Frictional Bear-Child Stories in Colonialist Spaces of Canadian Childhood

• In Event: Child-Animal Entanglements: Postcolonial and Posthumanist “Common Worlds” Perspectives

Abstract

This paper discusses bear-child entanglements in British Columbia, Canada through an exploration of the complexities and tensions that emerge in the colonized and colonialist spaces where bears and children “meet”. Specifically, frictional encounters (Tsing, 2007) with bears, both imaginary and real, are addressed in the context of an early childhood setting where contradictory images and figures of child and bear abound. The paper grapples with responsibilities and obligations that these frictional encounters bring to early childhood education pedagogies.

The province of British Columbia, which is home to grizzly bears, black bears, and spirit bears, employs narratives of unspoiled wilderness in ways that work to serve the ongoing colonial project (Braun, 2002), while urban and industrial encroachment into bears’ habitats continue. Bear encounters with humans are common. Some bears are now living close to humans and therefore are adapting to human proximity, changing their diets and no longer going into hibernation due to constant food supply. The spaces in which humans and bears come together in colonial British Columbia are thus contentious, and their relationships are embroiled in complex and evolving dynamics informed by notions of safety and conservation, by socio-politico-economic forces, and filled with affective investments (Ahmed, 2004) in fear, love and protection.

Working theoretically and methodologically with the bear-child figure (Haraway, 1997), and the frictions that this figure brings, this paper offers a multi-layered storying of four bear-child entanglements and, specifically, locates them in the settler colonial spaces of British Columbia. The paper addresses what the child-bear figure is becoming in these particular set of relations, and discusses the responsibilities and obligations that emerge through this becoming. The paper employs data collected in a two-year ethnographic research project in an early childhood centre engaged in thinking with ‘common world pedagogies’ (Taylor, 2013).

To investigate bear-child entanglements, the paper discusses the rich opportunities that early childhood spaces provide for these bear-child encounters. First, these spaces are sites that occupy ‘bear country’. Second, early childhood classrooms utilize stories featuring infantilized and human-like representations of bears. As Dempsey (2010) writes, bears have an “extremely cuddly charisma with a face and fur that trigger human concern” (p. 1149), so children are rendered “owners” of toy bears and exposed to a wide range of literature and media that portray bears as friendly creatures. Third, early childhood spaces protect children from potentially dangerous encounters with bears. Bears are conjured as fearsome predators and children are seen as particularly at risk from bears – they are vulnerable prey in one sense -, especially during visits to nearby forests. Finally, ‘bear protection and conversation’ activities are often deployed in early childhood sites as prevention to the eradication of bears and as a way to develop young children’s environmental stewardship.

The paper offers the opportunity to grapple with the following questions: What “otherwise” (Povinelli, 2012) stories might be told of children and bears relatings that disrupt the story written through late liberal colonial imaginaries? And how might educators and children negotiate these frictional relatings through response-ability (Haraway, 2008)?

Author

• Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, University of Victoria