This thesis mobilizes the concept of “colonial entanglement” to emphasize the deep complexity and unpredictability of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships within what is now known as the Banff-Bow Valley. Responding to various literatures—including Indigenous Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, Political Theory, and Canadian Politics—I posit that the concept of colonial entanglements offers a parallax view of contexts, such as the Banff-Bow Valley, and events like the Buffalo Reintroduction Project. Not only does such a concept reveal how Indigenous nations— both human and non-human—are targeted by the racializing and gendered entanglements of colonizing regimes that seek to break up and replace them, but it also shows how these nations continue to persist and resist despite colonizing efforts to achieve otherwise. In other words, colonial entanglements compel one to also consider how nations like the Ĩyãħé Nakoda also exert influence on other Indigenous and non-Indigenous life in the Banff-Bow Valley—albeit, in different ways and to different degrees. After unpacking the concept in the first chapter, I use colonial entanglement to show how colonizing regimes and their expansionist modes of relationship react to the Indigenous nations they become entangled with. Using the signing of Treaty 7 and the establishment of a national park in Banff, I reveal how the Canadian state seeks to erect colonizing regimes of property that cater to capital as they transit the Banff-Bow Valley by ‘breaking up’ and ‘breaking from’ Indigenous nations and their expansive modes of relationship. Next, I consider how such reactionary violence is continually justified and legitimated through the articulation and reiteration of state of nature fictions that rely on notions of wilderness and tropes of Indigeneity to delegitimize the enduring presence of Indigenous nations. Specifically, I look at the Indian Act, the prohibition of hunting in the Park, and the Banff Indian Days festival to show how state of nature fictions articulate a supposed transition from a “past state of nature” to a contemporary “state of (dis)possession” entangled with white supremacist and heteropatriarchal forms of power. In doing so, these fictions make and reproduce colonial subjects who buy into and support colonizing violence and breakage that disproportionately targets those Indigenous to place. In the final chapter, I turn to focus on the Buffalo Reintroduction Project. Here, I consider how the project presents contemporary opportunities for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to support and/or disrupt colonizing states of (dis)possession and the state of nature fictions they rely on, while also considering the project’s potential for a politics oriented towards expansive modes of relationship revolving around principles of decolonization and anti-colonial internationalism. / Graduate

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By asking the question “How do young, urban, professional Kenyans make connections between tribal identity, colonialism, and the lived experience of nationhood?,” the researcher engages with eight participants in exploring their relationships with their tribal groups. From this juncture the researcher, through a co-constructed process with participants, interrogates the idea of nationhood by querying their interpretations of the concepts of power and resistance within their multi-ethnic societies. The utility of KuPiga Hadithi as a cultural responsive methodology for data collection along with poetic analysis as part of the qualitative tools of examination allowed the researcher to identify five emergent and iterative themes: (1) colonial wounds, (2) power inequities, (3) tensions, (4) intersection, and (5) hope. Participant discussion of these themes suggests an impenetrable link between tribal identity and nationhood. Schooling, as first a colonial and then national construct, works to mediate that link. Therefore, there is the need for a re-conceptualization of the term ‘nation’ in the post-Independence era.

Ying Chen is a Canadian writer of Chinese origin who writes in French. In her novels, she investigates immigration which is closely connected with displacement and the loss of one's original identity. Her literary work is primarily aimed at the North American readership so she includes a lot of details of historical events and social facts about China. Ying Chen belongs to the group of authors who are labelled as immigrant writers. The majority of her literary work centres around the recurring themes of nationalism, feminism, imagination and immigration, which can lead to a loss of original identity. Ying Chen investigates whether a person can exchange his identity, that which was given to him by his parents, with a new one. In her second published novel, L'Ingratitude, Ying Chen speaks through the character of the dominant mother and says: "A person without parents is miserable, like a people without history." With these words she indicates the impossibility of exchanging one's nationhood, national history, and identity. We need to accept who we are, and she emphasises this fact in her novel, Immobile, saying, "I am myself."

