Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 149: Performing History & Land in Vancouver’s Stanley Park — with Selena Couture
Speakers: Kathy Feng, Am Johal, Selena Couture
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Kathy Feng 0:02
Hello, I’m Kathy Feng with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Our guest for this episode is Selena Couture, a scholar and an associate professor in the Dramatic Arts department at the University of Alberta. She’s in conversation with our host, Am Johal, about her research around Indigenous theatre, performance and decolonizing practices, and her latest book, Against the Current and Into the Light: Performing History and Land in Coast Salish Territories and Vancouver's Stanley Park. Enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 0:43
Welcome to Below the Radar. Delighted you could join us again. This week, we have our special guest Selena Couture joining us. Selena is an associate professor in drama at the University of Alberta and the author of Against the Current and Into the Light: Performing History and Land in Coast Salish Territories and Vancouver's Stanley Park. Welcome, Selena.
Selena Couture 1:05
Thanks, Am. It's so nice to join you today and get to talk with you on this podcast. I really appreciate the invitation.
Am Johal 1:12
Yeah, wondering if, why don't we begin with you introducing yourself a little bit?
Selena Couture 1:17
Sure. You already introduced me in terms of my academic position. I'm an associate prof in drama at U of A, which is on Treaty 6 territory, Métis Region IV, Amiskwaciy Waskahikan. And also when I introduce myself, particularly because of the nature of the scholar scholarship I do, I always try to be really clear about my positionality in relation to it. So I always like to introduce myself as an 11th generation descendant of French settlers and fifth generation descendant of Irish settlers, who came to the lands that are known as Eastern Canada now, like, over 400 years ago, and my family has lived on many treaty territories over the years. Treaty six and my association with U of A is the most recent one for me. And I'm certainly, it's a process of learning what does it mean to uphold treaty for me in this heritage that I have, and then I also really want to be sure to, to explain that for the last 30 years I've lived here and we're recording this today. And unseeded traditional ancestral territory but held by the Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh peoples and the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim-speaking Squamish peoples. And I really want and so much of I mean so much about we'll talk about today will, will unfold this, but living here for these last 30 years has really been a place where I've learned to to unlearn a lot of what it what it means to be a settler colonizer in this place. I certainly wouldn't say that it's a finished, finished process by any means. But I have learned from Coast Salish peoples and from a lot of this work that I did for this book, what it means to try to be rather than a settler here, or, as Dylan Robinson calls it xwelítem, which means like a hungry, the hungry ones, the starving ones, how to be in a visitor, which in Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language, it's a word that's constructed out of two words that mean essentially to walk alongside. And so this is the process of learning for me. And this book certainly has was, is a process of how I learned that and also a product of what is what does it mean to be, you know, to be a white settler, to live here in this land, and to try and learn the mega the meta-narratives of the creation of the City of Vancouver, of Stanley Park, and of Canada, generally too.
Am Johal 3:41
I remember, attending your doctoral dissertation, which formed the basis of... the research from that formed the basis of this book, and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how the overall project sort of began, the conceptualization of it.
