PRESENTING THE PAST
Historian laureate looks to share our ancient history
There are moments I wish I could go back to the past and redo my years in university, which, ironically enough, were spent as a history major.
At the time, I eschewed study of my own country and region, and was instead captivated by the romanticized stories of ancient societies from far off places — the senate of Rome, the court of Constantinople, the pharaohs of Egypt, the temples of Israel — not recognizing that North America had its own thriving civilizations that were just as fascinating.
I know I’m not alone. Perhaps because comparatively little physical evidence remains of these civilizations, or because of gaps in school curriculum, or maybe due to plain old wilful ignorance, we as Canadians — particularly western Canadians — have not done a great job of understanding the ancient history of our own part of the world.
It was therefore gratifying to hear that Edmonton’s newly minted historian laureate, Amber Paquette, aims to change that through a series of documentary films over the next couple of years.
“I would really like to demystify early North America on a scale we haven’t got to experience, especially through a visual experience,” she says.
A 29-year-old Métis, Paquette is the city’s first historian laureate of Indigenous decent and also happens to be the first filmmaker to land the appointment.
With the laureate now marking its 10th anniversary, the choice of someone like her is undoubtedly overdue, but also points to how the role has evolved in interesting and unexpected ways.
This is a positive development for a program that could use a boost in exposure, which Paquette may help to bring about.
As a child, Paquette grew up in both Edmonton and on a farm in Strathcona County. There wasn’t much family stability during her childhood, she says, which meant she didn’t have much connection to her heritage. That left her with a lot of unanswered questions, driving her as an adult to explore the history her parents couldn’t provide.
Through her inquiries she discovered a direct lineage to some of the area’s earliest participants in the fur trade, including those with connections to Fort Edmonton.
Fittingly, Paquette now works as a Fort Edmonton Park interpreter. Some days she plays the daughter of Fort Edmonton’s “chief factor” John Rowand, while other times she dons the role of one of the countless First Nations and Metis women whose labour made the fort tick.
Paquette notes that fur trade history is often told from the European perspective even though it was largely an Indigenous operation. The industry was sustained by huge kinship networks and trade routes, which were themselves based on ancient trade routes that existed among Indigenous people long before European settlers arrived.
Back then, the continent was home to massive civilizations such as the Mississippian kingdoms that built huge cities of earthen pyramids and platform mounds.
This part of North American history is not extensively understood, so Paquette’s challenge, in part, will be to use a modern lens to show how people from the Edmonton area connected to these ancient societies. She hopes to rely on friends with expertise in animation, time lapses, drone footage and other techniques to make something fun and accessible.
The laureate’s 10-year milestone is a good moment for reflection on whether the program is delivering what it should, though organizers are generally happy with how it has developed, said Dan Rose, chair of the Edmonton Historical Board.
After kicking it off with a couple of relatively traditional historians, subsequent appointees have employed a wider variety of approaches — from Marlena Wyman’s sketches of Edmonton architecture to Chris Chang-yen Philips’s podcasts on bits of local history, to Danielle Metcalfe-chenail’s work on the jagged past of the Charles Camsell Hospital.
Two of the last three appointees have been in their 20s, while a lot of the recent work has gone beyond civic boosterism into history that is complex and uncomfortable.
That diversity is how it should be because, as Rose notes, the laureate role should not be confused as the city’s “official historian.” It is instead a platform for the discovery and dissemination of stories, largely sourced from the community, which is ideally done in many different ways.
“We have a much richer, more nuanced perspective of who we are as a city precisely because of the work the historian laureates have done,” Rose says.
I agree. However, he acknowledges more effort is required to get that work noticed, no easy feat for a program on a shoestring budget.
On that front, I would love to see partnerships forged with some of the city’s cultural institutions, including the Royal Alberta Museum, the Art Gallery of Alberta, and Fort Edmonton Park.
That wider dissemination is crucial because, as I finally learned in my post-university days, learning about one’s local past has a plethora of benefits: from boosting civic pride and building a sense of home, to creating new connections and promoting cultural understanding.
As Paquette suggests, it can be a transformative experience when we can draw a line from the past to the people and places we see today.
“I think we can all find much wonderment, fascination and joy to know we have our own Egypts and Mexicos right here,” she says. “They aren’t as visual. But they were here.”