Review of \u3ci\u3eLouis Riel and the Creation of Modern Canada: Mythic Discourse and the Postcolonial State\u3c/i\u3e. By Jennifer Reid

In the late nineteenth century, Métis leader Louis Riel led two rebellions against Canadian state expansion on the North American prairies. The 1869 Red River Rebellion led to the creation of the province of Manitoba. The 1885 North-West Rebellion, in present-day Saskatchewan, led to Riel’s state execution, by hanging. But Riel’s legend goes beyond the facts of these nineteenth-century conflicts toward the generation of the most omnipresent and complicated mythology in Canadian politics and culture. It is complicated because Riel has been read in many, often contradictory, ways: as a Canadian founder, an Indigenous anticolonial rebel, a fighter for Western sovereignty, a messianic prophet, a lunatic, a statesman, and a founder of the new Métis nation. Thus, Jennifer Reid has taken on a tough task, for what is there new to say about Riel? Reid leverages Riel’s mythological fluidity and hybridity into her own claim that his legend speaks to a defining truth about the story of Canadian political and cultural development and the meaning of Canadian identity. In this sense, the book is not fundamentally about Riel himself, for even while Reid offers a meticulous, well-researched history of Riel and the rebellions he led, scholars on the subject are not likely to find anything new in an empirical sense. But that is not the book’s point: Louis Riel and the Creation of Modern Canada at base is about the role of collective memory in the production of Canadian national identity, with Riel standing as the central figure in that mnemonic production

On Geo Maher's Anticolonial Eruptions

Geo Maher’s Anticolonial Eruptions is a force to be reckoned with. As a reading experience, it’s a bloody delight, even as – and maybe because – Maher guides us down in to the depths of the volcanoes stoking the explosive fires of rebellion. We also get to follow the moles below and high above ground as they wait for their moment to emerge, shock, and rebel. These moles are blind in one sense, while in another sense they can tell time, or more accurately they create time in the form of political time; marking the potential beginning of a new era. This political time is created in the moment of the emergence of these moles from the shadows in order to ambush and take advantage of the “hubris” of colonizers who are comfortable in their own blindness, in not-seeing what they cannot grapple with, that which is right before their eyes; colonization and all it has wrought upon the colonized. A new political moment is then birthed, time starts anew, and this is a result of the colonizer’s limitations in grasping the depths and heights of their oppression of the colonized

Creolizing Collective Memory: Refusing the Settler Memory of the Reconstruction Era

The collective memory of the Reconstruction era in US history is a good example of Jane Anna Gordon's notion of 'creolization' at work. I argue that this is an era that could do with even further creolizing by refusing the influence of settler memory. Settler memory refers to the capacity both to know and disavow the history and contemporary implications of genocidal violence toward Indigenous people and the accompanying land dispossession that serve as the fundamental bases for creating settler colonial nations-states. One of the most important works on the Reconstruction Era is W.E.B. Du Bois’ canonical text, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880, published in 1935. I examine both the creolizing elements of DuBois' argument and also suggest how attention to settler memory can further creolize our grasp of this period through a re-reading of his text and putting it into the context of other developments occuring during the years he examines

Politics on the Boundaries: The Post-Colonial Politics of Indigenous People

Politics on the boundaries as a practice and third space of sovereignty as a pursuit frame a logic of indigenous politics developed through post-colonial analysis- The post-colonial premises of this logic are defined and applied in this article through an examination of indigenous political claims and activities from different historical moments. These forms of indigenous politics articulate diverse and yet similarly woven strands of the logic of politics on the boundaries. Implicated in any logic of indigenous politics in the U.S. context is the effort to affect a more politically resonant understanding of how American political identity has been constructed through a symbolic and material relationship to indigenous people. As such, this logic can and is turned around to shed light on the tensions inherent to American politics. Finally, the article closes by demonstrating how politics on the boundaries clarifies the terms of the pro-casino arguments of California-based tribes during the Proposition 5 campaign in 1998

Bioactivity Profiling of Small-Volume Samples by Nano Liquid Chromatography Coupled to Microarray Bioassaying Using High-Resolution Fractionation.

High-throughput screening platforms for the identification of bioactive compounds in mixtures have become important tools in the drug discovery process. Miniaturization of such screening systems may overcome problems associated with small sample volumes and enhance throughput and sensitivity. Here we present a new screening platform, coined picofractionation analytics, which encompasses microarray bioassays and mass spectrometry (MS) of components from minute amounts of samples after their nano liquid chromatographic (nanoLC) separation. Herein, nanoLC was coupled to a low-volume liquid dispenser equipped with pressure-fed solenoid valves, enabling 50-nL volumes of column effluent (300 nL/min) to be discretely deposited on a glass slide. The resulting fractions were dried and subsequently bioassayed by sequential printing of nL-volumes of reagents on top of the spots. Unwanted evaporation of bioassay liquids was circumvented by employing mineral oil droplets. A fluorescence microscope was used for assay readout in kinetic mode. Bioassay data were correlated to MS data obtained using the same nanoLC conditions in order to assign bioactives. The platform provides the possibility of freely choosing a wide diversity of bioassay formats, including those requiring long incubation times. The new method was compared to a standard bioassay approach, and its applicability was demonstrated by screening plasmin inhibitors and fibrinolytic bioactives from mixtures of standards and snake venoms, revealing active peptides and coagulopathic proteases

Creolizing Collective Memory: Refusing the Settler Memory of the Reconstruction Era

The collective memory of the Reconstruction era in US history is a good example of Jane Anna Gordon's notion of 'creolization' at work. I argue that this is an era that could do with even further creolizing by refusing the influence of settler memory. Settler memory refers to the capacity both to know and disavow the history and contemporary implications of genocidal violence toward Indigenous people and the accompanying land dispossession that serve as the fundamental bases for creating settler colonial nations-states. One of the most important works on the Reconstruction Era is W.E.B. Du Bois’ canonical text, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880, published in 1935. I examine both the creolizing elements of DuBois' argument and also suggest how attention to settler memory can further creolize our grasp of this period through a re-reading of his text and putting it into the context of other developments occuring during the years he examines

Review Essay on Seema Sohi’s Echoes of Mutiny and Suzan Shown Harjo’s Nation to Nation

Reviewing: SEEMA SOHI, ECHOES OF MUTINY: RACE, SURVEILLANCE, AND INDIAN ANTI-COLONIALISM IN NORTH AMERICA (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2014); SUZAN SHOWN HARJO, EDITOR, NATION TO NATION: TREATIES BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND AMERICAN INDIAN NATIONS (SMITHSONIAN BOOKS 2014)