Selena Couture 3:57
Absolutely, yeah. And thanks for that. That prompt, because it's certainly a huge part of this work has to do with my doctoral work at UBC. And UBC is of course on the unceded Musqueam territory, and they have a memorandum of understanding with Musqueam people and, and there is a program at the time it was called the First Nations Languages program now and they eventually became the First Nations Endangered Language program. But it's there was a partnership with Musqueam language teachers and Patricia Shaw, a professor at UBC and they had a language program a Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language program. And so I came in to do doctoral work in theater. My questions had to do with this land and the way that performance had been used by Indigenous people to maintain this as an Indigenous place. Coming coming here from eastern Canada in the early 90s, right after the summer of resistance at kanesatake and kahnawake and what's known as the Oka crisis, it was very striking to me to, to arrive here and to see this place with so much Indigenous iconography and so much presence of Indigenous people. And it was something I really, I really wanted to understand. And when it came time to do doctoral work, those were the questions that were uppermost in my mind as a performance scholar. It's like, how does performance contribute to this? So that was some of the work I was doing and learning the field of performance studies. And then also prompted by one of my one of my committee members, Coll Thrush, a historian at UBC, who suggested that I take a Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language class as a way to really be, to learn more about where where we were living, but also to try and be respectful of the people of this place. And as soon as I took the first language classes, I realized what a powerful thing it was to try and learn a language and the way that the language gave you a different perspective on land, and relationships to land. And so there's a core of the book has to do with the, the concepts that I learned about land in particularly around the kinds of place names that are present here and what they mean, in terms of the, what the places are for what they, people do in this places, the stories of those places. And then also how to be in relationship to land and actually to water too. I mean, people talk a lot about land, but actually, we live in a place that is surrounded by water, by the ocean, by the river. And there's a lot in the language that has to do with that. So between those two things, and being embedded at UBC, and UBC's already existing relationship with Musqueam. And my incredible privilege to be able to take those language classes, I just continued to take classes and to build a relationship with the Musqueam Language and Culture Program. And they were very, very clear in taking those classes that the protocols around the use of their language. And so everything that I learned I needed permission from the Musqueam Language and Culture Program in order to share it, which they did give me permission to share what is in the book. And I feel incredibly honored that they trusted me to do that.
Am Johal 6:50
A big portion of the book is looking at a kind of counter history of what's known now as Vancouver's Stanley Park, and through performance. I'm wondering if you can sort of walk us through how you came to some of the stories that are in the book. And there's also incredible striking images in the book of something called the Jubilee Show, from July of 1946. But there's a series of other examples of Stanley Park being this sort of colonial site that in itself was involved in the displacement of Indigenous communities.
Selena Couture 7:31
Sure, I mean, a lot of what I've done in the book builds significantly on previous work of scholars, in particular, Jean Barman, a historian. She wrote a book called Stanley Park’s Secret, in which she worked with the descendants of people who had lived in the park, Kanaka people, Hawaiian, Hawaiian people, and also Indigenous people. And she really tells the story of the people who lived there and how they were displaced. And a lot of what I have done is building on that work that already exists. She's not, she's not as, like a non Performance Studies scholar, she's not as interested in performance. And so what I was able to do, in kind of relation to her work, is think about the ways that performance has been used in a, really an a, in a very dynamic way. I mean, one of the things I got from the study of the language that I eventually came up with as a kind of a theoretical concept that would help me try to express the dynamics of performance was the concept of an eddy. So ,eddies are of course, very important here in this place where there's so much land and water and an eddy and in the waters a place where there's, there is some kind of an obstruction, and there's water flowing around it. The obstruction changes the current of the water, and then creates kind of a, a place that could be if you were paddling, a place you could, you know, take a rest from the current. It could be a safe place, it could also be a place that's actually kind of dangerous, right? And it's knowing where eddies are and the power of them. It's a really important thing for people who live on the water. And then also thinking about there's just an eddy as, like a metaphor, a concept and thinking about there's an obstruction of some sort, which is changing the water current, but that water current itself will eventually work on that obstruction, right? And so that will change the shape of it and then thus the well that will also change the current. So there's this constant dynamic back and forth. And so And there's, you know, the concept of an eddy is quite important in the Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language as well. So this is kind of all coming together. And as I was trying to think about performance and the way that performance studies think about a performance is not just a one way, you know, expression that lands nowhere. There's a constant dynamic back and forth. And so yes, there are colonial performances, like the Jubilee show, of which there is, you know, incredible striking images in the Vancouver archives that I was able to build on. Images like, I think the Jubilee show, it was a, it was a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the City of Vancouver. It was held at the oval, the cricket oval that exists there. There were 4200 performers in the show. And they built what they called the timber bowl, which sat 15,000 people, and that was all the timber bowl is to celebrate, you know, the forestry industry here. And that show was, you know, extremely long, you know, they had to cut two hours of it after the first night. It went on to two in the morning or something. And it