Storied Communities

Narratives of Contact and Arrival in Constituting Political Community

Edited by Hester Lessard, Rebecca Johnson, and Jeremy Webber
Categories: Law & Legal Studies, Political Science, Canadian Political Science, History, Canadian History, Indigenous Studies, Indigenous Law, Social Sciences, Immigration, Emigration & Transnationalism, Anthropology
Publisher: UBC Press
Hardcover : 9780774818797, 384 pages, December 2010
Paperback : 9780774818803, 384 pages, July 2011
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774818810, 384 pages, January 2011

Table of contents

Part 1: Introduction

1 Introduction / Hester Lessard, Rebecca Johnson, and Jeremy Webber

Part 2: Narratives of Contact and Arrival in the Canadian Political Space

2 Canadian Sovereignty and Universal History / Michael Asch

3 Historicizing Narratives of Arrival: The Other Indian Other / Audrey Macklin

4 The Conceit of Sovereignty: Toward Post-Colonial Technique / Brenna Bhanda 

Part 3: Narratives and Narrative Form

5 Show Me Yours / Richard Van Camp

6 Horseflies, Haireaters, and Bulldogs: In Conversation with Richard Van Camp / Blanca Schorcht

7 Counter-Narratives of Arrival and Return: Testing the Interstices of Resistance / Sneja Gunew

8 Common Ground around the Tower of Babel / J. Edward Chamberlin

Part 4: Contact and Its Narratives

9 Juxtaposing Contact Stories in Canada / Anne Godlewska

10 Native Women, the Body, Land, and Narratives of Contact and Arrival / Kim Anderson

11 The Batman Legend: Remembering and Forgetting the History of Possession and Dispossession / Bain Attwood

12 Layered Narratives in Site-Specific “Wild” Places / Jacinta Ruru

Part 5: Arrival and Its Narratives

13 Narratives of Origins and the Emergence of the European Union / Patricia Tuitt

14 “Robbed of a Different Life”: Alternative Histories, Interrupted Futures / Susan Bibler Coutin

Part 6: Institutional Implications: How Would We Do Things Differently If We Took Narrative Seriously?

15 Toward a Shared Narrative of Reconciliation: Developments in Canadian Aboriginal Rights Law / S. Ronald Stevenson

16 Hoquotist: Reorienting through Storied Practice / Johnny Mack

17 Proof and Narrative: “Reproducing the Facts” in Refugee Claims / Donald Galloway

Part 7: Theoretical Implications: Where Do We Go from Here?

18 Differentiating Liberating Stories from Oppressive Narratives: Memory, Land, and Justice / Martha Nandorfy

Contributors; Index

By bringing to light the links between narratives of contact and narratives of arrival in settler societies, this volume opens up new ways to imagine, sustain, and transform political communities.

Description

Political communities are defined, and often contested, through stories. Scholars have long recognized that two foundational sets of stories – narratives of contact and narratives of arrival – helped to define settler societies. Storied Communities disrupts the assumption that Indigenous and immigrant identities fall into two separate streams of analysis. The authors juxtapose narratives of contact and narratives of arrival as they explore key themes such as narrative form, the nature of storytelling in the political realm, and the institutional and theoretical implications of foundation narratives. By doing so, they open up new ways to imagine, sustain, and transform political communities.

Reviews

The book is a welcome addition to the recent work of scholars such as Andrea Smith, Patrick Wolfe, Sherene Razack and Sunera Thobani, who have drawn fundamental connections between the structural elimination of Native peoples and the racialization of (and violence against) non-Native minority groups in settler colonial states.

- Bruno Cornellier, Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies, University of Manitoba