The Testimonial Uncanny The Testimonial Uncanny IndIgenoUs sToryTellIng, Knowledge, and reparaTIve pracTIces Julia V. Emberley SUNY P R E SS Rebecca Belmore The Named and the Unnamed, 2002 video installation Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, The University of British Columbia. Purchased with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistant program and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 2005. Photo: Howard Ursuliak Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2014 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Jenn Bennett Marketing by Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Emberley, Julia. The testimonial uncanny : indigenous storytelling, knowledge, and reparative practices / Julia V. Emberley. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-5362-0 (paperback : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4384-5361-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4384-5363-7 (ebook)  1.  Indigenous authors—20th century. 2. Indigenous authors—21st century. 3. American literature—Indian authors—History and criticism. 4. Canadian literature—Indian authors—History and criticism. 5. New Zealand literature—Maori authors—History and criticism. 6. Australian literature—Aboriginal Australian authors—History and criticism. .  Postcolonialism in literature. 8. Violence in literature. 9. Indigenous peoples—Folklore—Social aspects. 10. Storytelling.  I. Title. PN491.4.E43 2014 809'.933897—dc23 2013049819 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 contents List of Illustrations vii Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Indigenous Epistemologies and the Testimonial Uncanny 1 PArT I: “A WITNESSINg LoVE”: TESTIMoNY IN INdIgENoUS STorYTELLINg 1. on the Threshold between Silence and Storytelling 39 2. Assembling Humanities in the Text: on Weeping, Hospitality, and Homecoming 79 3. The Accidental Witness: The Wilkomirski Affair and the Spiritual Uncanny in Eden robinson’s Monkey Beach 109 PArT II: For A SoCIETY AgAINST THE rACIAL INVAgINATIoN oF PoWEr 4. on Not Being an object of Violence: The Pickton Trial and rebecca Belmore’s Vigil 133 5. Lessons in Love, Loss, and recovery: The Life of Helen Betty Osborne: A Graphic Novel and Lee Maracle’s Ravensong 156 6. Sacred Justice and an Ethics of Love in Marie Clements’s The Unnatural and Accidental Women 183 v conTenTs vi PArT III: ECoLogIES oF KINSHIP: or, LESSoNS FroM THE LANd 7. The Storyteller, the Witness, and the Novel: Louise Erdrich’s Tracks 213 8. (un)Housing Aboriginality in the Virtual Museum: Civilization.ca and Reservation X 230 9. Ecologies of Attachment: “Tree Wombs,” Sacred Bones, and resistance to Postindustrial dismemberment in Patricia grace’s Potiki and Baby No- Eyes 254 Conclusion: The Indigenous Uncanny as reparative Episteme 289 Notes 301 Works Cited 315 Index 329 Illustrations 1.1. Book cover of My Name Is Seepeetza. 47 1.2. Illustration by Vernon gloade, “Four stories up and terrified.” 51 3.1. The medicine wheel. 121 4.1. The Pickton trial, “Police search robert Pickton’s property . . .” 134 4.2. The Pickton trial, “An rCMP officer patrols the entrance . . .” 140 5.1. Helen Betty holds a stone with the word “pray” etched across it. 166 5.2. Helen Betty braids her friend’s hair. A cross hangs on the wall in the background. 167 5.3. A juxtaposition of a hair braid, a cross, and Helen Betty’s face. 168 5.4. Images of Helen Betty’s burial site with stones and a cross. 169 8.1. grand Hall, Canadian Museum of Civilization. 236 8.2. House of Origin, Marianne Nicolson (view 1). 250 8.3. House of Origin, Marianne Nicolson (view 2). 250 8.4. House of Origin, Marianne Nicolson (view 3). 251 vii preface This book sets out to indigenize testimonial discourses by reading as- pects of the European- based critical epistemological legacy in relation to Indigenous storytelling practices. In Canada, the Indian residential School Truth and reconciliation Commission is currently gathering the traumatic knowledge of this colonial event that existed from the mid- nineteenth century to the 1970s in testimonial form. Contemporary In- digenous storytelling practices provide a necessary and alternative mode of expression to surpassing the deadening silence left in the wake of this history of colonial violence. Such practices alter the representation of In- digenous peoples as the inevitable and interminable victims of colonial violence by creating literary and artistic spaces to put into words and im- ages what has not been said or spoken before. The flexibility of Indigenous storytelling is evident from its appear- ance in a variety of genres and media, including novels, narrative and documentary films, performance art, theatrical and visual forms. This elasticity of location constitutes part of its strength along with its abil- ity to weave together the separate, yet mutually intertwined, spheres of cultural and political representation. Indigenous storytelling is markedly political in how it narrates the limits and possibilities of achieving bal- ance in political kinships that are uneven and unequal. Political kinships include relations between humans, humans and animals, humans and spirits, or humans and aspects of nature such as the land or sea. Ecologies of kinship express the desire to sustain balance and reciprocity between or among various political affiliations. Indigenous knowledges provide powerful conceptual frameworks for constructing theories of resistance in both “Western” and “non- Western” critical discourses. Indigenous theories of hospitality, for instance, under- lie the nineteenth- century European conception of communism, not to ix