RE-MEANING THE SACRED: COLONIAL DAMAGE AND INDIGENOUS COSMOLOGIES

Indigenous ways of knowing are dependent on an inheriting process both amongst humans and between human and non-human being. These multi-relationships cross material and immaterial borders as sites of knowledge production. This manuscript will interrogate how three particular Indigenous cosmological relationships have been purposefully re-meaninged by colonial institutions: 1) How Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee origin stories have been abstracted into a distinctive epistemological versus ontological site; 2) How Anishnaabe spirit worlds are impacted by colonial relations, and how state institutions benefit from the re-meaning of these worlds; and 3) How Indigenous sovereignty in Canada is imagined from a statist perspective, and how these polices have re-meaninged the sacred relationships within a cosmological understanding of Haudenosaunee governance. The re-meaning of sacredly-held Indigenous relationships is both accelerated by, and contributes to, a practice of reducing upon Indigenous and non-human societies. Throughout expressions of colonialism on Indigenous territories (the academy, the state, Indian policy), Indigenous knowledge is consistently either dismissed or appropriated. This reduction of Indigenous knowledge continues to bolster functions of the state as related to the elimination of the “Indian Problem” via reducing the “Indian” to an adaptive subject.

Giovanni Battista Montano as Architectural Draughtsman: Recording the Past and Designing the Future

Giovanni Battista Montano (1534-1621), who was born in Milan and trained as a woodcarver, relocated permanently to Rome in the early 1570s where his interest in sculpting was replaced by intense study of the city’s antique monuments and ruins. Although Montano carried out several sculptural and architectural projects during his time in Rome, it is his surviving corpus of drawings that testifies to his passion of exploring ancient architecture through the medium of drawing. While Montano was not famous during his lifetime, a large body of his intriguing designs became celebrated and widely circulated after his death thanks to the 1624 publication of Montano’s designs by his loyal pupil, Giovanni Battista Soria. Montano’s lifelong work differs from virtually all of his predecessors and contemporaries in its “fantastical” and ornamental nature. This thesis explores Montano’s artistic training as it relates to his later interest in imaginatively reconstructing antique buildings, along with his disregard for archaeological or historical accuracy. The subject matter upon which Montano focused is discussed, along with his objective in creating a large corpus of half-historical, half-invented drawings. His drawing techniques are explored with specific reference to the largest group of extant Montano drawings, today housed in Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, England, and also in reference to three original Montano drawings in the Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal. Also explored is the legacy and impact of Montano’s drawings and the later publications of his designs on the works of Roman Baroque architects, specifically Borromini and Bernini. This thesis ultimately attempts to understand the impact of the intellectual and artistic environment surrounding Montano in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Rome, his drawing techniques, his choice of subject matter, and the reception that his unique works received from contemporary artists and intellectuals, along with those of the following generation.

Unsettling Histories: Representation and Indigenous Creative Art Praxis in Official Indian Residential School Redress

This dissertation offers an investigation of the role of visual strategies, art, and representation in reconciling Indian Residential School history in Canada. This research builds upon theories of biopolitics, settler colonialism, and race to examine the project of redress and reconciliation as nation and identity building strategies engaged in the ongoing structural invasion of settler colonialism. It considers the key policy moments and expressions of the federal government—from RCAP to the IRSSA and subsequent apology—as well as the visual discourse of reconciliation as it works through archival photography, institutional branding, and commissioned works. These articulations are read alongside the creative and critical work of Indigenous artists and knowledge producers working within and outside of hegemonic structures on the topics of Indian Residential School history and redress. In particular the works of Jeff Thomas, Adrian Stimson, Krista Belle Stewart, Christi Belcourt, Luke Marston, Peter Morin, and Carey Newman are discussed in this dissertation. These works must be understood in relationship to the normative discourse of reconciliation as a legitimizing mechanism of settler colonial hegemony. Beyond the binary of cooptation and autonomous resistance, these works demonstrate the complexity of representing Indigeneity: as an ongoing site of settler colonial encounter and simultaneously the forum for the willful refusal of contingency or containment.