The First Americans

Since being in Canada, I have been learning a lot about the Native people of North America. A common question is “who were the very First Americans?” In other words who inhabited the land first? This question has important implications for modern day land claims in the Americas. In particular, I read an article from the National Geographic called “Tracking the First Americans”. In this article, the author Hodges asks the questions of who were the First Americans and how did they get to the Americas? In answering these two questions however, I feel some important issues arise…

The first issue is that of the western fascination with facial reconstruction of the First Americans. According to Hodges, one of the most exciting aspects about the discovery of the 12,000-13,000 year old skeleton Naia in Yucatan Cave, Mexico, was that the skull was intact enough to be used as a foundation for facial reconstruction. This fascination for facial reconstruction is possibly due to modern Westerners wishing to update geographical imaginations of Native people’s appearances. Yet it is interesting that the article asks why modern Native Americans “don’t look like their ancient ancestors?” Why should they look similar given 15,000 years of selective pressures and physical body changes over that time? Are we saying that our geographical imaginations of the First Americans and the modern Native Americans are the same? In which case, are we saying the modern Native Americans are just as “violent” and “wild-type” a people as their ancestors? 

Facial reconstruction of Naia.
Source: National Geographic

Secondly, the skeleton found at Yucatan Cave was named Naia after the water nymphs of Greek mythology. By using a western name, the scientists are essentially claiming this ancestral skeleton as their own. This feeds into old issues of colonial and Western power over the claims of the Native peoples themselves. Hodges also seems to suggest the First Americans were quite advanced people but he does this by employing western values of “advancement”, namely exploitation of natural resources and settlement in one geographical area, two factors which may differ from indigenous views on what constitutes an advanced society.

Thirdly, it is important to look not only at the scientific theories behind who the First Americans were and how they got to the Americas, but also at the moral issues of who should have the right to the skeletons (the scientists or the descendants of the skeletons) as well as how we are to refer to this skeleton that was once a live human being. Regarding Naia’s discovery, phrases like “her bad luck [in falling to her death in the cave] is science’s good fortune” could be interpreted as the scientists regarding this one-time human as simply a scientific object to study, while for many of the Native people, there is significant interest in giving the skeleton a burial in line with tradition for deceased relatives.  

When thinking about questions of who were the First Americans it’s all good trying to work out when and how they got to the Americas (as discussed in Hodges’ article), but it’s also important to think about why scientists ask the questions they do, and how those questions may reflect both desire for scientific understanding as well as historical oppression of Native Americans. 

Studying in Canada: First Impressions

The first few weeks of the semester at the University of Toronto have flown by as I've started going to classes while continuing to explore the city and make new friends. I've now confirmed all my modules and have chosen two region-specific courses (Geography of Canada; Historical Geography of North America); a course to develop my GIS skills (GIS and Public Health); and two further topics of interest (Geographies of Social Urban Exclusions; and Culture, History, Landscape).

One of the first tasks of organising myself for the semester was ensuring I had all required books for my courses. For 4 out of 5 of my courses, the lecturer will provide online links to the readings which we can easily access. For the course GIS and Public Health however, there are two required text books that my lecturer cannot provide access to. Initially, I didn't think this was a problem as I assumed that there would be plentiful supply of the books in the library, like I'm used to back at UCL. But searching through U of T's library catalogue I found only 1 copy of the book "GIS and Public Health" and no 5th edition of the "GIS Tutorial for Health", with the 4th edition of that book not even being at the central St George campus, but out in the Mississauga campus. So I went down to the U of T bookstore to check out prices, finding myself just one of many students milling around inspecting textbooks. When I found my two books, I was duly horrified by the price and in disbelief asked one of the workers in the bookstore whether it was normal for Canadian students to have to pay hundreds of dollars for their own books. I got a cheery "Yep! Welcome to Canada!" as a reply. After considering changing modules to avoid textbook costs, I ended up forking over just under $200 on two textbooks, which I was not happy about. I am not impressed that on top of tuition fees U of T expects students to buy many of their own textbooks; it's unfair on students who cannot afford pricey textbooks, and you would think that with such a large student population (around 85,000 students) and fees, there would be enough money to adequately stock the libraries with all the books students need. Considering I've never had to buy a single textbook in 2 years at UCL, I realise now just how grateful I should be for the well-stocked UCL libraries. 

On another note, I started doing the readings for my course Culture, History, Landscape. One of the readings for the first week was a chapter by William Cronon "Bounding the Land" which looks at Native American systems of land and user rights, as well as how European colonisers brought a new set of cultural views of using land (based on land commodification and privatisation). The European colonisers didn't consider Native land use systems as legitimate and so justification of colonisation and dispossession of Native lands was based on taking over this "illegitimately" used land and making it legitimate under European values. While the chapter is in itself very interesting, I was amused by my own reading of it. In the chapter, Cronon refers to the Native Americans as "Indians" and it was the very first reading I did for this course so I didn't have much context as to what I was about to read. As I began reading about the "Indians" my geographical imagination was rampant in the country of India, but within 2 pages of increasing confusion, I found my geographical imaginations and understandings of the country India didn't match the landscapes and histories I was reading about on the page. I reread the start of the chapter, and while I had happily glossed over "New England Indians", somehow concluding in my mind that this was some newly colonised part of India, I suddenly realised the whole article was talking about Native American "Indians", not Indians from India. I found it interesting that my mind immediately jumped to the country of India even when it was glaringly obvious ("New England Indians") that the chapter was based in North America.

