Beothuk: How Story Made a People (Almost) Disappear

The well-known story of the Beothuk is that they were an isolated people who, through conflict with Newfoundland settlers and Mi’kmaq, were made extinct in 1829. Narratives about the disappearance of the Beothuk and the reasons for their supposed extinction soon became entrenched in historical accounts and the popular imagination. Beothuk explores how the history of a people has been misrepresented by the stories of outsiders writing to serve their own interests - from Viking sagas to the accounts of European explorers to the work of early twentieth-century anthropologists. Drawing on narrative theory and the philosophy of history, Christopher Aylward lays bare the limitations of the accepted Beothuk story, which perpetuated but could never prove the notion of Beothuk extinction. Only with the integration of Indigenous perspectives, beginning in the 1920s, was this accepted story seriously questioned. With the accumulation of new sources and methods - archaeological evidence, previously unexplored British and French accounts, Mi’kmaq oral history, and the testimonies of Labrador Innu and Beothuk descendants - a new historical reality has emerged. Rigorous and compelling, Beothuk demonstrates the enduring power of stories to shape our understanding of the past and the impossibility of writing Indigenous history without Indigenous storytellers.

Christopher Patrick Aylward is a filmmaker and associate professor of film studies at Toronto Metropolitan University.