This thesis is a multi-faceted engagement with the many events and people that came to be known as 'The Bluff Rock Massacre'. Employing a number of textual techniques it seeks to articulate the ways in which 'historical' events and particular places come to be lived out in subjects who are both past and present and in a constant state of becoming. The work employs official historical records, family histories, tourist leaflets, gossip, field notes and other texts to show the multiple ways in which an event both becomes and exceeds its invention. The thesis is concerned with the ways in which the non-Aboriginal can write Australian history after the many Aboriginal interventions into hegemonic history and the ongoing re-appraisal of 'What happened?' Simultaneously the writing is written on the terrain of post-identity politics and is both queered and performative. The work attempts a textual exposition of the questions - How does one write the past when it is also the present?; What is a postcolonial autobiography?; what is a postcolonial sexuality/textuality? - rather than answer them / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This project examines whether recent changes to the relationships between museums and Aboriginal people are visible in the museum exhibits and narratives that shape public memory. It focuses on references to the fur trade found in the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s First Peoples Hall and Canada Hall and throughout the Manitoba Museum, using visitor studies, learning theory and an internal evaluation of the Canada Hall to determine how and what visitors learn in these settings. It considers whether display content and visual cues encourage visitors to understand the fur trade as an industry whose survival depended on the participation of Aboriginal people and whose impacts can be viewed from multiple perspectives.

This project examines whether recent changes to the relationships between museums and Aboriginal people are visible in the museum exhibits and narratives that shape public memory. It focuses on references to the fur trade found in the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s First Peoples Hall and Canada Hall and throughout the Manitoba Museum, using visitor studies, learning theory and an internal evaluation of the Canada Hall to determine how and what visitors learn in these settings. It considers whether display content and visual cues encourage visitors to understand the fur trade as an industry whose survival depended on the participation of Aboriginal people and whose impacts can be viewed from multiple perspectives.

This thesis explores the way three indigenous writers and leaders, in Peru, the US, and Canada, used both their literacy and their Christian faith as a means for protesting the inequalities of colonial rule, to counter settler attempts to denigrate Indigenous culture and history, and to further their own personal agendas.

The thesis examines the history of Central Australia and specifically the development of health services in the Northern Territory. The continuing colonial realtionships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia are explored as a reason for the peristence of poor Aboriginal health status, including the cycle of vself destructive behaviours. It rovides an explanation of the importance of community agency to address community problems, and the potential of community controlled ABoriginal health services as vehicles for such community action.

The Consort Pebble Chert Quarry site (EkOr-8) is a Pre-Contact quarry site located south of the Village of Consort, Alberta. Despite knowledge of the site's existence by local area farmers, it was only in 1999 that it was first recorded as an archaeological site. It is described as a large area dominated by the presence of marked depressions that vary in size from less than a metre in depth and diameter to well over three metres in depth and diameter as well as an abundance of chert pebbles on the ground surface. Originally believed to be an example of meteorite impacts, the site was explored by geologists from the University of Calgary. Further visits by provincial archaeologists resulted in numerous theories as to the cause of the depression features and the purpose of the site. No archaeological investigation was undertaken prior to the summer of 2006.<p>No diagnostic artifacts were recovered from within the site area; however, a possible temporal indicator to site usage may be indicated based on the discovery of a Duncan projectile point in a site immediately to the south of the Consort Pebble Chert Quarry. An abundance of lithic artifacts were uncovered as results of the shovel test program undertaken by the author during the summer of 2006. The majority of these lithic artifacts were derived from the abundant lithic material within the site area known as pebble chert. No other non-lithic artifacts were found during the course of this excavation. <p>Shovel tests were used to provide an indication of the subsurface stratigraphy at the site. No evidence of cultural strata was found and the subsurface deposits present reflect a history of glacial landscapes. A number of glacial phenomena are the likely causes of the depression features. The presence of pebble chert on the ground surface; however, did make this area an attractive location for collecting unmodified lithic material in order to fashion stone tools. The existence of numerous artifacts made from pebble chert at the site indicates that past cultural groups had visited and collected from the area. An overview of archaeological sites on the Canadian Plains demonstrates that pebble chert is a valuable lithic material that was used in a wide variety of archaeological sites throughout the Pre-Contact era.

