In this presentation, I considered the significance for studies of missionary colonialism of what scholars call the “photographic event,” focusing on a diary written by an Anglican missionary-journalist, Frederick Du Vernet, during his 1898 trip to visit the Ojibwe of Rainy River in Treaty 3 territory (also known in Canada as northwestern Ontario). Du Vernet recorded both Ojibwe resistance to and requests for his picture-taking. His stories reveal how the event of taking photographs marked his own longing to capture spiritual stories and presences and provoked a variety of Ojibwe responses to such forms of visual capture.
“Photography, Resistance, and Re-mediation on Manidoo Ziibi” Centre for Research on Colonial Culture, University of Otago, Dunedin, Aoteoroa/New Zealand, April 11, 2018.