GEOGRAPHY 537
UBC, Winter Term
Instructors: Cole Harris and Graeme Wynn
This seminar course turns around the land question and the post-colonial literature as they bear on British Columbia, and does so by considering a variety of primary and secondary texts, some of which are listed below. In initial discussion, we may decide to delete some of these topics and expand others. The course will be considerably tailored to student interests but, however focused, will involve a mix of theoretical texts and others drawn from the archives. Students will be expected to lead some of the discussions. The mark for the course will be based, in approximately equal proportions, on seminar participation and on an essay of not more than twenty-five pages. If arrangements can be made, we will give several days in February to reading, conversation, and field investigation either in Clayoquot or Nootka Sound.
Seminars and Readings
(A provisional list, subject to discussion. Depending on student interests,
we will probably emphasize some parts of this list and delete others)
1) Introduction
2) Disease and depopulation
- Robert Boyd, "Demographic History, 1774-1874," in W. Suttles,
ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 7, Northwest Coast
(1990) -- an outline of B.C. epidemics
- W.M. Denevan, The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, 2nd ed.,
(1992) -- a review of current estimates of hemispheric pre and early
contact populations
- Cole Harris, "Voices of Disaster: smallpox around the Strait of Georgia
in 1782," Ethnohistory, 41:4 (fall, 1994), 591-126.
-Brian Hayden and Jim Spafford, "The Keatley Creek Site and Corporate
Group Archaeology, BC Studies, 99 (autumn, 1993), 106-139.
- David Henige, "Their Numbers Became Thick: Native American Historical
Demography as Expiation," in James A. Clifton, The Invented Indian:
cultural fictions and government policies (1990), ch. 9.
- Daniel T. Reff, Disease, Depopulation, and Culture Change in Northwestern
New Spain, 1518-1764 (1991), ch. 1, ch. 5 (243-249), and ch. 6.
3) Toponymy, maps, and geopolitics
- Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay (1987), ch. 1
- Daniel Clayton, "Islands of Truth: Vancouver Island from Captain
Cook to the Beginnings of Colonization," Ph.D. thesis, UBC, 1995, Part
III (photostat)
-J. B. Harley, "Rereading the Maps of the Columbian Encounter,"
Annals, AAG,
Vol. 82, no. 3, Sept, 1992, 523-542.
- Manuel Quimper, "Journal," June 23, 1790. (photostat)
- George Vancouver, The Voyages, II, 569ff (photostat)
4) Commercial capital beyond the state
- Frank Ermatinger, "Notes Connected with the Clallam Expedition
fitted out under the command of Alx R. McLeod, Esquire," (photostat)
- Fort Langley Journal, Aug 27 - Sept. 15, 1830 (photostat)
- Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1979), pt. 1, ch. 2
- Cole Harris, "Strategies of Power in the Cordilleran Fur Trade,"
(photostat); published in shortened form as "Towards a Geography of
White Power in the Cordilleran Fur Trade," The Canadian Geographer,
39, 2 (1995), 131-140.
-Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation
(1992), 146-155
- E.E. Rich, Peter Skene Ogden's Snake Country Journal, 1824-15, 1825-26
(1950), extracts (photostat)
- Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects (1991), ch. 3.
5) Colonial discourse theory
- Jean and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity,
Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (1991), ch.3
-Catharine Hall, "Imperial Man: Edward Eyre in Australasia and the
West Indies 1833-66," in Bill Schwartz (ed.), The Expansion of England:
Race, Ethnicity and Cultural History (1996), ch. 6.
- Tina Loo, Making Law, Order, and Authority in British Columbia, 1821-1871
(1994), ch. 7
- Edward Said, Orientalism (1979), ch. 1, pts. 1-2 (31-73)
- Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government
(1994), chs. 1 & 2 (11-65)
- Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (1990),
ch. 7
6) Violence
- James Douglas, "Address of His Excellency the Governor to the
Inhabitants at Fort Yale," Sept. 12, 1858 (photostat)
- C.C. Gardiner, "Fraser River of British Columbia," Nov. 17,
1858 (photostat)
- Anthony Giddens, The Nation State and Violence (1987), ch. 7.
_ Cole Harris, "The Fraser Canyon Encountered," in The Resettlement
of British Columbia: essays on colonialism and geographical change (1997),
ch. 4.
- Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism
in the Nineteenth century (1981), chs. 4 & 5.
- Tina Loo, Making Law, Order, and Authority, ch. 3
- E.B. Lytton to Colonel Moody, Downing Street, Oct. 29, 1858 (photostat)
- Captain H.M. Snyder to James Douglas, Fort Yale, Aug 28, 1858 (photostat)
7) Land policy/disciplinary power
- Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism (1991) ch. 10 ("Census, Map, Musuem")
- Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pt. 3, ch. 1, 135-149.
