Performance as Treatment in the James Bay Treaty No. 9
In 2006 the diary of treaty commissioner George MacMartin was found in the Queen’s University Archives in Kingston, Ontario. In it MacMartin records how and under what terms Mushkegowuk and Anishinaabe communities made treaty in 1905—he records that agreement was “accepted” to the terms as “stated.”...
| Published in: | Canadian Theatre Review |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress)
2015
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.161.009 https://ctr.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/ctr.161.009 |
| Summary: | In 2006 the diary of treaty commissioner George MacMartin was found in the Queen’s University Archives in Kingston, Ontario. In it MacMartin records how and under what terms Mushkegowuk and Anishinaabe communities made treaty in 1905—he records that agreement was “accepted” to the terms as “stated.” This primary source is now the central piece of evidence in the Mushkegowuk Council’s legal case that challenges the terms of Treaty No. 9 as written and suggests that what was “stated” never mentioned that these communities would have their land “taken up” for the purposes of development. It is this story of the treaty that playwright Falen Johnson “takes up” for her new play, Treaty no. 9. This article considers how Johnson, through restaging treaty, conceptualizes a new approach to it—one that foregrounds how performance was used and abused in the signing process to facilitate agreement, and one that should be taken account of in the treaty’s current legal case. This article outlines the pragmatic challenges that this approach to treaty might come up against in the court of law and considers how performance studies frameworks and approaches might legitimize the law’s engagement with the repertoire of this treaty as proof. |
|---|