Authors
Owen, SuzanneAffiliation
University of Chester/Leeds Trinity UniversityPublication Date
2015-04-29
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Show full item recordAbstract
This article aims to investigate contemporary cultural representations of the Beothuk Indians in art, literature and museum displays in Newfoundland, Canada, focussing on ways these reimagine the past for the present, offering perspectives on contested histories, such as the circumstances leading to the demise of the Beothuk. Wiped out through the impact of colonialism, the Beothuk are the ‘absent other’ who continue to be remembered and made present through the creative arts, largely at the expense of other indigenous groups on the island. Rather than focussing on the ‘non-absent past’, according to Polish scholar Ewa Domańska, ‘instead we turn to a past that is somehow still present, that will not go away or, rather, that of which we cannot rid ourselves’ (2006, 346). Depictions of the last Beothuk are part of a cultural remembering where guilt and reconciliation are played out through media of the imagination.Citation
Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions, 2015, 2(1), pp. 119-139Additional Links
https://jkapalo.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/the-demise-of-the-beothuk-as-a-past-still-present-pdf2.pdfhttp://jisasr.org/
Type
ArticleLanguage
enDescription
Included with kind permission of Irish Society for the Academic Study of ReligionsISSN
2009-7409Sponsors
Research was funded by a British Academy Small GrantCollections
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