Emma Battell Lowman is the author of 'Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21st Century Canada' with geographer Adam J. Barker (Fernwood 2015)and Co-Editor of the journal Settler Colonial Studies. Emma is a Settler Canadian whose research focuses on settler colonialism in Canada and the Pacific Northwest and examines cultural and narrative production in the creation of settler Canadian society through critical reflection on the lives of missionaries to the British Columbia interior during the 'foundational interstitial period' (1850-1945).
She has also published on the history of the punishment of criminal corpses in Britain, the British nature of the 'gibbet', and is beginning to expand into considerations of carcerality, colonialism, and Indigenous histories.
This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Budapest Open Access Initiat... more This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of our articles. Users may not modify HSE-RHÉ publications, nor use them for commercial purposes without asking prior permission from the publisher and the author. http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/. Copyright (c) 2017 Historical Studies in EducationDuring the mid-nineteenth century, the advent of multiple gold rushes swept foreign populations into what is now known as the British Columbia interior, bringing a variety of European languages to the homeland of a multitude of Indigenous languages. In order to bridge communication gaps between these populations, Chinook Jargon, a composite trade pidgin, quickly spread. The Jargon or “Wawa” became so common that, in the last decade of the century, Catholic priest, Father JMR Le Jeune developed and standardized a shorthand writing sys...
The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, 2016
Emma Battell Lowman, Adam J. Barker, Toby Rollo, ‘Settler colonialism and the consolidation of Ca... more Emma Battell Lowman, Adam J. Barker, Toby Rollo, ‘Settler colonialism and the consolidation of Canada in the twentieth century’, in Lorenzo Veracini, Edward Cavanagh, eds., The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, (New York: Routledge, 2016), ISBN 978-0-415-74216-0, eISBN 978-1-315-54481-6.
For a minority of convicted murderers the decision was taken to gibbet their body rather than sen... more For a minority of convicted murderers the decision was taken to gibbet their body rather than send it for dissection. This chapter reviews what was involved practically in gibbeting a body (or ‘hanging in chains’ as it was known), including the locations chosen, and the technology of the gibbet. Three cases of hanging in chains are discussed: two in England and one in Canada. The Canadian one is especially interesting as it is a rare incidence of a woman being gibbeted (no women are known to have been gibbeted in Britain during this period). Finally, some enduring myths of the gibbet are described.
During the age of spectacular punishment, the bodies of those who threatened the State or social ... more During the age of spectacular punishment, the bodies of those who threatened the State or social order were subject to highly visible symbolic justice. The executions and dead bodies of traitors in particular were put at the centre of acts of theatre. At the same time, new discourses around the dead body were taking shape at this time: especially discourses about anatomy and medicine; and a new theology that came to dominate British religion after the Reformation and altered profoundly the relationship between the living and the dead.
Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States . Beacon Press. ***2... more Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States . Beacon Press. ***296 pp, US$27.95***
This thesis is a study of the lives of two missionaries – Stanley Eaton Higgs and Jean-Marie Raph... more This thesis is a study of the lives of two missionaries – Stanley Eaton Higgs and Jean-Marie Raphael Le Jeune – who worked closely with Nlha7kapmx and Secwepemc peoples in the south central Interior of British Columbia (BC), Canada, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a study of the networks of power and identity that swirled around these colonial actors on the ‘edge of empire,’ in the midst of a burgeoning settler colonial society, during a time of rapid change and incredible challenge for the Indigenous communities in which these missionaries lived and worked. The crux of this thesis is a methodological intervention into knowledge production in the academy: an attempt to employ Indigenous research methodologies as a non-indigenous researcher working primarily on the archive-informed histories of non-indigenous individuals in Canada. This effort involves an exploration of the processes, results, and impacts of taking up Indigenous research methodologies in t...