started off with and it was a, there was a, a narrative, a script that was written that had, you know, originally just a few Indigenous people in the very beginning. And then they disappeared and carried on with the European history of the place. Actually, if we look in the archives, we can see revisions of that script that actually change that dynamic and Indigenous people are somewhat present through that script, not really, but there is a change that happens there. And it starts with one of the images probably or that you noticed this one called the Potlatch ballet, which has 125 white settlers in red face, in quite revealing costumes for 1946, doing what they're calling a Potlatch ballet with masks and blankets. And so that was the opening of the show at that time. So it was a massive extravaganza, not a surprising kind of story to think about in terms of an attempt to create a colonial narrative. What is surprising, I found in 1946, was that the Citizens Committee also commissioned the Native Brotherhood of BC to put on a two week-long event at Sen̓áḵw or was also known as at the time as Kitsilano Park, or, it's now Vanier Park, where the city archives are in where in non pandemic times Bard on the Beach is performed. And the Native Brotherhood of BC was of course an incredibly political organization they had to do with organizing for fishing rights, and were quite a radical organization. And they agreed to put on this show, but actually did it in a really, in a very interesting way. And in contrast, in terms of the archives, there's unending images of the building of the timber bowl of the different dances or the light show that's going on at the Jubilee show. There are actually no images of what happened at the Indian Village and Show in the archives. There is a program that was clearly very carefully written and circulated that had to do with the Native Brotherhood of BC and their perspective on the knowledge they were sharing the dances and the people who were dancing and, and then a ceremony that they staged that had to do with inviting or initiating the new Governor General of Canada, who was an English war hero, and Viscount Harold Harold Alexander as a as a chief. So not an uncommon thing, a political move to do. In my book, I talk about the choice of doing that, at that time, particularly in the speech that William Scow read, where he points out that Alexander had served. They were honoring him for his work in the war. And that he was that he had an honor guard at that ceremony of Indigenous veterans who, coming back after World War Two had not been afforded all the privileges of other other returning vets. And so I think it was an intervention into the status of veterans and a connection to this, you know, a Governor General in Canada. I mean, it's changed somewhat but a Governor General still has the particular status for Canadians as representing the queen. That's a bit about the colonial stuff, but there's a ton more about the Indigenous interventions into that as well.
Am Johal 13:15
In terms of what was happening related to performance in the way that you describe in Stanley Park, can we place some sort of historical context like was this also happening in other parts of Canada or North America? Or is there something sort of specific to what was going on here that we can read something into it?
Selena Couture 13:39
That's a good question. I mean, there's one I think a really important point to, to always consider, is that, despite the meta narratives of Canadian history, there's always, there's continuously been Indigenous resistance to any, to any positions of colonial colonial violence. And, I don't know, stories of performance in specific places, particularly park places as much as I know, that's happened in Stanley Park. But I would, you know, absolutely agree. There's, there's been in other places, if you dig hard, you'll find stories. And I think what is particularly interesting, and what I think could be done in other places is, so, Stanley Park, in Vancouver has a particular status. It was, you know, created as a park with one of the first motions that the city council did when the city was incorporated as a city in 1885, or, I think 86. And then it opened as a park in 1888. It was actually a Federal Reserve. So it's, it's federal land, not to municipal land, and then becomes this kind of space of recreation that has, you know, a lot of narratives around it in terms of it's like, an old growth forest, what the city would like, like if we hadn't built a city, which Sean Kheraj writes a great book called [Inventing] Stanley Park that has to kind of puts all that to rest of it, just the, the the ways that this is a very manipulated space, and that concept that it is an untamed nature. It's, of course not, not true. But things like say, Banff, there's a huge story behind Banff and the creation of Banff, about the displacement of Indigenous people there. And the tension around ideas of conservation, and wildlife, and nature and the removal of Indigenous people from their lands, is a story that, you know, happens all over the place, not just in Canada, by any means. So, yeah, so yeah, I mean, I don't know the performance stories in other places, but I'm, I'm quite sure that they are there. I mean, another important point, I guess, to mention is that when I'm talking about performance, I talk about theatre performances. But also, all sorts of, you know, I talk about place names, and speaking of place names as a performance and these kinds of things as well. But the other really important point to connect to is that in the Indian Act, in 1885, performances by Indigenous people were outlawed, and particularly the Potlatch on the West Coast, as they called it. And these were, and then they added to that, I think, maybe 20 or 30 years later, any performance at all, any off of a reserve, and that that ban stayed in place until 1951, when the Indian Act was, had a reform. And so, particularly 1946, the performances that are happening at the Native Brotherhood, that the Native Brotherhood of BC is staging at the Indian Village and Show, they are illegal, and they can't be. And of course, during the Potlatch ban, of course, Indigenous people continued to perform. They continued their ceremonies. They just had to do them in ways where they were not as public and could not be caught by Indian agents. And so the opportunity to have two weeks long of people dancing and performing and singing songs, and transmitting that knowledge, in a really large public way, is a way that many, I think, Indigenous people over the over the years have used these sort of windows of opportunity for their own purposes, while seeming to follow colonial rules and structures, but actually, into, you know, having their own agendas fulfilled. And that's certainly what happened with the Indian Village and Show, I think.
