Holding Place: Resistance, Reframing, and Relationality in the Representation of Indigenous History

Abstract

This article explores questions of commemoration in Canadian history from the perspective of two Indigenous historians: one who has engaged in public history through performance art (Anderson) and another who is building a career studying public history (Groat). Our interest lies not only in commemorative acts related to Canadian history that we must resist and reframe but also in questions of how Indigenous peoples might hold place through our own commemorative practices. The article is shaped around recollections of performance art that Anderson has conducted with the public history troupe, the Kika’ige Historical Society – work that evolved in response to celebrations of Canada’s sesquicentennial. We argue that, as demonstrated by the Kika’ige Historical Society, Indigenous peoples have resisted, reframed, and engaged in processes of relationality to create new ways of sharing Indigenous histories. We document Canadian commemorative monuments and acts that have invited resistance from Indigenous peoples. This resistance started in the early twentieth century and has increased exponentially in recent years. Indigenous peoples are now reframing colonial informed commemoration and asserting their own practices that include renaming sites in Indigenous languages, engaging ceremony and public art, and calling for policy change. We celebrate contemporary Indigenous commemorations as relational practices that distinguish themselves by their engagement with the land and the integration of human, natural, and spirit worlds.