Overview
Popularly thought of as a recreational vehicle and one of the key ingredients of an ideal wilderness getaway, the canoe is also a political vessel. A potent symbol and practice of Indigenous cultures and traditions, the canoe has also been adopted to assert conservation ideals, feminist empowerment, citizenship practices, and multicultural goals. Documenting many of these various uses, this book asserts that the canoe is not merely a matter of leisure and pleasure; it is folded into many facets of our political life. Taking a critical stance on the canoe, The Politics of the Canoe expands and enlarges the stories that we tell about the canoe's relationship to, for example, colonialism, nationalism, environmentalism, and resource politics. To think about the canoe as a political vessel is to recognize how intertwined canoes are in the public life, governance, authority, social conditions, and ideologies of particular cultures, nations, and states. Almost everywhere we turn, and any way we look at it, the canoe both affects and is affected by complex political and cultural histories. Across Canada and the U.S., canoeing cultures have been born of activism and resistance as much as of adherence to the mythologies of wilderness and nation building. The essays in this volume show that canoes can enhance how we engage with and interpret not only our physical environments, but also our histories and present-day societies.
Full Product Details
Author: Bruce Erickson ,
Sarah Wylie Krotz
Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
Imprint: University of Manitoba Press
Weight: 0.333kg
ISBN: 9780887559099
ISBN 10: 0887559093
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 30 March 2021
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Many of the essays' authors read Colonialist meanings in the traditional Canadian discourse regarding canoes and argue for a new canoe discourse with First Nations at its center ... the theme of the political canoe is addressed through varied, even eccentric, approaches, making for mostly diverse and engaging reading.--Bob Holtzman Indigenous Boats
Author Information
Bruce Erickson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of Manitoba. His work investigates the cultural politics of recreation and tourism within the context of settler colonialism in Canada and beyond. He is the author of Canoe Nation: Nature, Race and the Making of a National Icon. Sarah Wylie Krotz is an Associate Professor of English literature at the University of Alberta. Her research explores the complex web of relations among literature, land, and ecological thought. She is the author of Mapping with Words: Anglo-Canadian Literary Cartographies, 1789-1916.