Am Johal 16:56
One of the strange characters we have in Vancouver history related to the archives is, of course, Major Matthews, whose archives form the basis of the City of Vancouver archives, but certainly has serious problems and blind spots. But for our listeners who don't know anything about Major Matthews, could you sort of place his role in the shaping of the archives in Vancouver?
Selena Couture 17:22
Sure. Major Matthews ended up being kind of an enormous figure in my book, and I certainly didn't intend to write a lot about Matthews. But as I was working in the field of performance studies, and particularly there's a line of performance studies that is focused on the conceptions of history and historiography and how we might use performance as a way to try to understand the transfer of knowledge. And this comes from a A book by Diana Taylor called The Archive and the Repertoire, she speaks a lot about if we, if we think of an archive as the only repository of reliable history, then we discount, and the printed documents in an archive, then we discount most of human history, and that she, and then many other scholars since her have subsequently developed ways to talk about how performance is actually transferring knowledge and history. So, I was quite interested in the archive itself. And so when I began to work in the archive, and I think it started with the work on the Jubilee Show, and I found all the documentation of the show, and that was at x̱wáýx̱way, Brockton point. And then the subsequent work on the Indian Village and Show, all of which was in the archives. But then I also kept finding Matthews' interventions into it, because a lot of… Matthews was not a trained archivist. He was born, I think, in 18... Let's see, 1898. I can't remember his birthday. He lived until 1976. 92 years old, but he was born and then immigrated to New Zealand. And he was nine years old with his family. They lived there for I think he lived there for nine or 10 years. It was not a successful move. And then his family left. They left him there and went to another country. And he moved here to what had just become the City of Vancouver. And then established his life here. He worked, I think he was a manager for Imperial Oil or something like that and had a young family. And then when World War One broke out, he joined the war. He was in his late 30s By that point, and or or at least 30s By that point, and was sort of supporting his motherland and joined the efforts. He, of course, World War One was traumatic for soldiers and he was very traumatized by being shot in the head, was severely injured and eventually released from the army due to nervous anxiety, which I think today we would call PTSD. And he returned to Vancouver. There were no supports for veterans at that point. He didn't have a job anymore, his wife left him. And he came back to the city. And really, throughout the 1920s had a very difficult time. And then, in 1931, when he was in his early 50s, having gone through a number of personal tragedies, he somehow convinced the City of Vancouver to appoint him the archivist. So he had been very interested in old things for a long time. He had been collecting things. And he just had, whatever, whatever kind of personal sway to, to convince them to make him an archivist. And so he created an archive. And even though he was not trained as an archivist, and he wasn't actually interested... municipal archives were usually about the Municipal Affairs of the city and they're tracking the documents and those sorts of things. He wasn't that interested in it. He was actually much more interested in collecting stories. And he, I mean, he interviewed, longshoreman. Like he interviewed people who would not necessarily have had their stories collected, including August Jack Khatsahlano. He had a series where he had a relationship with Khatsahlano. And he has a book that he put up called Conversations with Khatsahlano, which he records, in his own perspective, those conversations. So there's all of this sort of base of Matthews. And then of course, he's, he is British. And he is, you know, very interested in this in the pioneers, in celebrating the hearty pioneers who created the city. And he goes, and he records a lot of their stories. He's constantly seeking out the first pioneers. And then eventually, he lands on realizing that the Lord Stanley dedicating the park is a narrative that he's quite excited by, and he puts together publications and then eventually reenactments of Lord Stanley dedicating the park. The first one that he does, I think, is 1943. Kind of a strange one, it's in the middle of the war. Most of Stanley Park is closed. It's odd that he would try and rededicate the park at this point. But he does and he looks for other people who were descendants of the original people who would have been around during whatever event happened in 1889. Finds some of them and then and then crafts together a script that he that he gives to Lord Stanley, and that and then he carries on doing that over