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On October 1st, an exceptionally talented and important Indigenous artist passed away at the age of 97: Daphne Odjig.

This essay explores how print media conceals implicit hegemonic texts that common readers unsuspectingly tend to internalize. These geopolitically infused texts are set to appropriate the reader’s worldviews by sublimating the kind of perceptions and notions they want to promote. This paper raises questions and awareness about how academia responds to these acts of internalization. These geopolitical texts, which dominate most of the print media and other resources, function at an imperceptible level to legitimize presuppositions and mould the world based on its own political imaginaries. To decode and interpret these largely shrewd texts requires a literacy skill that students need to acquire in different academic disciplines. This essay, therefore, explores how print media, such as newspapers and comics, attempts to legitimize knowledge through reports and stories that work at the subliminal level. Since all readers, students, instructors or researchers are vulnerable observers (Behar, 1996), because of our fallible human nature, the act of internalizing mediascaped knowledge becomes alarmingly simple and crucially effective on the way we are directed to perceive the world. By analogy, geopolitical texts are these id-instigated drives that the superego often suppresses and filters into dreams and fiction and yet they ominously somehow found their way out; they stealthily found expression and now they paint reality with their own biased colors. Can readers in the context be dream catchers? Cet article explore la manière dont les médias écrits dissimulent les textes hégémoniques implicites que les lecteurs ordinaires semblent assimiler à leur insu. Ces textes géopolitiquement insufflés sont appelés à approprier la vision du monde des lecteurs en sublimant le type de perceptions et de notions qu’ils souhaitent promouvoir. Cet article soulève des questions et sensibilise l’opinion sur la manière dont le monde universitaire répond à ces actes d’assimilation. Ces textes géopolitiques, qui dominent la majorité des médias écrits et autres ressources, fonctionnent à un niveau imperceptible afin de légitimer les présuppositions et façonner le monde sur la base de son propre imaginaire politique. Pour décoder et interpréter ces textes hautement astucieux, il faut avoir des capacités de lecture que les étudiants doivent acquérir dans diverses disciplines universitaires. Par conséquent, cet article explore comment les médias écrits, tels que les journaux et les bandes dessinées, tentent de légitimer la connaissance par le biais de rapports et de récits qui agissent au niveau subliminal. Du fait que tous les lecteurs, tous les étudiants, tous les instructeurs ou tous les chercheurs sont des observateurs vulnérables (Behar, 1996), du fait de notre nature humaine faible, l’acte qui consiste à assimiler la connaissance du paysage médiatique devient dangereusement simple et extrêmement efficace sur la manière dont nous sommes poussés à percevoir le monde. Par analogie, les textes géopolitiques sont des volontés menées par le besoin d’identité que le super-ego réprime et filtre souvent pour en faire des rêves et des fictions, et pourtant, d’une manière ou d’une autre, ces volontés réussissent quand même à trouver leur chemin; elles ont furtivement trouvé comment s’exprimer et maintenant, elles dépeignent une réalité colorée de leurs propres préjugés. Est-ce que dans ce contexte, les lecteurs peuvent devenir des capteurs de rêves?

The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 challenged the hegemony that Western, archaeological methodologies has held over Indigenous cultural heritage in Australia. By choosing to relinquish state control and authority over cultural heritage in favour of the expertise of Indigenous people, the Act created a unique and innovative heritage policy. Over the 10 years the Act has been in force, it has seen a variety of approaches adopted as part of myriad projects. This has created a mature field of practice for investigation and analysis. This article examines and critiques the Act to determine its successes and weaknesses. In doing so, it offers opportunities for other policy-makers to consider as part of policy review.

The article draws up an inventory of, and compares strategies for, the theoretical and critical treatment of the absence–presence interplay at stake in the literary and visual representations of absence. This brings to our attention a multiplicity of heterogeneous and, to a greater or lesser degree, marginal signify-ing phenomena that have in common patterns of disrupting and deviating from the standard conventions of creating and conveying meaning through figures of absence. Lacking a name for these disparate yet similar instances where meaning is created from empty signifiers, we have chosen to call them figural voids. This attempt to produce a critical inventory focuses on modern and contemporary approaches to the analysis of figures and figurations of absence in literature, visual arts, and cinema, relying on the works of Anne Cauquelin, Jean-Pierre Mourey, Philippe Le Roux, Maurice Frechuret, Bruno Duborgel, and Marc Vernet. Their theoretical positions stand in a variety of literary and artistic contexts that are seemingly disconnected yet can be brought together on the basis of their common affinity to figural voids. This calls for a comparative standpoint and can be illustrated with examples ranging across historical periods and disciplines: from Stoic writings to Alberto Moravia’s Boredom, from Mallarmé’s blank page to the controversial curatorial practices espoused by Yves Klein.

Review of Jeremy Zallen, American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865.

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) emerged to bring attention to the overrepresentation of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. It has raised awareness about systemic racism and sexism as well as social and economic conditions experienced by Canada's Indigenous population. Yet, research shows that Indigenous males are the most likely to be murdered in Canada (Mulligan, Axford, & Soecki, 2016). Since Indigenous men are going missing and are murdered in disturbing numbers, and they are fathers, brothers, and sons to Indigenous women and girls, it is understandable that many in the Indigenous community wanted to include them in the inquiry. Our analysis explores how the MMIWG and discourses about inclusion and exclusion have been framed in ways that limit interpretations about the root causes of problems experienced by Indigenous people, especially when they exclude an important part of the Indigenous population—Indigenous males. We draw upon Indigenous perceptions of the inquiry and analyses of social norms and stereotypes in order to explore the conflicting positions and experiences associated with missing and murdered Indigenous people in Canada. We conclude by exploring the need for a more comprehensive inquiry. We recognize that a holistic model of inquiry that honours the voices of Indigenous communities is crucial to a proper investigation into missing and murdered Indigenous people in Canada.