1. Reading Fiction: Notions of ‘Nation’ in BC Literature
English 1106

3. What is a nation? Renan: a nation is a daily plebescite
Anderson: a nation is an imagined community & forged in part through novel and newspaper
Corse: novels are both a product of and partial creator of the nation

4. What is a nation? Renan: a nation is a daily plebescite
Anderson: a nation is an imagined community & forged in part through novel and newspaper
Corse: novels are both a product of and partial creator of the nation

6. What makes a nation-state?

7. What makes a nation-state?
Novels are both a product of and partial creator of the nation (Corse)

8. What makes a nation-state?

9. Monkey Beach

10. Monkey Beach

11. Without Treaty, Without Conquest
In the Delgamuukw court case (1997), the Supreme Court of Canada recognized
that Indigenous title to the lands in most of BC
was never extinguished
Significantly, the ruling agreed that intimate knowledge of the land transmitted in story, family crests, hereditary names, totem poles, etc. constitutes title to the land.
This ruling employed and recognized Indigenous law at the highest level of Canadian law

12. Story as title to land
William Gordon Robinson locates the origins of Haisla culture in his version of the popular myth of the “monster” of Kitimaat Arm, “The Story of Hunclee-Qualas or the Founding of Kitamaat”.
He tells of Waa-mis, who “accidentally” killed his wife one night as both of them were sitting by the fire. Fleeing the wrath of his in-laws, Waa-mis encounters the “monster”: the river opened a huge, gaping, white mouth then slowly closed it again. Terror came to his men’s hearts but he, being the leader, was determined to see just what the thing was and in spite of their fear they kept paddling on until the thing opened its mouth again. It was then that they saw that what had been believed to be a mouth was, in reality, a flock of countless millions of seagulls feeding on small fish in the river. The gulls, at times, would all sit on sand bars and then all of a sudden the whole flock would fly up. This was when the mouth was believed to open. When the party had taken enough of the small fish, now called eulachan, or oolachan, they returned to their camp at Kildala where the oldest woman cooked and ate the fish to see if it was good. Shortly afterwards she fell into a deep sleep for the fish were so fat that they had made her very drowsy. When she awoke she pronounced the fish very good and Waa-mis then moved his camp to the Kitamaat River Valley and pitched his new camp at the mouth of what is now called Anderson Creek for that was then the mouth of the Kitamaat River.
Waa-mis hosted a feast and changed his name to Hunclee-qualas; according to W. Robinson, he is honoured as Kitimaat’s fi rst settler.“That’s our story,” he concludes, “[i]t explains our origins and why our land is ours.
That’s how we Haisla came to be here ... and we’re still here. We’ll always be here.”

13. Story as title to land
Compare the version of the oral story Lisa inherits from her mother in Monkey Beach to William Robinson’s version from Tales of Kitimaat: “That’s our story,” he concludes, “[i]t explains our origins and why our land is ours.

14. Monkey Beach stories of place

15. Monkey Beach stories of place

16. from Monkey Beach

17. from Monkey Beach

18. from Monkey Beach

19. from Monkey Beach

20. from The Innocent Traveller

21. from The Innocent Traveller

22. from The Innocent Traveller
from The Innocent Traveller

23. Key Moments in Canadian Multiculturalism
~1860s: free entry policy; government gives land to European settlers
1858~: Chinese immigration during Gold Rush
1867: Constitution Act assigned Parliament legislative jurisdiction over "Indians and Lands reserved for the Indians.“ Policy of full assimilation.
1876: Indian Act passed. Enfranchisement in exchange for assimilation/loss of Status.
: Immigration from China sought by Canada, to build CPR
1903 South Asian immigration picks up, disenfranchised between
s: ‘White Canada’ laws and policies:
The ‘Border’ first appears in The Immigration Act of 1910.
Chinese Head Tax ($50 in 1885, $100 in 1900, $500 in 1903) and Exclusion Act (1923)
1910 ‘Continuous Journey’ regulation excludes British Subjects from India
1910 Exclusion in Immigration Act: ‘unsuited to the climate of Canada’ (mainly targeting British Subjects from India and the Carribean)
1914: Komagata Maru
WWII ‘None is too many’ policy
WWII: expulsion of BC’s coastal Japanese Canadian community
Denial of citizenship even to those born in Canada
1963 Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, response to Quebecois, Indigenous, and racialized minority demands for equality
Official Languages Act of 1969 made English and French the official languages of Canada; two ‘founding’ or ‘charter’ nations.
1971 Multiculturalism adopted as federal policy, ‘within Bilingual framework’
Non-immigrant Employment Authorization Program created the category of the worker who does not gain citizenship
1988 Official Multiculturalism becomes law: The Multiculturalism Act
1988 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) passed between Canada and US same year