and over and over again, until eventually he's created a, in 1960, a monument is erected which you can see in the park still and it this Lord Stanley standing, you know, this leg spread out wide and kind of a victory stance and his arms way up high. And it says on the bottom to dedicate this park "to the use and pleasure of people of all colours, creeds and customs for all time. I name thee Stanley Park." So what I was able to find through a careful perusal of his archive because he was pretty obsessive, as you can tell by his like rededication and dedications and reenactments and, and is in his need as an archivist to, to be also a public historian that there was actually no record of Lord Stanley ever saying anything when he came to the park. He certainly came in 1889, he was given a tour, they stopped at Chay-thoos, which is known as Prospect Point. Lord Oppenheimer made a speech to him that was printed in the papers. But there's no record of Stanley saying or doing anything. And instead, what I was able to trace by going through Matthews' work was that he had pieced together the gesture by interviewing a guy who worked at the waterworks, who saw it. And then also the, the phrasing which I think is a really I make the point in my book about that that particular phrase and and, and there's something about it that that is uplifting, right, like the idea that Lord Stanley would come in 1889 and dedicated and dedicate this beautiful space to the use and pleasure of people of all colours, creeds and customs is a beautiful thought. And, of course, but it's a, what I call it a disaffiliation. It's actually a lie. It's actually that argument that Matthews made up to to really make Lord Stanley look much better than he is. What was done at that time was Oppenheimer, in his speech to Stanley said, we will honor your presence here by building you a cairn, which is a classic sort of way of marking something, but the cairn will be made up of all of the mineral resources of BC. And so that, of course, makes a lot more sense to me of how do you mark, you know, a British diplomat's visit to the area? What are the British doing here? They're extracting mineral resources. So marking his visit with that makes a lot more sense. However, they didn't, that wasn't ever built. Matthews figures out that Oppenheimer made a promise to mark his visit and that it was never followed through. And then in 1952, he takes it on himself that he's going to, he is going to fulfill that promise to Lord Stanley's descendants by creating a monument which he designs the statue, commissions it, crowdsources the funds has it built, has a fight with a city when they won't put it where he wants it to be. He wants it to be at the entrance to the park where it is, because he'll Matthews I think won every fight he had. But the city wanted it to be where Matthews had been, which was actually what's now at Prospect Point. Anyway, he wins the fight and he gets the monument erected and he puts on the base of the monument, that phrase, and then in my searching the archives, I realized that where he found that phrase was from the mayor of Vancouver, a briefly there was a mayor named Dr. Telford who was also really known for his work in the CCF, he was kind of the known as the voice of the CCF through the 30s. He helped popularize socialism in BC. He was a member of parliament, or a member of legislature at one point and then eventually briefly, the mayor of Vancouver. And from 1939 to 1940. And so somehow this, you know, radical socialist mayor, it fell to him at the 50th anniversary of Lord Stanley's visit to the park to write a letter to his descendants. And so he did that in 1939 He writes a letter to Lord Stanley's descendants saying, we're honoring your, your great grandfather here. I just want you to think about you know, this beautiful land he has all this sort of really beautiful language about the greenness of it and then he writes a, and with a lot of rhetorical flourish, which makes a lot of sense given who Telford is right? You know, we we think about your Lord Stanley after he lifted up his hands and embraced this beautiful place and dedicated it to the people of all colours, creeds and customs, which, knowing Telford who actually spoke against the the internment of the Japanese at the time, and knowing that it was he's writing to British people who are under attack by Nazis, like the rise of fascism is happening in the in Europe. And so that the context of that sentiment makes quite a lot of sense that Telford is writing it in 1939. He's, you know, attributing it to Stanley or to Stanley saying that it's actually I think his, those were his words, I believe. There's no other written record of Stanley saying anything. And so Matthews, I think recognizes the brilliance of what Telford has said and then he gives that to Lord Stanley, and that's what's reenacted over and over again when he does the live performances in the park. And then that's what is eventually etched on the, on the statue in the park, which is a you