Elimination on display: Hannah Willmann, Rehearsing Settler Colonialism: Music, Visuals, and Text in the Spectacle of Canadian National Identity at Vancouver 2010, PhD dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2024 | settler colonial studies blog

Elimination on display: Hannah Willmann, Rehearsing Settler Colonialism: Music, Visuals, and Text in the Spectacle of Canadian National Identity at Vancouver 2010, PhD dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2024

22Dec24

Abstract: In this dissertation, I argue that settler colonial practices of “elimination” (A. Simpson 2014) and “extraction” (L. Simpson 2013) are present throughout the artistic choices in the “cultural portion” of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony. Within expressions of white settler Canadian nationalism, elimination is seen in the representation of the landscape as vast and empty, and extraction is evident through a settler positionality on the land and a multiculturalism that treats diversity as a resource to be mined (Lowman and Barker 2015, Robinson 2020). In response to the work of Dylan Robinson (2020), Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2021) and others, I undertake this study as part of settler responsibility within the co-intentional (Huygens 2011) work of anti-colonialism between settlers and Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island and further afield. While national spectacles such as the Olympics tend to distract observers from the reality of social injustices (MacAloon 1984), using a multimodal discourse analysis (Machin 2010, Goodwin 1992), I closely examine each multimodal element (music, visuals, and text) to discuss how the scenes reveal an underlying settler colonial mindset (Wolfe 2006, Veracini 2010). By combining the anti-colonial perspectives of Coulthard, Robinson, and Mignolo with the multimodal analysis, I propose an analytic framework which aims to reveal whether spectacles actively engage decolonial content, or whether they leave settler colonial terms unchanged (Coulthard 2011, Mignolo 2020). Studies such as this one, which serve to unveil the underlying logic of settler colonialism and its operation within constructions of Canadian national identity, are a continuing step towards a decolonized future. I offer this work as my small contribution to helping settler Canadians recognize and relinquish their settler positionality in favor of listening and living as guests and neighbors on Indigenous territory.

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