Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2006. / Supervisor: Richard Preston. Includes bibliographical references (p. 392-416).

Thesis (M.A.)--Oregon State University, 2007. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-163). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 23, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-101).

Professional archaeologists firmly control the prehistory of British Columbia (more commonly referred to today as "pre-contact" history). This has been the case since Dr. Charles E. Borden, a German professor at the University of British Columbia, professionalized the archaeological discipline between 1945 and 1960. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine and explain the process by which this monopolization occurred, and to suggest the massive ramifications that have followed. Relevant approaches to the history of archaeology are reviewed, and a "contextual" strategy is adopted as the best way to unravel, but preserve, the richness of the local history of archaeology in B.C. A mixture of narrative and analytical style is employed in explaining the rise Borden and professional archaeology in the 1950s. It is argued that Borden produced knowledge by drawing on an existing network of North American archaeology to create, and substantiate, his authoritative position. In the context of archaeological site destruction, during the 1950s, Borden was able to pull unrelated members of the B.C. populous to his cause, including provincial officials, through the passing of the "Archaeological and Historic Sites Protection Act," in 1960. Amateur archaeologists and Aboriginal people lacked the means to amass the powerful alliances that Borden did, and therefore amateurs and Natives were unable to offer a persuasive alternative to Borden's authority. It is concluded that because of the professional encapsulation of B.C. archaeology, we, as non-specialists, have to put our faith in archaeologists, and assume that the knowledge they produce is truthful and valid It is suggested that professional archaeologists have joined other human scientists in a rapidly spiralling scientification of humanity. This is significant because specialists inform the State about who we are as citizens, and impose identities on us which partly dicate how the State regulates our access to resources. The example of Natives in B.C., who have recently appropriated professional archaeology to their own cause of settling land-claim disputes, is offered to show how alienated components of our identities can be returned to us through political action.

Practically since its celebrated premiere in 1967, George Ryga's drama about urban Native Canadians, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, has enjoyed canonical status in Canada. Yet the same three decades that have seen over 200 productions of Rita Joe have also witnessed radical transformations in the ways First Nations' peoples are represented, heard and perceived in Canada. How has a play written about Natives by a non-Native man in 1967 managed such a long production history on such contentious and unstable ground? How do identity politics influence this piece of theatre, and how does the theatre shape identity politics? As popular notions about Native identities have changed and as Native people continue to represent themselves in and put of court, and on and off the stage, this play about Native people in Canada has been performed and re-performed. But the directors, the venues, the actors, the costumes and sets, the language itself and (most significantly) the resulting characterizations have changed over the years — in subtle and rather dramatic ways. While the words and the fundamental plot of Rita Joe have remained the same, its messages about Native identity has evolved since 1967, in relation to social, political, economic, and cultural changes. Indeed, historical developments impact the particular ways an "Indian" is represented in a particular time; what makes a "real Indian" tends to shift with the political and social needs of the moment. This paper examines the way Native identity is represented in eight productions of Rita Joe mounted between 1967 and 1992, creating a production history that focuses on the relationship between representations of identity and particular moments in time and space and, ultimately, discerns a complex and symbiotic relationship between the aesthetic, creative world and the historio-political world. Perhaps most remarkably, the play stretches to accommodate diverse cultural narratives, gathering meaning from the identity politics of its particular performance place and time.

This study is about the Burns Lake Indian Band's Indian Reserve No. 18 located in northwestern British Columbia. It is a case study that spans the 20th century. Through an analysis of archival documents pertaining to land loss I investigate the long term process that facilitated the alienation of land from this Indian reserve. This thesis is about borders, spatial marginality and social geography and it focuses on power and inequality. Historical records reveal the genesis of growing polarization and deteriorating social relationships evident in the clearly demarcated communities which establish the Indian reserve and the Village of Burns Lake. Theoretical perspectives informing my analysis include social construction, standpoint theory, and the sociology of storytelling. It includes postmodernist concepts of authority and power. The storytelling process sets the stage for contested history.

