Beavers, Blockades, and Animal Capital In Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s A Short History of the Blockade and Sydney Hegele’s The Pump
Abstract
This paper explores the beaver as a symbol and resource for Canadian national identity. It brings together the fields of animal studies, Indigenous critical theory, and critical political economy to read Sydney Hegele’s Ontario Gothic short story collection The Pump and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s lecture A Short History of the Blockade zeroing on the representation of beavers as staging criticisms of a settler colonial politics of extraction within Canadian history and national literary archetypes.
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on-our-land-how-rails-colonial-past/.
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Pasternak, Shiri. “Blockade: A Meeting Place of Law.” Whose Land Is It Anyway?: A Manual for Decolonization, edited by Peter McFarlane and Nicole Schabus, Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC, 2017, pp. 32-36.
Pasternak, Shiri, and Tia Dafnos. “How Does a Settler State Secure the Circuitry of Capital?” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 36, no. 4, 2017, pp. 739-57.
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—. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. U of Minnesota P, 2017.
Spice, Anne. “Fighting Invasive Infrastructures: Indigenous Relations against Pipelines.” Environment and Society: Advances in Research, vol. 9, 2018, pp. 40-56.
Varghese, Anuja. “The Pump by Sydney Warner Brooman.” The Miramichi Reader, 19 Sept. 2021, https://miramichireader.ca/2021/09/the-pump-by-sydney-warner-brooman/.
Wakeham, Pauline. Taxidermic Signs: Reconstructing Aboriginality. U of Minnesota P, 2008.
Andrew-Gee, Eric. “‘The Railways Got Very Wealthy on Our Land’: How Rail’s Colonial Past Made It a Target for Blockades.” The Globe and Mail, 3 Mar. 2020, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-the-railways-got-very-wealthy-
on-our-land-how-rails-colonial-past/.
Atwood, Margaret. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. McLelland & Stewart, 2004.
Belcourt, Billy-Ray. “Animal Bodies, Colonial Subjects: (Re)Locating Animality in Decolonial Thought.” Societies, vol. 5, no. 1, 1, Mar. 2015, pp. 1-11. MDPI, https://doi.org/10.3390/soc5010001.
Berlant, Lauren Gail. Cruel Optimism. Duke UP, 2011.
Boggs, Colleen Glenney. Animalia Americana: Animal Representations and Biopolitical Subjectivity. Columbia UP, 2013. Critical Perspectives on Animals: Theory, Culture, Science, and Law.
Clover, Joshua. “The Political Economy of Tactics.” Verso, 16 Mar. 2022, https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/5303-the-political-economy-of-tactics.
Coulthard, Glen Sean. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. U of Minnesota P, 2014. Indigenous Americas.
Fiamengo, Janice. “‘The Animals in This Country’: Animals in the Canadian Literary Imagination.” Other Selves: Animals in the Canadian Literary Imagination, edited by Janice Fiamengo, U of Ottawa P, 2007, pp. 1-25. Reappraisals: Canadian Writers.
Guenther, Lisa. “#AbolishCanada: Breaking Down the 2022 Freedom Convoy.” The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 122, no. 3, Jul. 2023, pp. 651-59.
Hegele, Sydney. The Pump. Invisible Publishing, 2021.
—. “The Sydney Hegele Interview.” The Miramichi Reader, 25 Oct. 2021, https://miramichireader.ca/2021/10/the-sydney-warner-brooman-interview/.
Hood, Glynnis. The Beaver Manifesto: An RMB Manifesto. RMB Rocky Mountain Books, 2011.
Innis, Harold A. The Fur Trade in Canada. U of Toronto P, 1956.
La Berge, Leigh Clare. Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary. Duke UP, 2023.
Manuel, Arthur. “From Dispossession to Dependency.” Whose Land Is It Anyway? A Manual for Decolonization, edited by Peter McFarlane and Nicole Schabus, Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC, 2017, pp. 18-22.
Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 1st ed., International Publishers Company, Incorporated, 1989.
—. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Translated by Ben Fowkes, vol. 1, Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, 1981.
O’Brien, Susie. What the World Might Look Like: Decolonial Stories of Resilence and Refusal. McGill-Queen’s UP, 2024.
Pasternak, Shiri. “Blockade: A Meeting Place of Law.” Whose Land Is It Anyway?: A Manual for Decolonization, edited by Peter McFarlane and Nicole Schabus, Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC, 2017, pp. 32-36.
Pasternak, Shiri, and Tia Dafnos. “How Does a Settler State Secure the Circuitry of Capital?” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 36, no. 4, 2017, pp. 739-57.
Poliquin, Rachel. Beaver. Reaktion Books, Ltd, 2015.
Scott, Cam. “Below the Barricades: On Infrastructure, Self-Determination, and Defense.” Viewpoint Magazine, 11 Oct. 2021, https://viewpointmag.com/2021/10/11/below-the-barricades-on-infrastructure-self-determination-and-defense/#r+13312+1+39.
Shukin, Nicole. Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times. U of Minnesota P, 2009.
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. A Short History of the Blockade: Giant Beavers, Diplomacy, and Regeneration in Nishnaabewin. U of Alberta P, 2021. CLC Kreisel Lecture Series.
—. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. U of Minnesota P, 2017.
Spice, Anne. “Fighting Invasive Infrastructures: Indigenous Relations against Pipelines.” Environment and Society: Advances in Research, vol. 9, 2018, pp. 40-56.
Varghese, Anuja. “The Pump by Sydney Warner Brooman.” The Miramichi Reader, 19 Sept. 2021, https://miramichireader.ca/2021/09/the-pump-by-sydney-warner-brooman/.
Wakeham, Pauline. Taxidermic Signs: Reconstructing Aboriginality. U of Minnesota P, 2008.
Selby, I. (2026). Beavers, Blockades, and Animal Capital In Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s A Short History of the Blockade and Sydney Hegele’s The Pump. Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, 15, 15–31. https://doi.org/10.14201/candb.v15i15-31
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