The Consort Pebble Chert Quarry site (EkOr-8) is a Pre-Contact quarry site located south of the Village of Consort, Alberta. Despite knowledge of the site's existence by local area farmers, it was only in 1999 that it was first recorded as an archaeological site. It is described as a large area dominated by the presence of marked depressions that vary in size from less than a metre in depth and diameter to well over three metres in depth and diameter as well as an abundance of chert pebbles on the ground surface. Originally believed to be an example of meteorite impacts, the site was explored by geologists from the University of Calgary. Further visits by provincial archaeologists resulted in numerous theories as to the cause of the depression features and the purpose of the site. No archaeological investigation was undertaken prior to the summer of 2006.<p>No diagnostic artifacts were recovered from within the site area; however, a possible temporal indicator to site usage may be indicated based on the discovery of a Duncan projectile point in a site immediately to the south of the Consort Pebble Chert Quarry. An abundance of lithic artifacts were uncovered as results of the shovel test program undertaken by the author during the summer of 2006. The majority of these lithic artifacts were derived from the abundant lithic material within the site area known as pebble chert. No other non-lithic artifacts were found during the course of this excavation. <p>Shovel tests were used to provide an indication of the subsurface stratigraphy at the site. No evidence of cultural strata was found and the subsurface deposits present reflect a history of glacial landscapes. A number of glacial phenomena are the likely causes of the depression features. The presence of pebble chert on the ground surface; however, did make this area an attractive location for collecting unmodified lithic material in order to fashion stone tools. The existence of numerous artifacts made from pebble chert at the site indicates that past cultural groups had visited and collected from the area. An overview of archaeological sites on the Canadian Plains demonstrates that pebble chert is a valuable lithic material that was used in a wide variety of archaeological sites throughout the Pre-Contact era.

The thesis examines the history of Central Australia and specifically the development of health services in the Northern Territory. The continuing colonial realtionships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia are explored as a reason for the peristence of poor Aboriginal health status, including the cycle of vself destructive behaviours. It rovides an explanation of the importance of community agency to address community problems, and the potential of community controlled ABoriginal health services as vehicles for such community action.

Building out of recent scholarship that examines the way colonialism has altered Aboriginal peoples relationships with the land, this thesis employs the theories of historical anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, historical philosopher R.G. Collingwood, and historical consciousness with ethnohistorical methods to explore the ways Native people have worked to protect and regain their connections with certain places. In particular, it examines change and continuity in the ways that the Stó:lõ Coast Salish in South Western British Columbia have understood and continue to understand a place called I:yem, located four kilometres north of Yale in the Fraser Canyon. Following a historiographical chapter, two case studies are used to access past and present Stó:lõ understandings of I:yem. The first case study examines the 1938 erection of a memorial there (which incorporated and blended aspects of Roman Catholicism with an articulation of a distinct Stó:lõ identity and assertion of rights) to see how I:yem was understood at the time. The creation of the I:yem Memorial illuminates those aspects of Stó:lõ relationships with I:yem that were considered non-negotiable in the face of rapid change and conflict, namely the continued importance of fishing and ancestors. The second case study, based on oral interviews that I conducted during the joint University of Victoria/University of Saskatchewan Stó:lõ Ethnohistory Fieldschool in June 2007, focuses on the current significance of I:yem and its memorial. Today the Stó:lõ place a greater emphasis on the importance of re-establishing personal connections with the Fraser Canyon in general, rather than in identifying those specific aspects of the relationships that are collectively and communally non-negotiable and in need of being preserved. Over the past seventy years the Aboriginal people of the Fraser Canyon and Valley have employed innovative means to regain and preserve attachments to their places. This thesis explores these processes, fundamentally demonstrating the importance Stó:lõ people attribute to maintaining relationships with place in the face of change.

This thesis explores notions of community and Aboriginality within the histories of two Aboriginal communities: the primarily Métis town of Île-à-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan and the Stó:lõ reserve of Seabird Island, British Columbia. By reading community members oral histories in terms of these two concepts, it historicises the accounts, giving temporal context to academics writings and local histories that at times act as snapshots of a small span of time.<p/> Considering Île-à-la-Crosse and Seabird Island in terms of their communal and Aboriginal components also complicates definitions of community and Aboriginality or indigeneity as they relate to these two places, thereby reinforcing the links between histories and the places and people from which they originated. Thus, the first part of this thesis situates Seabird Island and Île-à-la-Crosse historically and physically, and demonstrates how local oral histories introduce broader historical themes. The second part focuses on the community aspect of these places: the Aboriginal component to both Seabird Islands and Île-à-la-Crosses existence is what has tended to attract outside academic research and attention, yet an Aboriginal community exists as such because of influences that make and sustain a community as well as its Aboriginal components.<p/> While each category draws on understandings of the other in order to create a cohesive definition of the whole, a community does not become a community simply by being Aboriginal, nor is it Aboriginal simply as a result of Aboriginal people living together. Therefore, diverse definitions and histories of Aboriginality are also significant in maintaining historical links among inhabitants of Île-à-la-Crosse and Seabird Island.<p/> There exists a historiography in these communities that, while sometimes unintentional or implicit, links community members accounts of their community and its Aboriginal features with outside observations. This connection places these interpretations of historical events into a historiographical context of ways these Aboriginal communities have been both, and alternately, communities and Aboriginal places.