Taming settler colonialism

The statue of Lieutenant Harry Colebourn and Winnie-the-Bear

Bibliographic Data

ID12929945
AuthorsTracy Whalen (corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume32
Issue1-2
Pages65-92
Publication date2020-10-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal of Canadian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1757-8078 • E-ISSN: 0269-9222
PublisherLiverpool University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3828/bjcs.2020.5
OpenAlexW3093569611
LanguageEN
References cited17

This article argues that a popular Winnie-the-Bear statue operates within the framework of family to ‘tame’ the anxieties around settler colonialism. The ostensibly benign motives for taming that the statue condones align with and consolidate those offered in dominant discourses around bear capture, taming, and captivity in Canadian spaces of human/bear encounter. In keeping with such a project, the statue works to calm any discomfort visitors might feel about actual bear docility and captivity, particularly as these apply to the polar bears in the park’s adjacent zoo and the tranquilised black bears that are occasionally spotted in residential areas. By extension, the statue opens up questions of taming and subservience in the authority structures that undergird the creation and maintenance of the Canadian nation state where docile, disempowered bodies have constituted and continue to constitute the desirable colonised subject in a settler-colonial society

Archaeology · Art history · Captivity · Colonialism · Ethnology · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science · Statue · Subject (documents · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Law

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