Title: Politicizing the Soil: A Study on Indigenous Land Rights, Activism and Art in Canada
Debkanya Banerjee
Department of Comparative Literature
Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
Abstract:
This paper attempts to analyse the nature of Indigenous land rights in Canada and how they survived and changed after the British Crown acquired sovereignty over the land. Though this analysis is historical it shall remain incomplete without understanding its present state and the role of the United Nations in safeguarding the rights of the Aboriginal people. This paper will elaborate on the concept of reconciliation and its various forms. The second section of this paper will thoroughly explore the incidents of the Oka Crisis. I will bring to the forefront the background information that led to the crisis, how it affected the Indigenous people and the role of contemporary media in framing the events. Lee Maracle’s novel Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel and Beth Cuthand’s poem Post-Oka Kinda Woman will show how the Oka Crisis reassesses the conventional role of women in any kind of activism. The third section of this paper will emphasize films and visual arts that were inspired by the events at Oka. A comparative study of Alanis Obomsawin’s film Kanehsatake:270 Years of Resistance, Tracey Deer’s film BEANS, and Thomas Deer’s illustrations shall foreground the relevance of the Oka Crisis today and why it should be considered a landmark political issue in the history of Indigenous land rights movement in Canada. The paper will conclude by engaging in a discussion on the current socio-political relationship of the Indigenous people with the Canadian Government and identify the loopholes in the current governmental reconciliatory approach.
Keywords:
Films, illustrations, Indigenous Activism, Land rights, Oka Crisis, Reconciliation
How to Cite this Paper:
Banerjee, D. (2022). Politicizing the Soil: A Study on Indigenous Land Rights, Activism and Art in Canada. Atras Journal, 3(2), 78-89
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