ASTU399

Indigenous Stories of Hydro Power in Quebec and BC

Meryl McMaster, Time's Gravity 2015 (source: gallerieswest.ca)

This course meets the Place and Power requirement. 

This course explores how Indigenous writers, filmmakers and artists in Quebec and BC engage with the impact of hydro development on their lands. Through the example of a local case and a cross-country one, we will examine how hydro, often perceived as a form of sustainable energy, is also an extractive industry that has participated in the historical and ongoing process of separating Indigenous peoples from their lands. We will put the local case of hydro in BC in dialogue with hydro power in Quebec, a province where hydro development is connected to the Québécois national project and where water symbolizes the resource that led to the province’s economic emancipation. Through the study of life-writing, testimony, autofiction and dystopian fiction, we will explore the themes of relationship to land, culture and kin, and interrogate the dynamics that govern our current extractivist and colonialist systems of exploitation and power. Students will engage with literary texts from a variety of genres, as well as cinema and visual art to analyze the themes, arguments, rhetorical and visual devices put forward by creators. Students will gain an understanding of a timely issue at work in Quebec and BC.

Language of instruction: English

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Restricted to Faculty of Arts students.