The bodies of the dead are often contentious sites for contemporary ethical decision making. A nu... more The bodies of the dead are often contentious sites for contemporary ethical decision making. A number of those ethical anxieties either have their roots in the deep past, or can usefully be examined in light of the history of how dead bodies have changed in meaning and value. The case of the soldiers ‘shot at dawn’ during the First World War for cowardice or desertion illuminates the way that both criminality and the meaning of a dead body can change after death. Finally this chapter draws out some of the main conclusions of the project, and reviews some of the possible interpretive frameworks within which the history of the criminal corpse during the period of the Murder Act might be understood.
This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Budapest Open Access Initiat... more This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of our articles. Users may not modify HSE-RHÉ publications, nor use them for commercial purposes without asking prior permission from the publisher and the author. http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/. Copyright (c) 2017 Historical Studies in EducationDuring the mid-nineteenth century, the advent of multiple gold rushes swept foreign populations into what is now known as the British Columbia interior, bringing a variety of European languages to the homeland of a multitude of Indigenous languages. In order to bridge communication gaps between these populations, Chinook Jargon, a composite trade pidgin, quickly spread. The Jargon or “Wawa” became so common that, in the last decade of the century, Catholic priest, Father JMR Le Jeune developed and standardized a shorthand writing sys...
The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, 2016
Emma Battell Lowman, Adam J. Barker, Toby Rollo, ‘Settler colonialism and the consolidation of Ca... more Emma Battell Lowman, Adam J. Barker, Toby Rollo, ‘Settler colonialism and the consolidation of Canada in the twentieth century’, in Lorenzo Veracini, Edward Cavanagh, eds., The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, (New York: Routledge, 2016), ISBN 978-0-415-74216-0, eISBN 978-1-315-54481-6.
For a minority of convicted murderers the decision was taken to gibbet their body rather than sen... more For a minority of convicted murderers the decision was taken to gibbet their body rather than send it for dissection. This chapter reviews what was involved practically in gibbeting a body (or ‘hanging in chains’ as it was known), including the locations chosen, and the technology of the gibbet. Three cases of hanging in chains are discussed: two in England and one in Canada. The Canadian one is especially interesting as it is a rare incidence of a woman being gibbeted (no women are known to have been gibbeted in Britain during this period). Finally, some enduring myths of the gibbet are described.
During the age of spectacular punishment, the bodies of those who threatened the State or social ... more During the age of spectacular punishment, the bodies of those who threatened the State or social order were subject to highly visible symbolic justice. The executions and dead bodies of traitors in particular were put at the centre of acts of theatre. At the same time, new discourses around the dead body were taking shape at this time: especially discourses about anatomy and medicine; and a new theology that came to dominate British religion after the Reformation and altered profoundly the relationship between the living and the dead.
Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States . Beacon Press. ***2... more Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States . Beacon Press. ***296 pp, US$27.95***
This thesis is a study of the lives of two missionaries – Stanley Eaton Higgs and Jean-Marie Raph... more This thesis is a study of the lives of two missionaries – Stanley Eaton Higgs and Jean-Marie Raphael Le Jeune – who worked closely with Nlha7kapmx and Secwepemc peoples in the south central Interior of British Columbia (BC), Canada, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a study of the networks of power and identity that swirled around these colonial actors on the ‘edge of empire,’ in the midst of a burgeoning settler colonial society, during a time of rapid change and incredible challenge for the Indigenous communities in which these missionaries lived and worked. The crux of this thesis is a methodological intervention into knowledge production in the academy: an attempt to employ Indigenous research methodologies as a non-indigenous researcher working primarily on the archive-informed histories of non-indigenous individuals in Canada. This effort involves an exploration of the processes, results, and impacts of taking up Indigenous research methodologies in t...