know, a beautiful thought when you walk by it, but also I thought that is actually confusing in a way that as I was really researching this, and I came upon a piece by Lee Maracle, a Sto:lo writer. Lee Maracle, I'm sure many of your listeners know her and she sent me a piece called Mink. Visits the park and Mink is witnessing Lord Stanley say this and is very skeptical. So it's I think it's a anyway, it's a, it's a very interesting piece. And certainly supports a lot of performance studies’ thought about the instability of archives, and that, of course, archives are absolutely a place where we can go to investigate and try and understand the past. But then we have to understand that they are actually not these necessarily very stable places, that they are, there are interventions in archives. There's a lot of power that has gone into creating them. And certainly, in the City of Vancouver, Matthews had an enormous amount of power. And the City of Vancouver, I think, is the, if I remember correctly. It's the first municipality in Canada to have a municipal archive. And that has to do with Matthews' efforts. And it's also the first municipality to have a purpose built building for municipal archive, which also has to do with Matthews, because when he died in his will, he stipulated that unless the city built a purpose built archival building, he would sell off all the things that he owned that had to do with the city's history. And so the city very quickly, in 1971, or '72, built the archive that is adjacent to the planetarium. And it has to do with you know, Matthews beyond the grave reaching out and influencing it. You know, it's an incredible legacy. But it's one that has to be really critically understood. That was a long answer to your question there.
Am Johal 28:09
No, that's really fascinating. I'm wondering in the process of doing your research, encountering these images and counter histories and figures like Matthews, how do you, based on your own research, how do you read into the present context? Like, what would change in you in doing the research and how you read the political moment now?
Selena Couture 28:35
Oh, wow. I mean, so much changed, changed in doing this research. And there was a, certainly with Matthews, an awareness of like how to be much more critically aware of the kinds of things that we think of as the, as, you know, brass plaques that tell us the history of places, and the kinds of powers and personalities that had helped create those things, those kind of narratives. And the continuous actions and resistance and refusals that Indigenous people have have been doing since the Europeans arrived here. And I think that is something that there's a way that the kind of history that we have learned in Canada often has to do with kind of an oblivion, a settler oblivion to previous actions. And so when you know, when Idle No More, like, takes off in December, or the winter of 2012, it's, you know, seen as this, you know, unprecedented, remarkable like, like shocking actions. Well, of course, it's not. And Glen Coulthard, of course, has talked a lot about this, and that there's an incredible continuum. And so doing this work and making it so localized here, I began to understand that long continuum of, of assertion, right, that has always been here, and particularly actually the Native Brotherhood of BC. And then I guess another piece I would say to that is, in doing all of the work, and particularly the archival work, I was very aware that there's very few women ever in archives, Women's work is never, like a woman's presence is very rarely documented officially. And in particular Indigenous women are even more absent from an archive. And so that was a part of what I was learning by being present in this place. While I was writing all of this, I was, of course, going to performances. And what struck me was that there were so many, many of the performances I was going to were by Indigenous women who were themselves intervening in, in historical narratives. And so that is a way to honour that I included responses to performances in the books. The first one is by Quelemia Sparrow, a Musqueam, actor and playwright. It's called Ashes on the Water and it was a podplay. It's an audio play. And it has to do with the Fire of Vancouver and the decision by Indigenous women on the North Shore to come and rescue the settlers. It's a very striking audio play. It takes place down in Gastown near the water, near Crab Park, and it's what you're walking through that area while listening to the fire and the panic of a white settler woman with her baby, running to the water and being rescued. And that is, of course, a narrative that I think people might know more now, because Indigenous people have been performing and talking and there's finally more settlers listening to them. So that kind of thing is throughout the book. And the other one that I think is most relevant here was Marie Clements who's a Dene Métis artist, playwright, filmmaker, whatever, Marie Clements does everything.
