White Civility and Aboriginal Law/Epistemology

One image, multiple nationalisms:Face to Faceand theSiege atKanehsatà:ke

“…Looking at the image itself, several elements of its construction become immediately clear (Fee ). There is a physical disparity between the two men: the warrior is larger and stands tall over the soldier, forcing him to look upwards in order to meet his gaze.…”

“…Although this is not an extreme close-up, the distance of the shot is certainly One image, multiple nationalisms 489 in the range of personal space for the two men and the viewer is invited to share in this intimacy. Looking at the image itself, several elements of its construction become immediately clear (Fee 2008). There is a physical disparity between the two men: the warrior is larger and stands tall over the soldier, forcing him to look upwards in order to meet his gaze.…”

“…On the one hand, as Fee (: 203) notes, Face to Face could be understood as colonial imagery, that is, imagery that ‘strips away a huge number of complications, so that what remains is a binary, the binary that ties an identity as a white settler Anglo‐Canadian to the existence of an Aboriginal Other, who leans in threateningly from another‐uncivilized‐time‐frame.’ The repetition of the man‐to‐man combat binary embodied in Face to Face and in the texts that accompany it draw on us–them, self–other and civilised–uncivilised constructions integral for the creation and maintenance of dominant/imperial national identities (LaRocque ; Marvin and Ingle ). On the other hand, Face to Face , like other elements of material culture, cannot be understood in solely synchronic and singular terms.…”