The bodies of the dead are often contentious sites for contemporary ethical decision making. A nu... more The bodies of the dead are often contentious sites for contemporary ethical decision making. A number of those ethical anxieties either have their roots in the deep past, or can usefully be examined in light of the history of how dead bodies have changed in meaning and value. The case of the soldiers ‘shot at dawn’ during the First World War for cowardice or desertion illuminates the way that both criminality and the meaning of a dead body can change after death. Finally this chapter draws out some of the main conclusions of the project, and reviews some of the possible interpretive frameworks within which the history of the criminal corpse during the period of the Murder Act might be understood.
This paper argues for the application of Indigenous research methodologies to the study of Indige... more This paper argues for the application of Indigenous research methodologies to the study of Indigenous-Settler pasts in Canada. The starting point for this line of reasoning is that the determining factor in Indigenous and Settler identities is their historical and present-day interrelationship. This primary interrelation must therefore be acknowledged and made central to understanding the past in order to move towards new and more just relationships between Indigenous and Settler peoples. This shift in thinking is necessary to the development of practices of knowledge creation that do not reify the dominating colonising narratives that continue to obscure the violence, dispossession, complexities, and collaborations of Indigenous- Settler engagement in Canada. This paper will lay out the important background elements to this discussion: the dissonance between Canada’s portrayal of Indigenous-Settler relations and the current socio-political situation of Indigenous peoples in the state; Indigenous-Settler interrelations in Canada through the frames of hybridity and settler colonialism; the articulation of ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Settler’ as identity groups and as processes; the connection between story, history, and identity and the imperative to shift approaches to researching Indigenous-Settler pasts. The paper then raises and offers preliminary answers to two important questions: Can Indigenous research methodologies be effectively applied to historical research? And, can non-indigenous researchers employ Indigenous research methodologies? The paper concludes with the rationale for pursuing this methodological shift.
Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, 2016
From the mid-nineteenth century to the present, settler colonialism in Canada has been characteri... more From the mid-nineteenth century to the present, settler colonialism in Canada has been characterized by the ongoing consolidation of state sovereignty around its assertion of radical underlying title to Indigenous lands. Accordingly, Indigenous resistance to settler colonialism has focused to a significant extent on the state as the central apparatus of colonial imposition and dispossession. From court cases that have challenged the legal basis of Canada's definitions and justifications of territorial sovereignty to iconic struggles over land between Indigenous people and state policing and military forces, the institutions and apparatus of the state have been a major focus of resistance and negotiation. Most Indigenous peoples understand state governments to be a primary source of colonial suffering, giving rise to the question, 'Is the Crown at war with us?' Likewise, in the face of resistance, settler Canadians have traditionally looked to governments to 'fix' what has come to be known as the 'Indian problem'. While it is undeniable that the Canadian state has been a primary opponent of Indigenous peoples throughout the twentieth century, in this chapter we demonstrate that settler colonisation has been driven cooperatively by non-state actors working in partnership with the state or, in some cases, prefiguring state law and policy by preemptively claiming land and infringing on Indigenous sovereignty and nationhood. We identify and examine three key domains of settler colonialism within Canada: the state, the public and corporate-institutional partnerships. Within these domains, we find three specific processes of settler colonialism: the transition from a state policy of assimilation and erasure to one of multicultural 'recognition' and management of difference , the intensification of resource extraction and emerging narratives of 'development', and state-church partnerships leading to the implementation of the Indian Residential School system.
This open access book is the culmination of many years of research on what happened to the bodies... more This open access book is the culmination of many years of research on what happened to the bodies of executed criminals in the past. Focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it looks at the consequences of the 1752 Murder Act. These criminal bodies had a crucial role in the history of medicine, and the history of crime, and great symbolic resonance in literature and popular culture. Starting with a consideration of the criminal corpse in the medieval and early modern periods, chapters go on to review the histories of criminal justice, of medical history and of gibbeting under the Murder Act, and ends with some discussion of the afterlives of the corpse, in literature, folklore and in contemporary medical ethics. Using sophisticated insights from cultural history, archaeology, literature, philosophy and ethics as well as medical and crime history, this book is a uniquely interdisciplinary take on a fascinating historical phenomenon.
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