Remembering Vancouver's Disappeared Women: Settler Colonialism and the Difficulty of Inheritance PDF
Preview Remembering Vancouver's Disappeared Women: Settler Colonialism and the Difficulty of Inheritance
REMEMBERING VANCOUVER’S DISAPPEARED WOMEN Settler Colonialism and the Difficulty of Inheritance Between the late 1970s and the early 2000s, at least sixty-five women, many of them members of Indigenous communities, were found mur- dered or reported missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. In a work driven by the urgency of this ongoing crisis, which extends across the country, Amber Dean offers a timely, critical analysis of the public representations, memorials, and activist strategies that brought the story of Vancouver’s disappeared women to the attention of a wider public. Remembering Vancouver’s Disappeared Women traces what lives on from the violent loss of so many women from the same neigh- bourhood. Dean interrogates representations that aim to humanize the mur- dered or missing women, asking how these might inadvertently feed into the presumed dehumanization of sex work, Indigeneity, and liv- ing in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Taking inspiration from Indigenous women’s research, activism, and art, she challenges read- ers to reckon with our collective implication in the ongoing violence of settler colonialism and to accept responsibility for addressing its count- less injustices. amber dean is an assistant professor in the Gender Studies and Fem- inist Research Program and the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. This page intentionally left blank AMBER DEAN Remembering Vancouver’s Disappeared Women Settler Colonialism and the Difficulty of Inheritance UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 2015 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4426-4454-0 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-1275-4 (paper) Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks. _____________________________________________________________________ Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Dean, Amber Richelle, 1975–, author Remembering Vancouver’s disappeared women : settler colonialism and the difficulty of inheritance / Amber Dean. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4454-0 (bound) ISBN 978-1-4426-1275-4 (paperback) 1. Native women − Violence against − Social aspects − British Columbia − Downtown-Eastside (Vancouver). 2. Women − Violence against − Social aspects − British Columbia − Downtown-Eastside (Vancouver). 3. Missing persons − British Columbia − Downtown-Eastside (Vancouver) − Social conditions. 4. Memorials − Social aspects − British Columbia − Vancouver. 5. Collective memory − Social aspects − British Columbia − Vancouver. 6. Missing persons in art − Social aspects − British Columbia − Vancouver. I. Title. HV6250.4.W65D42 2015 362.8808209711’33 C2015-905833-3 _____________________________________________________________________ This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an Ontario government agency. an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement of Canada du Canada For Sharon, who lives on in countless ways and for Howie and Drew, who imagine otherwise This page intentionally left blank We inherit not “what really happened” to the dead but what lives on from that happening, what is conjured from it, how past generations and events occupy the force fields of the present, how they claim us, and how they haunt, plague, and inspirit our imaginations and visions for the future. Wendy Brown, Politics Out of History When you see, in a photograph or in a hat or in a foot print, the hand of the state, the other door, the water and what is down there, you have seen the ghostly matter: the lost beloveds and the force that made them disposable. When you have a profane illumination of these matters, when you know in a way you did not know before, then you have been notified of your involvement. You are already involved, implicated, in one way or another, and this is why, if you don’t banish it, kill it, or reduce it to something you can already manage, when it appears to you, the ghost will inaugurate the necessity of doing something about it. Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xiii Preface xvii Introduction: Inheriting What Lives On 3 1 The Present Pasts of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside 33 2 Following Ghosts: Different Knowings, Knowing Differently 58 3 Looking at Images of Vancouver’s Disappeared Women: Troubling Desires to “Humanize” 74 4 Shadowing the “Missing Women” Story: “Squaw Men,” Whores, and Other Queer(ed) Figures 99 5 Memory’s Difficult Returns: Memorializing Vancouver’s Disappeared Women 118 Conclusion: Reckoning (for the Present) 141 Notes 153 Bibliography 169 Index 183
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