This paper argues that state-sponsored memorialisation is a critical enterprise in creating and maintaining a national cultural identity that softens or erases the ongoing process of death-making and dispossession wrought by settlers on the land and Indigenous peoples. Drawing on the work of Toronto-based Cree scholar Karyn Recollet, I further argue that this death-making is not a given. Indigenous peoples assert their presence and relationships to the Humber River and its adjacent lifeforces alongside and in opposition to official memorialising projects. The 20^th anniversary of the Humber River’s designation as a Canada Heritage River in 2019, the first in the era of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action, begs the question as to the role memorial and commemoration ceremonies play in the coalescence of a particular settler colonial story/myth that stabilises geographies as “memorial spaces” while simultaneously narrating Indigenous peoples through erasure, assimilation, and as historical ghosts.

中文翻译：

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亨伯令人难以忘怀：定居者死亡景观、土著幽灵和加拿大遗产河流的纪念

本文认为，国家赞助的纪念活动是创建和维护国家文化认同的一项重要事业，它可以软化或消除移民在土地上和土著人民正在进行的死亡和剥夺过程。借鉴多伦多 Cree 学者 Karyn Recollet 的工作，我进一步认为，这种致死并非必然。土著人民在官方纪念项目旁边和对立的立场上主张他们与亨伯河及其邻近的生命力的存在和关系。20^日 亨伯河在 2019 年被指定为加拿大遗产河周年纪念日，这是加拿大行动呼吁真相与和解委员会时代的第一个周年纪念日，提出了一个问题，即纪念和纪念仪式在特定定居者的融合中所起的作用殖民故事/神话将地理稳定为“纪念空间”，同时通过擦除、同化和历史幽灵来讲述土著人民。