- James Douglas, Diary, January, 1853 (photostat)
- Cole Harris, "Making the Lower Mainland," in The Resettlement
of British Columbia (1997), ch. 3.
- Herman Merivale, Lectures on Colonization and the Colonies (1861),
Lecture XVIII (photostat)
- Indian Act, 1876. (photostat)
- Hamar Foster, "Letting Go the Bone: The Idea of Indian Title in British
Columbia, 1849-1927," in Hamar Foster and John McLaren, eds., Essays
in the History of Canadian Law: British Columbia and the Yukon (1995),
ch. 2.
- Royal Commission On Indian Affairs for the Province of British Columbia,
Meeting with the Boston Bar Band, Nov. 17, 1914 (photostat)
8) Time-space compression
- William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the
Great West (1991), ch. 2, ("Rails and Water")
- Cole Harris, "The Struggle with Distance," in The Resettlement
of British Columbia (1997), ch. 6.
- David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (1989), ch. 14 ("Time
and space as sources of social power")
- Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (1983),
ch. 8 ("Distance")
9) Pastoral Power
- Brett Christophers, "Savagery and salvation: Anglican missionary
work in colonial British Columbia," ms submitted to UBC Press
- Jean and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity,
Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (1991), ch. 6 ("Conversion
and Conversation") and ch. 8 ("Conclusion")
- Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1979), Part 3, ch.
3 ("The Carceral")
- Joseph Rouse, "Power/Knowledge,"in Gary Gutting, ed., The
Cambridge Companion to Foucault (1994), ch. 4.
- Margaret Whitehead, ed., They Call Me Father: Memoirs
of Father Nicolas Coccola (1988), "Introduction"
- Lettre de Mgr Durieu au R.P. le Jacq sur la direction des sauvages, Nov.
1853 (photostat)
- Rev. John Sheepshanks, 'Lecture on the...Red Indians of the West,"
Columbia Mission Report, vol. 6 (1864), 39-50 (photostat)
10) Resistance
- Douglas Harris, "The Nlha'kápmx Meeting at Lytton, 1879,
and the Rule of Law," BC Studies (winter 1995-96), 5-28.
- Memorial to Sir Wilfred Laurier, Premier of the Dominion of Canada, from
the Chiefs of the Shuswap, Okanagan, and Couteau Tribes of British Columbia,
Aug. 25, 1910 (photostat)
- Wendy Wickwire, "We Shall Drink from the Stream and So Shall You:
Anthropology and Native Resistance in South Central British Columbia, 1908-1922,"
(photostat)
- Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (1994), Chs. 4 and 5 ("Of
Mimicry and Man" and "Sly Civility")
11) Ecological imperialism: the forest
- M.A. Grainger, Woodsmen of the West
- Roderick Haig-Brown, Timber, ch. 4
- Nancy Langston, Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares. The Paradox
of Old Growth in the Inland West (1995), pp. 3-10 ("Introduction")
and pp. 296-306 ("Conclusion)
- Richard White, Land Use, Environment, and Social Change. The
Shaping of Island County, Washington (1980) pp. 77-93 ("The Ox
and the Axe") and pp. 94-112 ("The Creation of a New Forest")
-
12) Ecological imperialism: the rivers
- Arthur F. McEvoy, "Toward an Interactive Theory of Nature and
Culture: Ecology, Production and Cognition in the California Fishing Industry,"
in D. Worster, ed., The Ends of the Earth: Perspective on modern environmental
history (1988), 211-229.
- M. P. Marchak, "What Happens When Common Property Becomes Uncommon?,"
BC Studies 80 (winter, 1988-89), pp. 3-23.
- Dianne Newell, Tangled Webs of History: Indians and the Law in Canada's
Pacific Coast Fisheries (1993), chs. 3-5, pp. 46-121.
- Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River
(1995), ch. 4 ("Salmon")
13) Immigrant society in colonial space
- Nan Bourgon, Rubber Boots for Dancing and other memories
of pioneer life in the Bulkley Valley (1979), (photostat)
- David Demeritt and Cole Harris, "Farming and Rural Life,"
in The Resettlement of British Columbia (1997), ch. 8.
- Robert Galois and Cole Harris, "Recalibrating Society: The Population
Geography of British Columbia in 1881," The Canadian Geographer,
38, 1 (1994), 37-53.
Cole Harris, "Making an Immigrant Society," in The Resettlement
of British Columbia (1996) ch. 9.
- Elizabeth Phillips, and Cole Harris, eds., Letters from Windermere
(1984) (browse)