This dissertation presents research that is broadly concerned with comparative understanding of the concept of citizenship and its relationship to nationhood, most particularly as it relates to contemporary government policies - what Michel Foucault refers to as 'studies of governmentality' - in Britain and Hong Kong. A major consideration is the assessment of how modern states seek to imbue citizenship with new meanings by mobilising connections to reimagined 'national cultures' and 'national values' as a way of expanding power and limiting access to citizenship. Two cases are selected and examined in this research to elucidate the above concern and consideration. The first is Hong Kong, where a compulsory subject Moral and National Education was proposed in 2012 to cultivate students' positive values and enhance their 'national qualities'. The second is Britain, where all schools and universities since 2015 must by law carry out the Prevent Duty to assess the risk of students becoming terrorists and beginning in 2014 where all schools must actively promote 'fundamental British values'. In both contexts, the education policies and their associated discourses claimed to protect 'our culture', defend 'our values', and promote understanding of 'our nation' Curriculum documents, policy documents, and parliamentary reports related to these education policies are collected and critically analysed in a genealogical approach to reveal (a) the expressions of 'national values' and citizenship in these policy and associated political texts, (b) how these texts and associated discourses influenced the re-imagination of nations, and (c) how the national perspectives expressed ideologically - especially in relation to the narrowing of borders through policies - recast, mediate or alter conceptions of citizenship. The comparative policy landscape in Britain and Hong Kong is assessed by deploying an interdisciplinary framework that addresses nation, citizenship, borders, and governmentality in a unique way. The study of the cases, in return, demonstrates how this framework can be applied to analysing education policies and assessing the rationalities and effects of these policies.

Sport is an inherently hegemonic hyper masculinity-building project. Therefore, tensions exist when non-hegemonic groups reclaim sport. This thesis questions how normativity is constructed and resisted in non-normative sporting spaces. Drawing from semi-structured interviews, participant observations, self-reflection qualitative methods and post-structural, spatial and post-colonial theory, I problematize how sportsmanship (sportspersonship) is “cultivated” in a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (lgbtq) soccer league . Specifically, I interrogate how queer sporting bodies negotiate (homo/hetero)normativity by either contesting or confirming neoliberal values of ‘sportsmanship.’ Five interlocking themes that emerged from my data suggest that ‘a queer muscularity’ and ‘a normative queer nationhood’ is being (re)produced by and through queer sporting bodies and sports spaces. I argue that we need to be vigilant of queer sporting spaces that claim to be or are assumed to have greater inclusivity because these spaces may actually facilitate the (re)production of dominant discourses and norms.

Sport is an inherently hegemonic hyper masculinity-building project. Therefore, tensions exist when non-hegemonic groups reclaim sport. This thesis questions how normativity is constructed and resisted in non-normative sporting spaces. Drawing from semi-structured interviews, participant observations, self-reflection qualitative methods and post-structural, spatial and post-colonial theory, I problematize how sportsmanship (sportspersonship) is “cultivated” in a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (lgbtq) soccer league . Specifically, I interrogate how queer sporting bodies negotiate (homo/hetero)normativity by either contesting or confirming neoliberal values of ‘sportsmanship.’ Five interlocking themes that emerged from my data suggest that ‘a queer muscularity’ and ‘a normative queer nationhood’ is being (re)produced by and through queer sporting bodies and sports spaces. I argue that we need to be vigilant of queer sporting spaces that claim to be or are assumed to have greater inclusivity because these spaces may actually facilitate the (re)production of dominant discourses and norms.

Today, some twelve million immigrants are unlawfully present in the United States. What response to this situation does Christian theology suggest for these immigrants and those who receive them? To this question about the status of immigrants before the law, the theological literature lacks an understanding of how federal U.S. immigration law developed, and it lacks a robust theological account of the governance of immigration. To fill this gap, the thesis presents three stages in the formation of the laws that designate some immigrants as aliens unlawfully present or illegal aliens, drawing out the moral argumentation in each phase and responding with moral theology. In the first stage, non-citizens were called aliens in U.S. law. In response to the argument that aliens exist as a consequence of natural law, Christian teaching indicates that immigrants are not alien either in creation or for the church. In the second stage, the authority of the federal government to exclude and expel aliens was established, leaving those who do not comply to be designated illegal aliens. To the claim that the federal government has unlimited sovereignty over immigration, interpretations of the Christian Scriptures respond that divine sovereignty limits and directs civil authority over immigration. In the third stage, legal reforms that were intended to end discrimination between countries allowed millions from countries neighboring the U.S. to become illegal aliens. These reforms turn out to be unjust on philosophical grounds and unneighborly on theological grounds. While federal law classes many as aliens unlawfully present in the United States, Christian political theology indicates that immigrants are not alien, the government of immigration is limited by divine judgment, and nationals of neighboring countries deserve special regard.