Am Johal 31:17
She started Urban Ink.
Selena Couture 31:18
Yeah, she started Urban Ink. She's done everything. She had an incredible show that was called The Road Forward, which started as a commission for the final show at the 2010 Olympics in the Aboriginal Pavilion. I think it was, you know, you remember the 2010 Olympics, it was a lot of showing off Vancouver and the four host First Nations. And I think she had a commission to do something about the presence of Indigenous people here and the history of them. And she did, I think, particularly on that kind of mega event stage, a really interesting thing, which was focus on the archives of the Native Voice, which is the paper that was published by the Native Brotherhood of BC, along with support from Maisie Hurley, a super, incredibly important figure in in history. And these were the activists from the 19, like, kind of 30s 40s 50s, who were absolutely incredible resistance to that colonial project here. And so she created this, this performance, which was a song called The Road Forward. The performers all dressed as if they were from the 1950s and they were the activists and she projected all the archival images from that. She then eventually developed that into a full concert, and, and then eventually into an NFB musical documentary. So that kind of thing where I'm, you know, I'm writing about the Native Brotherhood of BC and their intervention to the 1946 Jubilee Show. And then while I'm writing about that, Marie Clements is staging this incredible performance. I don't know if you saw it.
Am Johal 32:45
I didn't see it at the time, but we screened the documentary at SFU. And it's just a remarkable film. And Russell Wallace is in there. A number of others, it's a really remarkable piece of film.
Selena Couture 32:56
Yeah, so there's this. So things like that were going on, as I was writing the book, so I'm kind of digging in this history and, you know, immersing myself in these rabbit holes. And then when I come out of the archives, like, go to an event like The Road Forward. And so that, that continuum, and particularly the way that the presence of Indigenous women now doing this work, just itself shows off the lie of the archive, right? Of course, Indigenous women are here, here and now doing this work. Of course, they were there and then doing that work as well, like the back, so it's just that the archive didn't document them. Does that answer your question?
Am Johal 33:29
Yeah, yeah, sure. For sure. Selena, is there anything you'd like to add?
