| dc.contributor.author | Wall, Karen | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2010-06-23T20:09:49Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2010-06-23T20:09:49Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2010-06-23T20:09:49Z | |
| dc.identifier.other | 19th Annual American Communication Association Conference in Taos, New Mexico | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/2149/2610 | |
| dc.description | On October 4, 2007, I presented a paper titled “Healing Waters, Healing Histories: Aboriginal Pilgrimage in Western Canada” at the American Communication Association Conference in Taos, NM. This paper builds on a previous conference paper, currently under review with a journal, which was an initial exploration of ideas about the role of Native Catholic pilgrimage among indigenous people in the wider context of tourism and leisure behaviour and its impacts on individual and social welfare. The current paper focused more closely on the resonance between discourses concerning spiritual ideas of ‘healing’ and ‘reconciliation’ in the pilgrimage tradition and those involved in the current political fashion for Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, such as that just launched by the Conservative government. For the conference, my main intent was to discuss the case study and theoretical context with colleagues who are much less familiar with the Canadian context but are aware of Native American conditions, politics and tourism economies. Since several other papers also dealt with ideas about discourse including issues of political and cultural texts in the creation of the sense of place (sacred, national, cultural, historical etc), I was interested in learning of other work and approaches related to the topic.
The conference was relatively small with about three dozen participants, and papers were presented in colloquium style within small discussion groups. This was very helpful since each session was allotted 90 minutes, with plenty of time for discussion and questions. My session was attended by between 8 and 10 people (some wandering between sessions), one of whom was a man from Peru who had insights based on long-established indigenous/Catholic pilgrimage in that region. There were many unexpected questions dealing with residential school history, the Canadian west, and other areas where my own assumptions of established knowledge proved to need supplementing with explanation for this and future publication audiences. One person responded that she had been unaware that there actually were ongoing political, social and cultural issues concerning Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relationships in Canada; while surprising at first, this underlines a widespread misconception about the success of Canadian mythologies of multiculturalism and consensus which is also useful to my own discussion. Following the conference I was further able to pursue some related field research in local pueblo and tourism settings, in an area where indigenous tourism and cultural enterprise is far more developed than it is in western Canada, but which shares many related sets of ideas and mythologies. One of these sites was an important pilgrimage venue, where again I located several areas of overlap with my own case study.
As well as the above focus of activity, I attended several sessions related to areas of interest to the Communication Studies program, including one on social marketing, which is a topic of growing interest to a significant sector of our students as well as our centre. The presenter and I spent some time discussing a course she is developing on the topic, and I hope to pursue this connection in future. Another session was a roundtable on a collaborative electronic publishing project, which may also have interesting applications to Athabasca University as it develops a publishing program and related collaborations. | en |
| dc.description.abstract | Travel is a medium of communicating information and experience across time and space; aboriginal tourism involves consumption of sacred sites, traditions and contemporary cultures by outsiders. While much research addresses these phenomena, much less is known about the contemporary mobilities of aboriginal people as travellers themselves. The annual Lac Ste Anne pilgrimage in western Canada draws up to 40,000 indigenous people each year from across western North America and beyond. The site was long a traditional ceremonial and healing place, later becoming a Catholic mission and shrine, and is currently shared with village residents, recreationists and a First Nations reserve. Pilgrims include those seeking individual healing in the context of a collective search for social reconciliation over the legacies of the residential school system. New Aboriginal event management, meanwhile, seeks to balance entrepreneurship and facility development with traditional meanings, as do others amid the rising numbers of casino operaters on provincial reserves. Finally, the federal government has designated the pilgrimage site a national historic site, adding layers of new stories and nationalist symbolism. The paper argues that the pilgrimage mediates vertical and horizontal dimensions of experience in its typical emphasis on healing or reconciling relationships between human, spiritual and natural worlds. It represents a ground for performance of evolving identities and relationships extending from pre-contact to the present time. Analysis moves from anthropological perspectives on ritual and cultural hybridity to communication models concerning the role of media forms in sustaining and evolving cultures. It incorporates critical theory in understanding ‘places-apart’ in relationship to the power structures of contemporary society. The goal is to assess the pilgrimage event as a hub of mobilities on several levels for aboriginal participants. | en |
| dc.description.sponsorship | Academic & Professional Development Fund (A&PDF) | en |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.relation.ispartofseries | 92.927.G1029; | |
| dc.subject | aboriginal pilgrimage | en |
| dc.subject | western Canada | en |
| dc.title | Healing Water, Healing Histories: Aboriginal Pilgrimage in Western Canada | en |
| dc.type | Presentation | en |
