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This dissertation proposes an analysis of certain aspects of the syntax and morphology of Gitksan, a Tsimshianic language of northwestern British Columbia. In particular, the goal of the dissertation is to show that, despite claims and surface appearances to the contrary, the structure of a Gitksan sentence conforms to the putatively universal constraints on sentence structure proposed in Government and Binding theory. In order to defend this claim, I show that other structures which have been proposed for the language are not well-motivated by data, and that the structure I propose is able to account for the complex case and agreement facts observed in declarative Gitksan sentences. The thesis is structured in the following way. Chapter 1 briefly sketches the theoretical framework I assume, while Chapter 2 consists of a short introduction to some salient aspects of Gitksan phonology, morphology and syntax. Chapter 3 contains a comprehensive discussion of typological and structural properties of Gitksan sentences. I review those characteristics of the language which have led researchers to claim that Gitksan is either an ergative or a non-configurational language, but I argue that these surface characteristics do not provide compelling evidence that Gitksan should be assigned any divergent type of syntactic structure. On the contrary, I show that there is syntactic evidence in Gitksan to support a standard structure. I conclude Chapter 3 by examining a possible alternative proposal, namely that Gitksan is a pronominal argument language.’ Once again, however, I argue that the data are more consistent with a conservative account- in this case, one in which nominals function as arguments rather than adjuncts. In Chapter 4, I present in some detail data relating to agreement, case and the distribution of overt and silent pronominals in Gitksan, showing how these complex data can be accounted for under the structure I assume. The analysis presented in this chapter has important consequences for the treatment of morphological agreement and case in GB theory.

The impact of Euro-canadian civilization on the Algonkian speaking aborigines of the Province of Quebec poses many problems. sane of these problems, espeaially those involving changes in social organization and culture patterns are of interest to anthropologiste and other social scientiste. others are of more immediate or practical concern to government administrators and I:ndian welfare agencies. The present thesis has thus a two-fold objective: a general and a specifie purpose. The general purpose is to contribute to the body of anthropological knowledge wbich concerna itself with the understanding of the processes of culture change and culture growth. Such knowledge is essential to the planning and effective implementation of governmental policies among these people. The specifie purpose will be to descr!be and analyze some aspects of the process of culture change, or acculturation, among the Montagnais Indiana of the seven Islands band of the Quebec-Labrador region of canada. Three phases are abstracted in the acculturation process. The Haliotenam Reserve, one of the segments of the band is chosen as a typological representative of a community in Phase III of the postulated developmental sequences to be examined.

In the process of negotiating land claims, First Nations in British Columbia and Canada face the challenging task of presenting a unified identity without trampling on the inevitable diversity within their communities. This thesis explores the perceived conflict between unity and diversity amongst Native populations. It brings together fieldwork in St6:l o territory in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, performance theory, and contemporary discourse surrounding identity production at this particular point in time. The work examines performance of identity as a form of social action and the variability of identity performances. Data was gathered from interviews with people involved with two sites where educational programmes are being developed for local students: Xa:ytem Longhouse Interpretive Centre at Hatzic Rock, near Mission, and Longhouse Extension Programme/ Shxwt'a:selhawtxw on St6:l o Nation grounds in Chilliwack. The theme explored in this thesis is that just as unity is politically expedient, diversity and its management is an important facet of the performance of identity.

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Through the use of ethnohistorical data, the Saponi and Nottoway Indians of seventeenth-century Virginia are analyzed in terms of basic, or group, personality and acculturation history. Through a reconstruction of the contrasting reactions of these communities to eighteenth-century English activity, a test for the motivating influence of personality and history on this behavior is made. It is determined that the Saponi and Nottoway shared similar basic personalities, but that they experienced different seventeenth-century histories. By the eighteenth century, the behavior patterns of each community were consistent with the different levels of acculturation attained by each community as a result of their different histories. It is concluded that in the case of the Nottoway and. Saponi, acculturation history served as the primary motivational factor in their different reactions to eighteenth-century English activity. Personality became a factor only as a result of the stress placed upon it by acculturation.

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The thesis on which I have based my research proposes that while the European perception of the Native American from 1750 to 1850 came to be mediated via all the visual arts, it was specifically via the graphic media that the proliferation of imagery concerning the Native American developed certain iconic and representational conventions and that these consistently overwhelmed other sources of information, from experience to written interpretation. The ubiquity of certain modes of presentation, of figure-types, and of synecdoches which stood for the Native American (e.g. feather decoration or the tomahawk) resulted almost entirely from graphic methods of visual elucidation. The tyranny of such visual types lies not only in their effective re-constitution of known, familiar imagery but also in the qualitative characterization of the Native American figure. In their reduction of the figure to symbolic and emblematic patterns of content, these few visual tokens belied the greater, complex reality of Native American existence, and left the European perception of it in a static position. It is only through the collation and analysis of all the various modes of visual expression, both graphic and ‘high’ art instances, that these tokens of the visual representation of the Native American can be discerned and their proliferation be analysed as a determinant in the ‘construction’ of the Native American.

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No description available.