Selena Couture 33:33
I guess one, one last thing I was thinking that I didn't I didn't actually mention when I talked about the language and it has to do with the title of the book. And I really do like to explain the title. Because I feel like it was a piece of learning that was very powerful to me. And it really connects to the overall argument I try to make. So the title, the book is called against the current and into the light. And that comes from the learning I did around location. So the Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language, there's a lot to do in the language, it has to do with the location of a speaker. You know, movement, to and from a speaker is what's documented or the presence or, or something is being here and now or there and then. There's auxiliary verbs. And so there's a lot that has to do with location than the actual speaker. So say like, in French, articles have to do with feminine and masculine. Everything is feminine and masculine. In Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓, things are present or not present. This is kind of like a different way of just even articulating the world. Another important understanding is that location has to do with cardinal directions. So rather than North East, West, and South, Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speakers locate themselves in in relation to the shore, and the water and the current and the water. And so they have different words that have to do with those and that will give you a direction that you're going and then those words are about the actual river like you're on the shore. Or you're out from the shore. You're going against the current. You're going with the current. There's words that describe all that, but then those words are then transported and used in other places on the land as well in order to relate to where you are in space. And the word for going against the current is also the word for being in a house. That is you're in a darker area of the house and you go towards the middle where there's a fire you're going into the light. And so that word against the current is also into the light. And then as my language teachers, I actually really should mention that the teachers I learned from Larry Grant, the Elder Larry Grant, Marny Point and Jill Campbell, and then also Patricia Shaw from UBC, were my language teachers over the years. So as I learned from them, there's also a word in the Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language that has to do with the leadership, the head, the chief. And that word is actually based on that same word for going against the current into the light. And so that, to me, was a really powerful understanding of what does it mean to be a leader, right, that you have not just the strength to withstand a current, but you actually have the to go and move against it, or that you have also the courage to move from the shadows and into the light. And so eventually, I started to understand as I attended all of these contemporary performances, including I didn't talk about it, but the performances of Klahowya Village, a tourist site that was built on top of the Children's Farmyard. And I started to understand the kind of leadership and strength and courage that Indigenous performers who work in intercultural performances have. And so I think I eventually think about them almost as like frontline workers of decolonization that they, that they face this and that they, and that they show that kind of leadership. And so that's it, the book is named Against the Current Into the Light, and that's what it's referring to.
Am Johal 36:35
And what's been the most interesting part of the reception of the book for you in terms of feedback you've gotten or if people you've heard from have had a chance to read it.
Selena Couture 36:45
Well, it's been a, it's been a funny reception, because it's the course the book was published in January 2020. And I had a book launch scheduled at U of A for March of 2020. Obviously, it was cancelled. And I haven't had a lot of chances to talk about the book because we've all been rather preoccupied with a pandemic. I have, you know periodically, I get emails from people, and they're, they're coming from all different directions. Like I had one the other day from a, an art historian who's quite interested in copyright assignments, because there's a section in the book where I talk about William Scow, the president of the Brotherhood of the Native Brotherhood of BC, who intervenes into the archive and gains the copyright over a set of photos from the Jubilee Citizens Committee. And it's a very strange thing. And so she was questioning me on that piece of it. So, because the book is just a very interdisciplinary mix of works from performance studies, works from archival historiography. You know, Indigenous Studies work, there's just, it's a whole lot. And in performance studies, what the some of the response has been, and performance studies is an interdisciplinary field, obviously, or is at SFU. And it's performance studies. Led by Peter, Peter Dickinson, but it is a field that has been dominated by the US and certainly by a few particular institutions. And of course, there are performance studies. practices in Canada, but they haven't necessarily been recognized and they don't necessarily transfer hemispherically in that same way. And that is one response has been that to talk about how this work, even though it is so local, like it is sort of going to see like I'm like, I'm super focused on not even all of Stanley Park, it's actually like the kind of what we like from Lumberman's Arch to the totem poles to around the aquarium and the Children's Farmyard, like just really that chunk of the park, right. And then eventually a couple other places in the city, but it's so local, it's so West Coast, and you know, the situation in the West Coast, it's, you know, so very specific in terms of the geography, the history, the relations, and over time with Europeans and Indigenous people, like it's all very specific. Yet, one response had been talking about how this method that I worked on, like understanding language, focusing on land, focusing on those relationships and using the tools of performance studies can actually just illuminate a history that has been ignored. And like so that's been, that's been a pretty satisfying response that I feel like, even though I worked so locally, that people from elsewhere can find the stories compelling because the stories are, they're compelling. They're fascinating, I think. But also, though, the way that I was able to uncover those stories is something that I hope other people could also, you know, make use of it as a method.
Am Johal 39:20
Selena, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar and sharing about your book. We'll put links into the description. I hope all of our listeners get a chance to read it as well. Thank you so much.
Selena Couture 39:35
Such a pleasure, Am. Thank you.
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Kathy Feng 39:41
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. This has been our conversation with Selena Couture. You can head to the show notes to find links to her work, and to listen to her prior interview for Below the Radar, discussing the politics of urban parks with Matt Hern. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you next time on Below the Radar.
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