Sacred and Sacrificial Landscapes: Reading and Resisting Settler Canadian Environmental Discourse in M. T. Kelly’s A Dream Like Mine and the Navigation Protection Act

Abstract:

This paper explores how the Canadian landscape is figured through two interrelated processes of settler colonialism, which form social and subjective identities in relation to Canadian environmental discourse. I explore these processes through what I refer to as settler sanctified and sacrificed landscapes. I read this dual process of settler sanctification and sacrifice through a literary representation in M.T. Kelly’s 1987 novel, A Dream Like Mine, exploring the operation of contemporary settler liberal environmentalism in a self-conscious settler narrative, and through Canadian environmental policy, which expresses the preemptive sanctification of the settler landscape present in Canada’s oldest piece of environmental legislation, the recently amended Navigation Protection Act. My readings of these two seemingly disparate texts aim to illustrate that a particular kind of sanctification of the landscape has structured settler Canadian engagement with the environment from the very inception of official Canadian environmental discourse, thus creating the conditions for the landscapes’ inevitable sacrifice.

Erratum:
On page 55, the sentence beginning with "Examples of the sacrificial landscape in Canada range from Alberta's oilsands extraction..." should be prefaced by the word "Potential." As such, the sentence should read: "Potential examples of the sacrificial landscape in Canadian environmental discourse range from Alberta's oilsands extraction..." We apologize for the omission.


This article “Sacred and Sacrificial Landscapes: Reading and Resisting Settler Canadian Environmental Discourse in M. T. Kelly’s A Dream Like Mine and the Navigation Protection Act” originally appeared in Emerging Scholars 2. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 228-229 (Spring/Summer 2016): 53-71.

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