Deathscapes of Settler Colonialism: The Necro-Settlement of Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

This article considers the influence of burials and memorials to colonial soldiers from an earlier era on contemporary social and cultural landscapes in Canada. Through the example of a landscape centered on Smith's Knoll, a burial ground for war dead from the British-American War of 1812, it explores the process of necro-settlement: the strengthening of settler colonial claims to land based on the development of complex, meaning-laden landscapes of dead and memory. This article consists of three parts: The first situates geographical studies of deathscapes alongside theories about settler colonialism through intersecting discourses of land use. The second includes a settler colonial microhistorical geography of Smith's Knoll and the local deathscape that surrounds it. The third section draws on this case study to reveal new perspectives on the role of burial and memorial in settler colonial place-making and the erasure of Indigenous histories and peoples.

本文考量早期殖民军人的葬礼和纪念活动, 对于加拿大当代的社会与文化地景之影响。本研究透过围绕着史密斯．科诺这个埋葬 1812 年英美战争中战死者之墓地地景案例, 探讨亡灵殖民的过程: 藉由建立复杂且充满意义的死亡记忆地景, 强化迁佔殖民主义对于土地的宣称。本文包含三大部份: 第一部分透过相互交织的土地使用论述, 併置死亡地景的地理学研究与迁佔殖民主义理论。第二部分包含史密斯．科诺的迁佔殖民之微观历史地理, 以及围绕于此的地方死亡地景。第三部分运用此一案例研究, 揭露有关葬礼和纪念活动在迁佔殖民地方打造中所扮演的角色, 以及抹除原住民历史及人民的崭新视角。

Este artículo estudia la influencia de los entierros y los monumentos erigidos en memoria de soldados coloniales de una era anterior sobre los paisajes sociales y culturales del Canadá contemporáneo. Por medio del ejemplo de un paisaje centrado en la Colina de Smith, un campo de sepultura de muertos en acción durante la Guerra Británico–Americana de 1812, se explora el proceso de necro-poblamiento: el fortalecimiento de las demandas coloniales de tierra por los pobladores basadas en el desarrollo de complejos paisajes de muerte y recordación cargados de significado. Este artículo consta de tres partes: La primera sitúa los estudios geográficos de los paisajes de muerte al lado de teorías acerca del colonialismo con pobladores por medio de discursos cruzados de uso de la tierra. La segunda incluye la geografía microhistórica colonial de un poblador de la Colina de Smith y del paisaje mortuorio local que la rodea. La tercera sección se apoya en este estudio de caso para revelar nuevas perspectivas sobre el papel de entierros y monumentos en la construcción de lugar por el poblador colonial, y sobre la eliminación de historias indígenas y pueblos.

Key Words:

• Canada
• deathscapes
• Indigenous people
• settler colonialism
• War of 1812

关键词：:

• 拿大
• 死亡地景
• 原住民
• 迁佔殖民主义
• 1812 年战争。

Palabras clave:

• Canadá
• paisajes de la muerte
• pueblo indígena
• colonialismo con pobladores
• Guerra de 1812

Acknowledgments

I owe thanks to Dr. Gavin Brown (University of Leicester), Dr. Anthony Ince (Cardiff University), and Kelly Black (Carleton University), who all read and commented on earlier versions of this article; to Professor Clare Anderson (University of Leicester), who viewed and insightfully commented on a presentation on this research; and to Dr. Emma Battell Lowman (University of Hertfordshire), whose expertise in historical research, settler colonialism, and death and dying was invaluable.

Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement 312542.

Notes

1. Veracini (2010b, 53) argued that settler colonizers are marked by an observable animus manendi or intent to stay.

2. There is a complex debate over the capitalization (or not) of the term settler, which I engage more fully along with Battell Lowman in our book Settler: Colonialism and Identity in 21st Century Canada (Battell Lowman and Barker 2015). Rather than rework that debate here, I use the more common lowercase settler throughout this article to refer to the subjective position within settler colonial systems.

3. Larsen and Johnson (2012) made a compelling case for embracing phenomenological discovery as a method in Indigenous geography research and for many of the same reasons—including the need to understand particular places as coconstitutive of local cultures, although in this case looking at a settler rather than Indigenous culture—I believe that this method is appropriate here as well.

4. See, for example, Collard, Dempsey, and Sundberg (2015) and Blomley (2014).

5. This term is adapted from Mignolo (2000, 3), who used it to denote the ways that colonizers conceived of themselves and their spaces as fundamentally different from Indigenous peoples and spaces. I assert that the colonial difference can also be broadly deployed in reference to the difference between a colonizer's expectations of colonization, and the reality of “doing” colonization in place (for details, see Barker 2013, 133–37).

6. This term is inspired by Selbin's (2010) use of bricolage to describe how stories are made from pieces of preexisting narratives, individual experiences, and creative improvisation. I use the term here to describe both narrative and material processes.

7. It is imperative that the historical occupation of the Haudenosaunee and Anishnaabe in this region not disappear from settler colonial analyses. Ethical research on any kind of colonialism must work to avoid further erasing indigeneity (Smith 1999; Lewis 2012).

8. For more detail on the Battle of Stoney Creek, see Elliot (2009).

9. In the summer of 2014, a sculpture by David M. General (Oneida) titled “The Eagles among Us” was installed on the grounds of Battlefield Park. It was commissioned as part of the War of 1812 Bicentennial Commemoration, in part to recognize the contributions of Indigenous warriors in the Battle of Stoney Creek and elsewhere, but it is not as yet listed on the Battlefield House Museum and Park Web site (see battlefieldhouse.ca), nor is it easy to find information on the sculpture either at the park or online, and the sculpture sits quite literally on the periphery of the park. Interpreting the meaning of this recent addition is an interesting avenue of inquiry but beyond the scope of this article.

10. Transcribed by author, May 2014.

11. Thank you to Kelly Black for inquiring into the roles of churches and faith in settler colonial nationalism.

12. Recent Haudenosaunee research and writing has challenged the nationalist historical narratives of places like Stoney Creek. Monture's (2014) book, We Share Our Matters, documents 200 years of literature developed at Six Nations of the Grand River in opposition to colonial displacement and dispossession, asserting a constant and evolving counterargument against settler claims. Hill's (2017) book, The Clay We Are Made Of, deconstructs historical and anthropological claims that assert that Haudenosaunee people do not belong in or did not ever have claim to land in southern Ontario, particularly by relying on Haudenosaunee oral histories. Finally, McCarthy's (2016) book, In Divided Unity, demonstrates that Haudenosaunee people have never stopped practicing acts of direct resistance to land loss but that settler colonial discourses have predictably attempted to coopt the land and legal frameworks around these.

13. Exclusive in theory if not always in practice; for examples of public and social reclamation of cemetery spaces in Britain, see Deering (2012).

14. The property was eventually purchased, the house demolished, and a comprehensive archaeological dig undertaken to properly rebury the bodies, funded by public budgets.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam J. Barker

ADAM J. BARKER is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. His research focuses on geographies of settler colonialism, decolonization and Indigenous resurgence, and solidarity in anticolonial activism and social movement building.