I feel this could be because the British school curriculum teaches the era of the British Empire in a way that perhaps still evokes national glory and success, with India being mentioned often and being portrayed as the poor country that Britain charitably helped develop. By contrast, the school curriculum does not devote much time, if any, to the Native Americans or what British colonisers did in the New World, perhaps because with limited time to teach history, there is a preference for teaching about the glory days of the British Empire rather than the colony Britain lost (upon the American Revolution). With my greater knowledge of the British Empire in India as opposed to North America (due to growing up in the British education system), it is possible to see how my mind jumped to India first. Regardless, this course is challenging my existing knowledge of the British Empire and it has already been enlightening to learn the extent of injustices in the British Empire, from the various ways in which India was exploited to the dispossession of land from Native Americans.
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Algonquin Provinical Park: Beautiful Nature or Colonial Landscape?

The first month in Canada has been absolutely amazing; I’ve met exchange students from all over the world (as well as a couple of Canadians here and there), have enjoyed geography modules related specifically to the region (e.g. Geography of Canada; and Historical Geography of North America) and have travelled around Ontario and even ventured bravely into Quebec (unfortunately, 7 years of learning French still left me unable to decipher their accent *sigh*). 

When I initially came out to Canada this summer with my brother, we travelled around Ontario a bit before I went back to Toronto to settle in. One of the places my brother and I visited was Algonquin Provincial Park. This is a beautiful park, with huge lakes and lush woods of maple and pine. I revisited with the other exchange students a month later, where we camped, hiked and went canoeing. Magical moments from my trips to Algonquin include watching the chipmunks scampering about, seeing a black bear dash across the road, and lying in my tent at 3am listening to the howling of the wolves. Algonquin is an enchanting place where one can appreciate the beauty of nature and wilderness. And yet the question is, how natural is this landscape?  

Chipmunks are adorable! But do they live in a completely
natural environment...?

First of all, the forests of Algonquin are far from primeval. For the past 175 years they have been logged and burned to supply the large market for Canadian pine that arose in Britain in the early 1800s. As the market grew, more and more men went farther into the wilderness to cut more and more trees. Every spring, when the winter snow melted and river levels rose, the logs would be floated down to the big cities from where they would be shipped across the Atlantic. In fact, Algonquin was not declared a Provincial Park for environmental reasons, it was declared a Park to protect the capital interests of the white European settlers; Algonquin was simply a place to be exploited for timber and beaver fur for the fur trade.

Thus Algonquin is a landscape that has been transformed completely in the last 200 years. Physically, large old trees were cut down and logging infrastructure grew in its place: lumbermen huts, the railway, bridges and lookout towers. While many of these old railways and bridges are no longer in use, their remnants still litter the park, reminding us that this landscape was completely absorbed by the logics of capital introduced by the white settlers 200 years ago. Even today, most of the park is still logged; the landscape is thoroughly controlled by man.

Originally, lumber was floated down the rivers to the big cities 
during spring; the introduction of the railway meant faster, more 
reliable transportation that was not limited to one season. 

I would also like to suggest that the voices of the First Nation, the Algonquins, have been silenced in the Park. A number of trail guide books are available to pick up at each trail, yet the guide books focus on the ecology and geology of the Park, with the history of the Park starting with the early lumber industry. Who knows, maybe I just didn't do the trails that focus on the First Nations in the Park, but after my two trips, I can easily tell you all about the logging and the ecology, yet I know very little about the people who originally lived in and used the area.  Place names in the Park are mostly English, which, following lectures for my U of T course Culture, History, Landscape, feeds into one of the ways that the early European settlers dispossessed the First Nations from their land: laying land claims in territorial maps through the use of new place names and ignoring the previous names and claims. 

One example of this is a trail that goes past a section of a river known as Whiskey Rapids. These rapids got their name because near the turn of the 19th century, a group of log drivers celebrating the end of their log drive were trying to transport a keg of whiskey down the rapids from the railroad station. Two of the men decided to have a quick first drink while on their canoe but ended up drinking until darkness fell and they didn't see the approaching rapids. The canoe tipped and the keg was lost, thus explaining how the rapids got their name. While this is a fun story that gives insight into the lives of the loggers, it is an example of how the whole Park has been renamed by white European settlers to lay claim on the land by creating new, overriding histories in various different places.

Top section of Whiskey Rapids, Algonquin Provincial Park

In conclusion, there is no denying that Algonquin Provincial Park is a beautiful place. But let’s not pretend that this is a wholly natural landscape or that it represents a true Canadian wilderness. Rather, it is very much a colonial landscape utterly transformed by white European settlers.