Couverture du livre "Encounters on Contested Lands"Julie Burelle. Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec, Evanston, Northwestern University Press (“Performance Works” Series), 2018.

Commented by Julie Burelle, associate member (June 2020):

Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec focuses on artistic and quotidian performances by Indigenous artists and activists as well as settler artists in the distinct context of Québec. The province provides particularly interesting research grounds given its complicated self-fashioned narrative which positions the community I call the French Québécois de Souche (that is the white, euro-descendant francophone majority) as a colonized minority within Canada, while obscuring this majority’s own ongoing role as a settler colonial force. Encounters  critiques such “moves to innocence” (to borrow from Tuck and Yang) and examines how Indigenous theatre and performance in Quebec productively question this narrative, complicate current understandings of nationhood and sovereignty, and call into question the fragile coherence of the province’s sense of self as an imagined community. The book’s cases studies, which includes Ondinnok’s theatre, films by the Wapikoni Mobile and Alanis Obomsawin, a long-distance walk led by Innu women, and a reflection on Nadia Myre’s visual piece Indian Act, do all this while simultaneously embodying and centering Indigenous epistemologies and futurities. Written by a French Québécoise de souche, this book attempts to open spaces of encounters and productive dialogue.

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