One Site, Multiple Pasts: Negotiating Identity and Archaeological Heritage along the US/Canadian Border

Summary

Fort Saint-Jean lies in the Richelieu River Valley approximately half-way between the modern American/Canadian border and the City of Montreal. The valley has been a space of contestation between French, British, Canadian and American ideas, identities, and empires. For over three hundred years this contestation has taken numerous forms, ranging from ethnic stereotyping, to open warfare. When I began directing the Laval University archaeological field program at Fort Saint-Jean, our research questions were geared toward the role the site played in Canadian military history. At that time, I was unaware of the significance of this specific National Historic Site to the heritage of multiple modern peoples. French-Canadian Nationalists vaunt the Richelieu Valley for its role in the 1837 rebellion, for the Loyalists Fort Saint-Jean is a figurehead of imperial control of North America. For all Canadians, the site can be seen as a shrine to Canadian military heritage. Finally the site is often employed by Americans to commemorate the short lived invasion of British Canada by the Continental Army. This paper discusses the path taken by one graduate student through the complexities of research partner and stakeholder interactions on the topics of ethnic and collective North American heritage.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Managing Archaeological Heritage in the 21st Century

Keywords

Spatial Coverage