This thesis makes the legal argument that certain histories of aboriginal child removals in Canada and Australia, that is, the residential school experience in Canada, and the program of child institutionalization in Australia, meet the definition of 'genocide' in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. My primary focus is on that Convention's requirement that an act be committed with an "intent to destroy a group". My first concern in formulating legal argument around the Convention's intent requirement is to offer a theory of the legal subject implicit in legal liberalism. Legal liberalism privileges the individual, and individual responsibility, in order to underscore its founding premises of freedom and equality. The intentionality of the subject in this framework is a function of the individual, and not the wider cultural and historical conditions in which the subject exists. Using a historical socio-legal approach, I attempt to develop a framework of legal subjectivity and legal intent which reveals rather than suppresses the cultural forces at work in the production of an intent to genocide. Having reacquainted the subject with the universe beyond the individual, I move on with the first limb of my legal argument around intent in the Genocide Convention to address the systemic means through which child removal policy was developed and enforced. In this, I confront two difficulties: firstly, the difficulty of locating in any single person an intent to commit, and hence responsibility for, genocide; and secondly, the corresponding difficulty of finding that a system intended an action in the legal sense. I respond to both of these difficulties by arguing for a notion of legal subjectivity which comprehends organisations, and correspondingly a notion of intent which is responsive (both on an individual and an organisational level) to systematically instituted crimes such as genocide. The second limb of my argument around intent confronts the defence of benevolent intent. In this defence, enforcers of child removals rely on a genuine belief in the benevolence of the 'civilising' project they were engaged in, so that there can be no intent to destroy a group. I reveal the cultural processes at work to produce the profound disjunction between aboriginal and settler subjectivities, especially as those subjectivities crystallize around the removal of aboriginal children. I locate this disjunction in the twin imperatives of colonial culture, those of oppression and legitimation. I argue that colonial culture exacts a justification for oppression, and that aboriginal people have been "othered" (in gendered, raced, and classed terms) to provide it. Intent to destroy a group, then, will be located via an enquiry which confronts the interests of colonial culture and aligns them firstly with the oppression of aboriginal people, and secondly with the discourses which developed to render that oppression in benevolent terms. The interpretation of the Genocide Convention is thus guided by the demands of context: and in context is revealed an intent to genocide by child removal.

This dissertation deals with the organized commuting of native labour in northern Saskatchewan, it causes, and the economic consequences for the communities involved. A neo-marxist approach is used towards those objectives. The search for explanations is carried out through the analysis of the scenario of implementation of the commuting programs: the role of Capital, the initiator of the programs, is examined in the light of its imperatives (accumulation, legitimation); State action is discussed with respect to its roles of integration, legitimation, support to accumulation, and that of a capitalist; the participation of the native people is seen from a perspective where their culture and social fabric have been altered, in spite of apparently strong idiosyncrasies. The consequences of participation in commuting, and of the revenues thereby brought to the communities, are consistent with already existing trends among northern native population: a decline of reciprocity; an assimilation to capitalist society (consumption and monetization); a local circulation of income which varies in importance from a place to another, but which everywhere favors exclusively the local bourgeoisie; the survival of subsistence economy; and the enhancement of dependence and economic vulnerability.

No description available.

Indian hobbyism, or Indianism, is an expression of a typically European fascination with Native American peoples which involves crafting "museum-quality replicas" of clothing and artifacts as well as reenactment of slices of Native American nineteenth-century life by non-Native practitioners in an effort to produce knowledge and meaningful experience through experimentation. Drawing on fieldwork data collected in 2003 and 2004 among play communities of Indian hobbyists in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the Czech Republic, I formulate an understanding of the social, performative, and mimetic dynamics of this phenomenon by conceiving of Indianist practices as forms of play that constantly shift between different play frames. In terms of knowledge production, I argue that the Indian hobby provides a space in which different (epistemological) traditions meet, as Indian hobbyists draw on, and enact, a hybrid reservoir of indigenous and European knowledge systems and art forms. Especially interesting is the relationship between Indianism and the dynamics of museal display in the West, both historically and contemporaneously. In general, I found that two different approaches to the right way of representing may be distinguished in Indianist methodological practice: a "Renaissance" and a "Translational" mode. / Because of its striking mimetic aspects, Indianism raises questions of identity play and cultural appropriation. An important element of the hobbyist quest for knowledge and experience consists in investing the self in an "other" in ways that elicit criticism from outsiders, including anthropologists. Indian hobbyism is a controversial example of "playing at" cultures that (by all conventional standards) belong elsewhere and to someone else, providing interesting insights for debates on identity politics and the construction of "race"---also among Indianists themselves. Rather than longing to embody someone else's identity, however, Indianists, almost in spite of themselves, enact a social world that is filled with action and life in their European present. Indianist practice and desire for authenticity revolve around craftsmanship and reenactment, resulting in skillful replicas, in the here and now.