Anti-Colonial Science: A Course Journal. Vol. 1, 2022. https://ojs.library.dal.ca/acs/

Stories of Mining and the North: Canadian Geosophy and Colonialism

Ric Peever

Geosophy: the study of the world as people conceive of and imagine it

A concept introduced to geography by J. K. Wright in 1947. The word is a compound of ‘geo’ (Greek for earth) and ‘sophia’ (Greek for wisdom).

Where we come from plays a large role in the construction of our identity, whether we want it to or not. I never wanted the place I grew up to be a formative aspect myself, and it wasn’t until I moved halfway across the country that I actually acknowledged the role that my hometown played in my creation. Geosophy, as J.K. Wright called it, plays a big role in our identity and the way we interact with the world, but what about the role it plays in colonialism? Settler colonialism is a system dependent on the reconstruction of history, but also on a lesser-known reconstruction of geography, a process that develops and shares new geosophies designed to benefit colonizers. Through the eyes and writings of Emilie Cameron and Lee Maracle, I will explore the relationship between my own geographies and colonialism. Geosophy, rather than geography, dominates Canadian views of our country’s physicality; and serves to further colonial narratives of the land, its history, and all the people upon it.

I grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, a place built on mining. In primary school we learned French, algebra, and the story of a group of Trans-Canada railway workers whose believed-to-be faulty compasses led to the discovery of millions of tonnes of precious metals, pushed deep into the earth by a meteor. That metal was the foundation of an entire city, and even the reason I’d come to be there, my family drawn in from Scotland by the promise of a job as an Inco chemist for my grandad. Sudbury is home to Ukrainians, Finns, Italians, and Scots, all drawn in by the promise of nickel; few of my friends had called Canada home for longer than one generation. We even had an entire museum dedicated to the history of Sudbury’s mining; Dynamic Earth was the place to spend a snow day, plan a field trip, take a tourist, and recount and celebrate the history of our home. Dynamic Earth had at least a century of northern Ontario’s history displayed on its walls. It did not mention the Anishinaabe, or any other Indigenous peoples.

Of course, making no mention of Canada’s indigenous population was hardly a unique thing in our country, especially ten years ago. But how was it possible that I grew up so completely ignorant? As far as I was concerned, the history of mining in the north began with my hometown in the late 19th century. In Emilie Cameron’s Copper Stories, she disagrees.1 Cameron’s recounting of history is undeniable, yet it directly opposes all that I was taught growing up. Through an exploration of Samuel Hearne’s unpublished travel notes, she clearly establishes that copper was an important part of the regional economy before the arrival of colonizers; despite scholarly persistence that the history of metal and mining began with the introduction of European iron. Through several stories of copper, Cameron establishes its importance in the history of the Indigenous peoples, and with it establishes their histories of trade, conflict, culture, and agency. hat value does the suppression of this specific subject give to colonialism in Canada?

One of the ways in which this reconstructed geography aids colonialism is in its support of John Locke’s theory of property.2 His philosophy was used to justify many instances of European colonization; as land that was unused or undeveloped (by European terms) did not belong to anyone, and could be freely taken. The indigenous peoples of North America lived differently than Europeans, with the land rather than on top of it, and many believed that this apparent lack of ownership or development justified the establishment of their own. Mining by Indigenous people was something in direct conflict with this idea, as it was seen in Europe as one of the most intensive and laborious forms of development and resource extraction, and something that would deny the applicability of Locke’s theory of property, were it to get out. The suppression of this history is hardly surprising then, as it falls in line with desired erasure of Indigenous peoples and the consequent conquering of their land. An isolated, timeless, far-flung landmass is what Canada was portrayed as, and it is no coincidence that Cameron describes current settler ideas of the north with the exact same words.3

The second major component of my own geography was growing up in the north. Sudbury was the gateway to northern Ontario, the largest city in a vast area of trees and lakes and rocks – and not much else. Our ski-doos and ice fishing huts and weeks spent below -20 Celsius, they all reinforced our sense of ‘northness’ and our connection to the land we lived on. I would skate to a friend’s house in the winter and kayak there in the summer, we went camping and snowshoeing and we did not have a Popeye’s or a Taco Bell – we were much to far north. Except if you look at a map of Ontario, you will not find Sudbury in the top half, you might actually find it about a third of the way up, because it really isn’t all that far north. So why do we tell ourselves that it is? Why is there a several hundred-kilometre gap between our geography, and our geosophy?

Through the eyes of Lee Maracle, this gap could be seen as the manifestation of colonial appropriation.4 Maracle sees in colonialism an appropriation of land, and the stories that come with it. In her definition of appropriation, the original owner must lose the use, benefit, authority, and ownership of something, while the thief or appropriator benefits. We have appropriated the land of Canada by all aspects of this definition, but how have we taken the stories? In this case, rather than stealing folktales or histories, we have appropriated their very reality as our own. We both lament and take pride in our bravery in the face of our cold and isolation; but we live in cities of hundreds of thousands while condemning the Indigenous peoples to face the true cold and isolation we make ourselves martyrs of. We do this so that we might erase the history of genocide in Canada; in order to clear the stage to prepare for our denial of wrongdoings and the history we intend to rewrite.

It is undeniable that colonialism has been served well by hegemonic Canadian geosophy, and will continue to do so if we do not disrupt and correct our historic and geographic narratives as both Maracle and Cameron seek to do. Although in different contexts, Lee and Maracle agree that the suppressed and stolen stories of Canadian geography serve and are served by colonizers and their beliefs.56 This exploration of geosophy and its role in my own life has served as an important reminder that malevolence is not needed to perpetuate colonialism, and personal identity, although foundational, still demands re-examination.

Bibliography

Cameron, Emilie. “Copper Stories: Imaginative Geographies and Material Orderings of the Central Canadian Arctic.” In Rethinking the Great White North: Race, Nature and the Historical Geographies of Whiteness in Canada, edited by A. Baldwin, L. Cameron, and A. Kobayashi, 169–190. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011.

Positioning ourselves: Maracle, My Conversations with Canadians, Conversation 10: Appropriation, pp. 99–122. 2017.

Tuckness, Alex. “Locke's Political Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/. 2020.

Endnotes

  1. Cameron, Emilie. “Copper Stories: Imaginative Geographies and Material Orderings of the Central Canadian Arctic.” In Rethinking the Great White North: Race, Nature and the Historical Geographies of Whiteness in Canada, edited by A. Baldwin, L. Cameron, and A. Kobayashi, 169–190. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011.↩︎

  2. Tuckness, Alex. “Locke's Political Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/. 2020.↩︎

  3. Cameron. Copper Stories, 2011↩︎

  4. Positioning ourselves: Maracle, My Conversations with Canadians, Conversation 10: Appropriation, pp. 99–122.↩︎

  5. Cameron. Copper Stories, 2011↩︎

  6. Maracle, My Conversations with Canadians, 2017↩︎

Copyright (c) 2022 Ric Peever

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