Response Paper 1

Due Date: 10/12

General Guidelines

By “Response Paper”, I mean a brief argumentative essay responding directly to issues raised by course readings. Usually response papers work best when framed either as a disagreement with, or an expansion of, the original author’s ideas. So, for instance, here are two ways one might respond to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave:

While Plato argues convincingly that we have no direct access to the material world, his cave metaphor ultimately fails. In particular, I will argue that there is simply no way that the captive observers could be adequately fed without coming to understand that the world has 3 dimensions and that they are imprisoned within it. This has important consequences for any version of Idealism that seeks to ground itself in Plato’s work.

or

One puzzling aspect of Plato’s remarkably successful and almost wholly convincing account of the Cave has to do with the manner in which a captive observer would escape and bring the news of an external world to his or her fellow prisoners. In this paper, drawing on the work of David Copperfield and Harry Houdini, I will outline the precise steps required to effect such an escape. I’ll show how a more precise understanding radically deepens our understanding of the human predicament and has broad consequences for a theory of underlying reality and the relationship between the world of Forms and the world of mere phenomena.

A response paper has several important components:

Questions

Answer one of the following questions in an essay of approximately 1000 words.

Option A

In the abstract to “Returning to the water…”, Jessica Hallenbeck argues:

The renewal campaign is one example of how water can form the basis of decolonial political practice, revealing colonial understandings of territory, law, and entitlement.

To what extent do you agree with this claim? Could Hallenbeck have used her experience more persuasively to make this argument – or can you add something to it from your own experience – or might a different claim have been better supported by the evidence she presents?

Option B

Consider the following passage from Fractured Homeland:

Many non-status Algonquins whose traditional territories lay along the Bonnechere and Petawawa Rivers had generally hunted and fished in the Golden Lake territory, so that the Golden Lake Indian agent worked with the police to clarify who were “bona fide” Indians and who were not. Increasingly, this was used to force the Golden Lake Algonquins to reside full-time on the reserve, as those who refused to do so were considered to be off-reserve and therefore non-status… In Ontario, then, it appears that the police used the presence of non-status Algonquins to coerce the people of Golden Lake to live permanently o n the reserve rather than risk losing the limited recognition and benefits available to them as status Indians. (pp.42-3)

In a short essay, explore the ramifications of this “policing” of the boundary between indigenous and non-indigenous in the Ottawa River Valley. Use arguments form Fractured Homeland but also feel free to disagree with the author or clarify arguments that you find unclear or unconvincing.

Option C

In “Canoe Pedagogy,” Liz Newbery writes:

In Canada, both wilderness and the canoe are coded as symbols of the nation, symbols suggesting a just, good nation, with a history brimming with adventure and intercultural cooperation . Canoe trips in Canada, then, are heavily loaded experiences, often carrying idealized notions about Canadian identities, fur trade histories, Aboriginal heritage, and fantasies of wilderness.

Do you find Newbery’s claim convincing? If so, why, and what kinds of measures might help to mitigate this colonial heritage? If you disagree fundamentally, explain where you think her argument goes wrong and how it might be corrected.