Taking Masters Students to British Columbia - Online?
Our gaze shifted as we caught sight of the porpoise looking up at us through the water as they swam beside the boat. This was the start of our Grizzly Bear tour in North Vancouver Island, part of a core module, International Field Course to Canada, on the the MA in International Heritage Management and Consultancy.
It was the first international trip for Penryn Humanities. The plans were ambitious, risky and innovative: the module tries to ‘unhome’ UK based heritage knowledge by pulling together threads from across the Masters and placing them in a comparative international context. This enables students to explore the relationship between theory and practice.
North West Coast Canada boasts the ultra-modern metropolitan city, Vancouver, famed for its use as a setting in futuristic movies and TV series. Adjacent is Vancouver Island and an expanse of wilderness: mountains, forests, islands and seascapes. Despite the name and the predominance of the English language, British Columbia is the most ethnically diverse province in Canada, with one-quarter of the population representing a visible minority, and multiculturalism enshrined in law. There are over 198 distinct First Nations and 30 different First Nations languages spoken in the province. Despite its inclusivity, BC has important, yet mostly hidden, histories of cultural oppression and genocide.
When we arrived with our first MA cohort in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in May 2019, one of the first things students noticed was the declaration that they were on unceded Indigenous land. This framed the start of a journey designed to unpick and problematise ideas we take for granted – like where we are and our right to be there.
One of the key ideas to unsettle was the way we view and categorise types of heritage. To do this the course was designed to encounter and reencounter similar kinds of Indigenous material cultural heritage (cedar carvings, masks, totem poles) in a range of diverse settings to enable us to view them through different institutional and cultural lenses, and eventually with new eyes. On the first day at the Museum of Anthropology UBC, students encountered Indigenous material as artefacts in ethnographic collections, owned by communities but displaced and displayed in an academic setting for the public. The next day we saw similar material (totem poles) outside in a natural but manufactured tourist setting, Capilano Suspension Bridge, a heritage site north of the city. This comparison started the unsettling process, as students felt uncomfortable about inconsistencies between the guide’s information and the museum interpretation the day before.
Creating a virtual platform for the field course has made me consider the in-between times, being in place, the informal learning.
We left the mainland and travelled to Vancouver Island, where the pace of life is notably more relaxed. We explored historic giant redwood and cedar forests and considered the role of this material in Indigenous and settler culture. Then at the north end of the Island we took a ferry to a small island to visit U’mista Cultural Centre. This centre is renowned for its repatriation work as the community has successfully returned many of the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw Potlatch items that were confiscated under oppressive colonial law. In this setting the students encountered material culture as sacred, connected to ancestors and lineage. They also saw evidence of a period of Canadian history now considered cultural genocide. The visit was emotive. A hush fell and lingered. People reflected.
Back on the main Island we reencountered Indigenous material as living culture at K’ómox First Nations Big House, in Comox. The Kumugwe Cultural Society generously welcomed us into their Big House to share stories, performance, and food. Before entering I heard that some students feared it would be a commercialisation of culture, but as we entered the warm dark space with an earthen floor, and our eyes adjusted to see a crackling fire in the centre of the one-room building constructed from whole cedar trees, I could sense a shift in the students’ demeanour. Once seated on the wooden bleachers, Kumugwe Cultural Society dancers came out and performed four songs and dances wearing masks and robes that brought the ‘objects’ to life and imbued them with vibrant animation and narrative. Afterwards we ate together, sharing bannock and salmon bake, and some of the dancers stayed to talk with us and explained their roles as carvers, artists and keepers of culture. This emphasised the deep history and ongoing practice, building a sense of connection as the dancers explained the importance of sharing and maintaining cultural traditions and reviving aspects that were lost during the Potlatch ban. Hearing traditional stories of human animal connections also helped reframe the wildlife we saw on the grizzly bear tour as more-than-human others with a heritage of their own.
On returning to the shining glass city of Vancouver the students had a final encounter with Indigenous carvings at the Bill Reid Gallery, where they are presented as art, but also evidence of resistance, survivance and cultural renaissance. The students completed logbooks and organised their own symposium at the Museum of Anthropology where they gave conference papers reflecting on their experiences, as part of their assessments. Students called the experience ‘life changing’. They highlighted how they saw heritage differently: as living, vibrant, and future orientated. They viewed heritage with new eyes, from different perspectives, enriching their understanding of what it means to care for the past.
This year we are travelling virtually. The new challenge is to create space and time for the being together that would have happened naturally.
The field course was academically stimulating, but it also resonated on a more personal level: helping students think differently about the world, their understanding of others and themselves. Greater happiness and confidence in the cohort was tangible and infectious. I felt elated. This was more than I had expected, and more significant and important than I had previous given credit to. When I think of the trip I forget the tiredness and stresses, and simply feel an overwhelming sense of warmth and joy.
This year we cannot travel to Canada due to the international lockdown. So we are travelling virtually, accessing resources that will try to simulate the experience. Creating a virtual platform for the field course has made me more closely consider the in-between times, being in place, the informal learning. When I reflect on last year, it was being together and sharing experiences that seemed to enrich the programme. So the new challenge is to create space and time online for informal conversations, the being togetherness, that would have happened naturally. Given the circumstances, the virtual visit offers a new opportunity that will enhance future in-person visits. But I wonder if it will be possible to make the links and cognitive leaps without physically being in place, meeting with people, learning through tangible, tactile, kinetic experience and having the opportunity to have our gaze returned by wild porpoise as the morning light reflects off the water.
