Settler heritage is on Indigenous lands: Robert Coutts, Authorized Heritage: Place, Memory, and Historic Sites in Prairie Canada, University of Manitoba Press, 2021 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler heritage is on Indigenous lands: Robert Coutts, Authorized Heritage: Place, Memory, and Historic Sites in Prairie Canada, University of Manitoba Press, 2021

05Mar21

Description: Authorized Heritage analyses the history of commemoration at heritage sites across western Canada. Using extensive research from predominantly government records, it argues that heritage narratives are almost always based on national messages that commonly reflect colonial perceptions of the past. Yet many of the places that commemorate Indigenous, fur trade, and settler histories are contested spaces, places such as Batoche, Seven Oaks, and Upper Fort Garry being the most obvious. At these heritage sites, Indigenous views of history confront the conventions of settler colonial pasts and represent the fluid cultural perspectives that should define the shifting ground of heritage space.

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