Terrance Houle | The Wagon Burner and Other Stories

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Terrance Houle, “The Wagon Burner,” 20003

video still (courtesy of the Gallery)

What are the ways in which wagon trains were instrumental to European settlers' westward expansion across Turtle Island; and how did Indigenous peoples mobilize to protect their lands from encroachment by settlers? What are the afterlives of wagons today, and what place do they occupy in Western Canada, including within the Calgary Stampede?

Departing from – and centered around – Blackfoot artist Terrance Houle's The Wagon Burner (2003), The Wagon Burner and Other Stories reflects on the social and political history of the wagon, and the ways in which it has shaped our collective imaginaries of both the North American landscape and the Indigenous communities that have lived on this land for thousands of years.

Bringing together newspaper clippings from the Library of Congress, montages of Western films, and posters from the Calgary Stampede, The Wagon Burner and Other Stories offers a snapshot of the history of this land, seen through the lens of a seemingly benign – yet often overlooked – mode of transport: the wagon.