Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture

255 Pages·2003·2.5 MB·English

by  Renée Hulan

101873_90.fm Page i Friday, January 18, 2002 6:40 PM
Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture
In Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture Renée
Hulan disputes the notion that the north is a source of distinct
collective identity for Canadians. Through a synthesis of critical,
historical, and theoretical approaches to northern subjects in lit-
erary studies, she challenges the epistemology used to support
this idea.
By investigating mutually dependent categories of identity in
literature that depicts northern peoples and places, Hulan pro-
vides a descriptive account of representative genres in which the
north figures as a central theme – including autobiography,
adventure narrative, ethnography, fiction, poetry, and travel writ-
ing. She considers each of these diverse genres in terms of the
way it explains the cultural identity of a nation formed from the
settlement of immigrant peoples on the lands of dispossessed
indigenous peoples. Reading against the background of contem-
porary ethnographic, literary, and cultural theory, Hulan
maintains that the collective Canadian identity idealized in many
works representing the north does not occur naturally but is arti-
ficially constructed in terms of characteristics inflected by
historically contingent ideas of gender and race, such as self-
sufficiency, independence, and endurance, and that these charac-
teristics are evoked to justify the nationhood of the Canadian state.
renée hulan is assistant professor in the Department of English
at Saint Mary’s University and the editor of Native North America:
Critical and Cultural Perspectives.
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mcgill-queen’s native and northern series
bruce g. trigger, editor
1 When the Whalers Were 6 Otter Skins, Boston Ships,
Up North and China Goods
Inuit Memories from the The Maritime Fur Trade
Eastern Arctic of the Northwest Coast,
Dorothy Harley Eber 1785–1741
James R. Gibson
2 The Challenge of
Arctic Shipping 7 From Wooden Ploughs
Science, Environmental to Welfare
Assessment, and Human The Story of the Western
Values Reserves
David L. VanderZwaag and Helen Buckley
Cynthia Lamson, Editors
8 In Business for Ourselves
3 Lost Harvests Northern Entrepreneurs
Prairie Indian Reserve Wanda A. Wuttunee
Farmers and Government
Policy 9 For an Amerindian
Sarah Carter Autohistory
An Essay on the
4 Native Liberty, Crown Foundations of a Social
Sovereignty Ethic
The Existing Aboriginal Georges E. Sioui
Right of Self-Government
in Canada 10 Strangers Among Us
Bruce Clark David Woodman
5 Unravelling the Franklin 11 When the North Was Red
Mystery Aboriginal Education
Inuit Testimony in Soviet Siberia
David C. Woodman Dennis A. Bartels and
Alice L. Bartels
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12 From Talking Chiefs to 18 Social and Environmental
a Native Corporate Elite Impacts of the James Bay
The Birth of Class and Hydroelectric Project
Nationalism among Edited by
Canadians James F. Hornig
Marybelle Mitchell
19 Saqiyuq
13 Cold Comfort Stories from the Lives
My Love Affair with of Three Inuit Women
the Arctic Nancy Wachowich in
Graham W. Rowley collaboration with
Apphia Agalakti Awa,
14 The True Spirit and Rhoda Kaukjak Katsak,
Original Intent of Treaty 7 and Sandra Pikujak Katsak
Treaty 7 Elders and Tribal
Council with Walter 20 Justice in Paradise
Hildebrandt, Dorothy First Bruce Clark
Rider, and Sarah Carter
21 Aboriginal Rights and
15 This Distant and Self-Government
Unsurveyed Country The Canadian and
A Woman’s Winter at Mexican Experience
Baffin Island, 1857–1858 in North American
W. Gillies Ross Perspective
Edited by Curtis Cook and
16 Images of Justice Juan D. Lindau
Dorothy Harley Eber
22 Harvest of Souls
17 Capturing Women The Jesuit Missions and
The Manipulation of Colonialism in North
Cultural Imagery in America, 1632–1650
Canada’s Prairie West Carole Blackburn
Sarah A. Carter
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23 Bounty and Benevolence 27 Alone in Silence
A Documentary History European Women in
of Saskatchewan Treaties the Canadian North
Arthur J. Ray, Jim Miller, Barbara Kelcey
and Frank Tough
28 The Arctic Voyages
24 The People of Denendeh of Martin Frobisher
Ethnohistory of the An Elizabethan Adventure
