Sian Lathrop's ARIA project:ÌýRethinking the Saint Lawrence Seaway
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My ARIA research project was funded by the generous support of the Bram Garber Arts Undergraduate Research Internship Award, which has allowed me to conduct research into the displacement of Kahnawa:ke’s residents during the construction of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Over the course of the summer, I have reviewed media coverage (current and contemporary), as well as various first person narratives (oral histories), in order to contextualize the expropriation of Indigenous land during the massive multinational infrastructural undertaking. Before I began my archival research, I started my project with a literature review of the existing histories of the St. Lawrence Seaway. This review, along with the archival work on the seaway’s media representation, served an access point for critical scholarship: a way to examine the settler-colonial narrative about the infrastructure project, and problematize the logic upon which this type of media representation relied. The critical aspect of this project relied on recent scholarship in the emerging field of critical infrastructure studies, and used these frameworks to examine the implication of infrastructures of extraction, transportation and communication in the dispossession of Indigenous lands and the erasure of Indigenous jurisdiction and legal order.
The primary research phase of the project involved remotely combing through the CBC Radio archives and various newspaper databases, as well as interpreting various legal documents available to me online. This type of primary research was unfamiliar to me, and I was very lucky to have my supervising professor, Dr. Darin Barney, as a source of guidance. I was interested in participating in an ARIA project in order to have the opportunity to work closely with a professor, an experience that is not always available to a student in an undergraduate degree. I was also able to work with the Greirson Research Group, a community of academics who regularly contribute scholarly work to the field of critical infrastructural studies. Over the course of the summer, I regularly attended the group’s Zoom Meetings, and listened to paper presentations and scholarly discussions that critically examined the role of infrastructure within the settler-state. I also was afforded the opportunity to Skype with PhD students and young scholars in the field, whose recommendations were integral to the direction and scope of my project. The learning objectives of my project were to design an independent scholarly research project, prepare a scholarly literature review, conduct primary archival and documentary research, and finally to produce a research paper that might be developed for publication and/or serve as a work sample for graduate program applications. The project exceeded even these expectations, and at the end of September I have been offered the opportunity to present my work to the Grierson Research Group via remote means. This means the world to me, and allows me to design a presentation for an audience of several graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, something I never expected to do as an undergraduate student.
As exciting as this process has been, there have also been many challenges. Two of the archives I initially planned to consult - the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS) and ARCmtl - closed to the public because of the COVID-19 pandemic. My contacts at both COHDS and ARCmtl initially told me that I would be able to access their resources online; however this opportunity never materialized, and I eventually had to find new archival resources. This meant that I had to reorient my research strategy, and look in places I had not anticipated. The library staff at Â鶹AV were so incredibly helpful during this time, and pointed me in the direction of a host of online archives. Without their support this project would have been much more difficult, and I am endlessly thankful for their direction and guidance. I am also so grateful to Mr. Michael Garmaise, without whom none of this work would have been possible. It is through Mr. Garber’s Fellowship with the Art History and Communications Department that this internship opportunity was made available to me, and the resulting experience has been invaluable to the furthering of my academic career.
The ARIA Research Award has undoubtedly shaped my future academic path, imparting me with valuable skills that I will take with me past my undergraduate degree. In the fall, I am planning to begin the application process for graduate school, and the work I have done this summer (conducting primary research, creating a scholarly literature review and writing a thesis paper) has prepared me for a graduate degree in my field of choice.
