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Exploring Relationality: Perspectives on the Research Narratives of the Rock Art of the Algonquian-Speaking Peoples of Central and Eastern Canada

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Abstract

Over the past six decades, researchers investigating the rock art of the Algonquian-speaking peoples of Central and Eastern Canada have produced interpretations that recognize and draw on Algonquian peoples’ oral traditions, worldviews, and realities. Mainly characterized by the use of ethnohistorical and ethnographic evidence and analogy, this has resulted in a number of important developments and trends in Algonquian rock art research. In particular, this research has identified some of the motives, practices, and performances that underpin the making of rock art, and focused attention on the ways in which humans and other-than-humans are implicated. It has also revealed the paradigms within which researchers have operated. In recent years, the interest in ‘new animism’ has resulted in a shift from epistemological concerns to new ontologically related approaches, which engage Algonquian ontologies as sources of theory and heuristic tools with which to examine the relationality and agency of rock art. The trajectory of current research indicates that the recognition and acceptance of ontological multiplicity and the multivocality of the past are crucial not only to the interpretation of rock art but also to the ‘worlding practices’ that characterize Algonquian rock art research.

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Notes

  1. This term refers to Northern Algonquian (Anishinaabeg/Ojibwa and Algonquin, Cree, and Innu) and Maritime Algonquian (L’nu/Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqiyik/Maliseet, and Peskotomuhkat/Passamaquoddy) groups known to have made rock art.

  2. ‘Other-than-human persons’ are a class of beings which may include spirits, plants, animals, natural phenomena (e.g. weather), elements of the physical environment (e.g. a mountain), and objects considered to have agency (Hallowell 2010 [1960]).

  3. Mandated in the Indian Act (1876) and its subsequent amendments.

  4. Selwyn Dewdney is considered by many to be the ‘grandfather’ of Algonquian rock art studies in Canada. He had a background in art therapy.

  5. Morrisseau later founded the ‘Woodlands School’ style of painting and became a major figure in Canadian art.

  6. In many shamanistic Algonquian cultures, the cosmos comprises several tiered worlds—the Underground, Underwater, Earth, and Upperworld—each with their own resident persons. Places that mark the interface between rock, earth, water, and sky are considered to link these different realms and to be where spiritual power could be sought and communication with other-than-humans is possible. Places traditionally considered to exhibit such power include dramatic landscape features such as mountains, cliffs, caves, and effigy rock formations, as well as water bodies, waterfalls, and dangerous rapids (Rajnovich 1994: 35).

  7. These other-than-humans are known as maymaygwayshi to the Anishinaabeg/Ojibwa, memkwesiwak to the Cree, memekueshuat to the Innu, mihkomwéhsisok to the Peskotomuhkati/Passamaquoddy, and wiklatmu’j to the L’nu/Mi’kmaq.

  8. For example, the Constitution Act (1982) Section 35, Supreme Court of Canada rulings (Haida Nation v. British Columbia (Minister of Forests), [2004] 3 SCR 511, 2004 SCC 73 (CanLII) and Mikisew Cree First Nation v. Canada (Minister of Canadian Heritage), [2005] 3 S.C.R. 388, 2005 SCC 69) and the Canadian Environmental Act (2012) have obligated greater consultation with Indigenous peoples. In 1997, the Canadian Archaeological Association adopted the Statement of Principles for Ethical Conduct Pertaining to Aboriginal Peoples.

  9. Medicine in this context is the power to control and influence, and the ability to maintain good relations. In the animic Algonquian cosmos, persons are distinguished on the basis of the power they wield; other-than-humans exercise greater power than humans who seek to obtain it from the former through respectful behaviour and gift-giving. A failure to respect good relations can have negative consequences for humans (Hallowell 2010 [1960]: 553).

  10. This recalls Dewdney and Kidd’s observation that many of their Indigenous informants were less concerned about ascertaining the exact meaning and intention of the original artists, but assumed that ‘the audience will do some filling-in on its own’ (Dewdney and Kidd 1962: 87).

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Acknowledgements

Research for this paper was supported by the Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland. I thank Dagmara Zawadzka for photographs, and Mario Blaser, Roger J. Lewis, and Chelsee Arbour for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am grateful to the editors and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

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    Bryn Tapper

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Tapper, B. Exploring Relationality: Perspectives on the Research Narratives of the Rock Art of the Algonquian-Speaking Peoples of Central and Eastern Canada. J Archaeol Method Theory 27, 723–744 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09467-6

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