Indians of Canada’s Robert McGhee
Northwest Territories
June Helm 29 Northern Experience and
the Myths of Canadian
25 The Marshall Decision and Culture
Native Rights Renée Hulan
Ken Coates
26 The Flying Tiger
Women Shamans and
Storytellers of the Amur
Kira Van Deusen
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Northern Experience
and the
Myths of Canadian Culture
renée hulan
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca
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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2002
isbn 0-7735-2227-1 (cloth)
isbn 0-7735-2228-x (paper)
Legal deposit first quarter 2002
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free, and printed
with vegetable-based, low voc inks.
This book has been published with the help of grants from the
Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds
provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada, and the Senate Research Committee of Saint Mary’s University.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges
the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for its activities.
It also acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts
for its publishing program.
National Library of Canada
Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hulan, Renée, 1965–
Northern experience and the myths of Canadian culture
(McGill-Queen’s native and northern series: 29)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-7735-2227-1 (bnd)
isbn 0-7735-2228-x (pbk)
1. Canadian literature – History and criticism. 2. Canada, Northern, in
literature. 3. National characteristics, Canadian, in literature. 4. Identity
(Psychology) in literature. i. Title. ii. Series.
ps8101.n67h84 2002 c810.9’32719 c2001-901557-7
pr9185.5.n67h84 2002
Typeset in Palatino 10.5/13
by Caractéra inc., Quebec City
Every effort has been made to locate copyright holders. Any omissions
should be brought to the attention of the publisher for inclusion in
subsequent printings.
Excerpts from “Archie Belaney, 1931” in Grey Owl: The Mystery
of Archie Belaney by Armand Garnet Ruffo used by permission
of Coteau Books.
Excerpts from “In the Idiom of the Sun” by Rienzi Crusz used
by permission of the author.
Excerpts from Naked with Summer in Your Mouth by Al Purdy used
by permission, McClelland & Stewart, Ltd. The Canadian Publishers.
Excerpts from Poems of the Inuit edited by John Robert Colombo used
by permission of Oberon Press.
Excerpts from Gwendolyn MacEwen’s Terror and Erebus used
by permission granted by the author’s family.
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: A Northern Nation? 3
1 Speaking Man to Man: Ethnography and
the Representation of the North 29
2 “Everybody Likes the Inuit”: Inuit Revision
and Representations of the North 60
3 “To Fight, Defeat, and Dominate”:
From Adventure to Mastery 98
4 Lovers and Strangers: Reimagining
the Mythic North 138
Epilogue: Unsettling the Northern Nation 179
Notes 189
References 201
Index 235
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Acknowledgments
The research for this book was undertaken with the help of a
doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada and published with a grant from the
Aid to Scholarly Publishing Program. The preparation of the
manuscript was supported by a Senate Research Grant from Saint
Mary’s University.
Thanks to the Canadian scholars who shared their expertise and
knowledge with me, and especially those who read and com-
mented on earlier versions of this study, including Margery Fee,
Sherrill E. Grace, Robert Lecker, John Lennox, Brian Trehearne,
Sarah Westphal, Gary Wihl, and John Wolforth, and the Aid to
Scholarly Publishing Program’s two anonymous readers. Discus-
sions with colleagues and friends encouraged and sustained me
as I worked on the manuscript, thanks in particular to Dale Blake,
Teresa Heffernan, Shelley Hulan, Susie O’Brien, and Linda Warley.
Philip Cercone, Joan McGilvray, Joanne Pisano, John Zucchi, and
Lesley Barry of McGill-Queen’s University Press were instrumen-
tal in seeing the manuscript through to publication. Sincere thanks
to Heather Egger, my research assistant and a graduate of the
Linguistics Program at Saint Mary’s University, for her diligent
efforts. Finally, to Michael E. Vance, my deepest gratitude.
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