This website/digital exhibit is the culmination of work done over a few years–first, as part of the research collective Earth, Sea, Sky, and second, as a Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory Bilinski Fellow at UC Davis. I am incredibly grateful and fortunate to have had the chance to work with both of these organizations and have my work supported. Despite the publication of this exhibit, this project continues to be on-going, as should always be the case for born-digital publications. This project presents what I have and the thoughts that I have now. As I will continue to work with the Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory, the UC Davis English department, and the UC Davis Medieval and Early Modern Studies department, this project will change and expand. Ultimately, I’d like to emphasize the ways that this digital project presents both static and mutable information. I cannot change the past or what has already been done, but I can chose to present what I know, what I’ve observed, and what I think with an eye towards decolonization and an anti-imperialist narrative.
As a scholar of early modern English literature, I am limited in my perspective in that I am most readily knowledgable in English language and literature from 1450-1680 CE. In this way, many of the historical documents and pieces of information that have informed this project are inherently colonialist. Even my understanding of maps, coordinates, and place names are colonialist. My perspective of events and history is informed by the long history of colonialism on the west coast of North America. And while I have tried my best to illuminate the ways that this project and my information reflects a long-standing colonialist narrative that, as a scholar of English literature, I am always already entwined, I have undoubtably missed key pieces of indigenous information and history. With this in mind, I intend for this project to remain adaptable in order to incorporate additional information and context that shed further light on the inherent colonialist frameworks engendered by inquiries into Drake’s landing.
I cannot and will not give a definitive answer to the question that looms over Drake’s landing…
The aim of this project was never to play a proto-Indiana Jones figure searching for the long-lost land of Nova Albion. In fact, despite my cataloging of locations, I am resistant to legacies of hunting, finding, and naming–actions that are deeply entwined with a continued colonial mindset. Instead, my methodology has been one of observation and reflection. I cannot and will not give a definitive answer to the question that looms over Drake’s landing: where did he actually land? Instead, I offer perspective on the continued repercussions of focusing on that question. The questions that have informed this project are:
- How has the continued search for “truth” engendered modern colonialist narratives?
- What are the continued legacies of Drake’s landing?
- How does the mystery of Drake’s narrative continue to impact the lands and peoples where those narratives are most prevalent?
- What is the danger of attempting to correct the past?
As these questions have guided my research, I have recorded both potential/proposed sites of Drake’s landing as well as the pieces of evidence I could find of continued engagement with his mythology. Additionally, in some cases, I have recorded instances of a continued preoccupation in Elizabethan England and its supposed provenance in North America. In recording this information, my goal is to elucidate the continued effects of Drake’s proposed landing and its mythologies. Ultimately, what this project shows is mythology without evidence. It is the belief of something unknown. Additionally, it is the choice of a select few that continues to perpetuate these mythologies.
While I’ve found many stories of proposed evidence, I have found even more stories of individual choices. In my research, I have found that attribution to Drake is usually not a collective effort; it is, quite often, the work of an individual or a small group of people who chose to attribute particular locations and landmarks to Drake and his Pacific coast sailing. With few exceptions, these choices have been made relatively recently with many of them occurring between 1830-1930–around 300 years after Drake’s Pacific sailing. As the first European to land in the Northwest and as a pirate for the English, Drake and his mythology has continued to be a preoccupation of Elizabethan and early American history enthusiasts. And while it might seem surprising that many of the landmarks and places that bear Drake’s name have often been named by one man, it is actually a continuation of a long history of a select few making choices that for much larger groups without their input. In fact, for the men that renamed landmarks and locations after Drake, they have simply continued Drake’s colonialist legacy.
When we consider the select few that have seemingly so much power over how we see places, it is a reminder that change is not always a democratic effort. Change can be made by so little and so few, and it has often been made by a privileged minority seeking a whiter and Eurocentric vision of the Pacific Northwest; however, one of the goals of this project is to demonstrate how individuals can effectuate positive changes that dismantle the perpetuation of colonialist violence embedded within the act of renaming. What I have found time and again is that what is said, how it is said, and who does the talking matters tremendously. My project illustrates just how easy it is to make significant changes that continue to impact people and places. And while I do not have a clear cut vision of how to entirely dismantle the colonialist structures that undergird so much of our everyday, I suggest that we begin with an awareness of the colonialist structures that have become commonplace. My goal for this project is to show Drake’s colonial legacy and to inspire you to be more attentive to the places and landmarks that populate your everyday.
In naming my exhibit California Albion, I am calling upon the tradition of imaginary places being substituted for the real and vice-versa. The name of California is theorized to have come from The Song of Roland whose use of Califerne illustrates the distinction between the Christian and non-Christian worlds, with Califerne being non-Christian. It also is theorized to have come from Las Sergas de Esplandián, the fictional work of early 16th-century writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. In his work, he describes the fictional land of California that is populated by Amazons. In both theories, California is fictional and different. It is the representation of otherness and foreignness, so I call upon that history and pair it will Albion so as to call upon the English familiar. I also call upon California as a continuation of space because the California coastline, at least as it concerns Drake’s narrative, seems to stretch from Mexico to Alaska. It is one continuous space without distinction, and for Drake’s narrative, it’s boundaries are just as fictional as the imaginary worlds that inspired California’s name.
California Albion 