Piecing Together Modern Treaty Politics in the Yukon: Indigenous Aesthetic Practices, Paper Politics, and Collage

Abstract

In this dissertation, I posit a conceptual intervention into Yukon settler colonial politics using three community-made political art pieces: a life-size, hot pink papier mâché bull moose, made out of the Umbrella Final Agreement, the framework that guides modern treaty-making in the Yukon; a paper moose hide on a frame, indicative of a stage in a Northern Tutchone traditional moose hide tanning process, that is made out of a collage of land claims maps; and a paper baby belt, a traditional Northern Tutchone garment used to carry a child, made out of the Little Salmon/Carmacks land claims map and the Placer Mining Act. Yukon settler colonial politics are defined by modern treaty (also known as comprehensive lands claims and final agreements), a right-based approach to Indigenous/state relations housed within Canada’s recognition paradigm. I claim that Indigenous aesthetic practices have a role in rebuilding Indigenous governance systems that center Creation. Indigenous aesthetic practices reconnect Indigenous Peoples to the intimate qualities of their governance practices, values, and ethics; and facilitate a reconnection to, whilst simultaneously rebuilding, Creation-based lifeways and decolonial futures. Although Yukon First Nations imagined a future in which their worldviews and values would be present within their governance practices, and that modern treaty would be the mechanism for this, the post-treaty political and social landscape in the Yukon demonstrates otherwise. Yukon First Nations have not escaped settler state domination and are embedded within the ambit of the state. I argue that the mechanisms used within the politics of recognition serve the interests of the Crown, not Indigenous nations, because they facilitate state and corporate access to Indigenous lands by extinguishing in perpetuity Aboriginal title and rights and re-defining and containing Aboriginal jurisdiction based on the state’s terms and conditions. I draw upon the art practice of collage and offer a collage methodology and theory to frame out the resurgence approach of this study.