (and Metis) people, reminding them that they were Christianized and well cared for by the missionaries. At the same time, Natives were dispossessed of their land and put into reserves, where they would lose their way of life and even their memory of the land. And since the era was patriarchal, Native women were confined in domestic tasks in order to be fully brought into the Euro-colonial way of life. How should one study these forgotten people? One such way is to reconstitute the processes that organized and structured the land, meaning how Native and Metis homelands were territorialized (how they were made a 'place of living'), how they were de-territorialized (how they were transformed and even deconstructed from the outside) and re-territorialized (how they were reshaped by the descendants of the Native and Metis people). Another approach is to analyze the interaction between local actors and deciders coming from the outside, in order to see how the local people resist or adapt to the various changes imposed upon them. What this new generation of historical geographers suggests in fact is to reconstruct past and present geographies from a particular perspective (the geography of territorialities) and a particular preoccupation (the search for meanings). At the same time, they wish to assess the impact of urbanity (which is the superior manifestation of Western civilization in the fields of law, religion, art and science) on local territorialities. These goals are to be achieved by looking at the four interconnected fields that define territoriality: the field of language (for example, place naming); the field of power (for example, the models imposed upon young Native children by Euro-colonial educators); the field of economy (for example, the impacts of new technologies on traditional ways of life); and the field of culture (for example, the ways Natives build, transform and adapt their habitat). …