Abstracts
Abstract
The author of this article examines the ways in which the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage considers the protection of aboriginal languages and provides a case study of the challenges of the preservation of the Cree language in Canada. For Indigenous people, in Canada as elsewhere, questions arise about who speaks for whom; many of their constituents may not identify with the major political organizations that represent their interests to governments and are recognized by government agencies; and other structural and logistical barriers also arise. The paper takes a look at the richness of Aboriginal history around Hudson Bay as held in language and stories, and then discusses the many challenges that a Hudson Bay Cree storyteller, Louis Bird, and his collaborators faced in pursuing an oral history project funded by a Canadian governmental agency with its own parameters and priorities.
Résumé
L’auteur de cet article examine la façon dont la Convention pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine culturel immatériel envisage la protection des langues autochtones et peut constituer une étude de cas des difficultés que présente la conservation de la langue cri au Canada. Pour les peuples autochtones, au Canada comme ailleurs, se pose la question de savoir qui parle au nom de qui ; nombre de membres de leurs groupes ne se reconnaissent pas toujours dans les principales organisations politiques qui les représentent auprès des gouvernements et qui sont reconnues par les instances gouvernementales ; et l’on voit également se dresser d’autres barrières structurelles et logistiques. Cet article commence par présenter la richesse de l’histoire des Autochtones des environs de la baie d’Hudson telle qu’elle apparaît dans la langue et dans les histoires, avant de discuter des nombreuses difficultés auxquelles ont été confrontés un conteur cri de la baie d’Hudson, Louis Bird, et ses collaborateurs, lorsqu’ils travaillaient à un projet d’histoire orale financé par un organisme gouvernemental canadien qui avait ses propres paramètres et priorités.
Appendices
References
- Bird, Louis, 2005, Telling our Stories: Omushkego Legends and Histories from Hudson Bay. Jennifer S.H. Brown, Paul W. DePasquale and Mark F. Ruml (eds.). Peterborough: Broadview Press.
- Bird, Louis, 2007, The Spirit Lives in the Mind: Omushkego Stories, Lives, and Dreams. Susan Gray (ed.). Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
- Blake, Janet, 2009, “UNESCO’s 2003 Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage: the Implications of Community Involvement in ‘Safeguarding’.” In Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa (eds.), Intangible Heritage: 45-73. London: Routledge.
- Brown, Jennifer S.H, 2007, “Rupert’s Land, Nituskeenan, Our Land: Cree and English Naming and Claiming around the Dirty Sea.” In Ted Binnema and Susan Neylan (eds.), New Histories for Old: Changing Perspectives on Canada’s Native Pasts: 18-40. Vancouver: UBC Press.
- Brown, Jennifer S.H. and Roger Roulette, 2005, “Waabitigweaa, the One Who Found the Anishinaabeg First.” In Brian Swann (ed.), Algonquian Spirit: Contemporary Translations of the Algonquian Literatures of North America: 159-169. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
- Brown, Michael F., 2005, “Heritage Trouble: Recent Work on the Protection of Intangible Cultural Property.” International Journal of Cultural Property 12: 40-61.
- Cowan, Jane K., 2006, “Culture and Rights after Culture and Rights.” American Anthropologist 108(1): 9-24.
- Ellis, C. Douglas, 1995, Cree Legends and Narratives from the West Coast of James Bay. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.
- Faries, R. and W.A. Watkins, 1938, A Dictionary of the Cree Language. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre.
- Francis, Daniel and Toby Morantz, 1983, Partners in Furs: A History of the Fur Trade in Eastern James Bay 1600-1870. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
- Geertz, Clifford, 1999, A Life of Learning. Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 1999. American Council of Learned Societies Occasional Paper No. 45.
- James, Thomas, 1973 (1633), The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Capt. Thomas James in his Intended Discovery of a North West Passage into the South Sea wherein the Miseries Indured, both Going, Wintering and Returning, and the Rarities Observ’d Philosophical, Mathematical and Natural are Related… Toronto: Coles Publishing.
- Lockhart, James, 1992, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Long, John S., 1985, “Treaty No. 9 and Fur Trade Company Families: Northeastern Ontario’s Halfbreeds, Indians, Petitioners and Metis.” In Jacqueline Peterson and Jennifer S.H. Brown (eds.), The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Metis in North America: 137-162. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.
- Lytwyn, Victor P., 2002, Muskekowuck Athinuwick: Original People of the Great Swampy Land. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.
- Mushkegowuk Council, 2003, Press Kit: Rupert’s Land Protection Pledge Lawsuit. Moose Factory: Mushkegowuk Council.
- Pentland, David, 1981, “Synonymy .” In John J. Honigmann, “West Main Cree” in June Helm (ed.), Subarctic. Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 6: 227-230. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.
- Pentland, David, 1982, “French Loanwords in Cree.” Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 7: 105-117.
- Phillips, Ruth B., 2006, “When Objects become Subjects: Aboriginal peoples, Intangible Heritage, and Canadian Museums.” Paper presented at Seminar on the Politics of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University.
- Povinelli, Elizabeth, 2002, The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
- Preston, Richard J., 2002, Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meaning of Events. 2nd edition. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
- Turgeon, Laurier, 2003, Patrimoines métissés: Contextes coloniaux et postcoloniaux. Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme; Quebec: Les Presses de L’Université Laval.
- Turgeon, Laurier, 2006, “Prospectus for The Politics of Intangible Cultural Heritage.” Seminar convened at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, spring 2006.
- Wishart, Vernon R., 2006, What Lies behind the Picture? A Personal Journey into Cree Ancestry. Red Deer: Central Alberta Historical Society.