Many indigenous communities perceive an intimate connection between land and religion, and land has, and continues to remain, at the heart of indigenous-state relations. This dissertation examines how philosophies of land and religion in correlation with histories of dispossession and differentiation contribute to socio-political structures that threaten the religious freedom of Aboriginal peoples and the very existence of indigenous religious traditions, cultures, and sacred sites in Canada today. Through a political-philosophical approach to ethical concerns of justice as fairness, national minorities’ rights, and religious freedom, I examine court decisions, legislation, and official protocols that shape contemporary indigenous-state relations. I identify philosophical and structural issues preventing Canada from protecting the fundamental rights guaranteed to indigenous peoples and all Canadians. More specifically, I examine the historical manifestations of concepts of land and religion in philosophies of colonization, emphasizing their effects in contemporary indigenous-state relations. I analyze the impacts of secularization, socio-economic expansion, and the dispossession of Aboriginal traditional lands on the protection of indigenous cultural rights and off-reserve sacred sites. Based on this analysis, I discuss communicative democratic theory and the potential benefits and limitations of the “Duty to Consult and Accommodate”—the most recent framework for indigenous-state relations—for the protection of indigenous religious traditions and the importance of the inclusion of indigenous peoples in administrative and decision-making processes. Finally, I explore indigenous representation, religious revitalization and the politics of authenticity, authority, diversity and cultural change.

My dissertation employed intellectual historian Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics—which can be most broadly parsed as the political organization of life—to examine the way the lives of Aboriginal people were regulated and surveilled in relation to settler European norms. The study is a focused investigation into a topic with global ramifications: the governance of race and sexuality and the effect of such governance on the production of apparently inclusive cultural productions within the public spheres. I argue that the way in which subaltern peoples have been governed in the past and the way their cultures have been appropriated continue to be in the present is not extraneous to but rather formative of what is often misleadingly called “the” public sphere of dominant societies. In the second part, I analyze the legacies of this biopolitical moment and emphasize, particularly, the cultural politics of affect and trauma in relation to this (not quite) past. Authors addressed include: Xavier Herbert, P. R. Stephensen, Rex Ingamells, Kim Scott, Alexis Wright, and others. I also examine Australian Aboriginal policy texts througout the twentieth century up to the "Bringing Them Home" Report (1997).

In writing this thesis, I plotted where the streams of whiteness theory, life-writing theory and practice, and Daphne Marlatts novel <i>Ana Historic</i> converge. In the introduction, I outline the development of my own subjectivity, focusing on my identification with multiple ethnic communities, and on my racial and working class identity. My second chapter surveys current whiteness theories, accepting some and rejecting others, and drawing significantly upon theory that is accessible and personal, a decision that undoubtedly resulted because of my working class practicality. In this chapter, I conclude that whiteness and white solipsism (theoretically comparable to Simone de Beauvoirs challenge that masculinity as the neutral and positive gender renders femininity and other gendered constructions negative), actually envelope multiple identities, but argue that the way in which whiteness is experienced by those on its margins is often monolithic. In the third chapter, I investigate Marlatts biography and her life writing theory, arguing that her experience as a once immigrant foregrounds many issues relevant to the Canadian white identity, and that because her theory is so conscious of how identity is constructed, relying on fact and fiction, <i>Ana Historic</i> provides a portrait of white Canadian identity and the context in which that identity has been constructed. In Chapters 4 and 5, I apply the theories of life writing and whiteness to the characters of Ana, Ina, and Annie, challenging that their identities as colonizer, emigrant, and immigrant, respectively, illustrate the evolution resulting in the current white Canadian identity. Further, because Marlatt chooses these characters who occupy different positions in history, she shows her reader that contemporary Canadian white identity has grown out of colonial times, creating a continuum. The history out of which each of these women emerges is never contained because aspects of their identity carry forward into subsequent generations.

Immigrants live transnational lives when they maintain transborder social ties, participate simultaneously in multi-local social relations, and engage in self-transforming identity negotiations that also impact their host societies and their communities of origin. Their social organizations manifest identity construction as agency, with their objectives reflecting particular culture production activities. This native ethnography of Atlanta’s sub-Saharan African immigrants combines 115 surveys of the general population, and 13 in-depth interviews of their organization leaders and members, to examine the potential problem solving instrumentality of social organizations. Study results show that organizational objectives do not reflect top community problems, but prioritize projects that confirm immigrant transnational lives. The organizations’ early potential for engineering non-tribal nationalism within the specific countries and the continent is a surprising finding. African philosophy is evoked to illuminate the relevance of pre-migratory identities and socialization as a possible homogenizer, but also a source of friction for immigrant integration.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Communication

In her novel Tracks, Louise Erdrich tells the story of a band of Anishinaabe early in the twentieth century. Through the two narrators, one a tribal elder and the other a mixedblood who eventually abandons the traditions of the tribe, the novel offers two divergent perspectives of the events that take place as the government divests the tribe of its land. The conflicting perceptions of these occurrences, which are magical realist in nature, underscore the conflict within the tribe to maintain tradition in the face of the ever-increasing influence of European settlers. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the perceptions at odds with one another in order to shed new light on the significance of Erdrich’s use of magical realism in the text. Highlighting Erdrich’s engagement with magical realism, a largely postcolonial literary device, will hopefully expand notions of identity and authenticity within the Native American literary tradition.

This thesis intends to investigate the ways in which the changing perceptions of landscape during the nineteenth century play out in Kipling’s treatment of Kim’s phenomenological and epistemological questions of identity by examining the indelible influence of space— geopolitical, narrative, and imaginative—on Kim’s identity. By interrogating the extent to which maps encode certain ideological assumptions, I will assess the problematic issues of Kim’s multi-faceted identity through an exploration of both geographical and narrative landscapes and the various chronotopes—Bakhtin’s term for coexisting frameworks of time and space—that ultimately provide a new reading of identity-formation in Kim.

In writing this thesis, I plotted where the streams of whiteness theory, life-writing theory and practice, and Daphne Marlatts novel <i>Ana Historic</i> converge. In the introduction, I outline the development of my own subjectivity, focusing on my identification with multiple ethnic communities, and on my racial and working class identity. My second chapter surveys current whiteness theories, accepting some and rejecting others, and drawing significantly upon theory that is accessible and personal, a decision that undoubtedly resulted because of my working class practicality. In this chapter, I conclude that whiteness and white solipsism (theoretically comparable to Simone de Beauvoirs challenge that masculinity as the neutral and positive gender renders femininity and other gendered constructions negative), actually envelope multiple identities, but argue that the way in which whiteness is experienced by those on its margins is often monolithic. In the third chapter, I investigate Marlatts biography and her life writing theory, arguing that her experience as a once immigrant foregrounds many issues relevant to the Canadian white identity, and that because her theory is so conscious of how identity is constructed, relying on fact and fiction, <i>Ana Historic</i> provides a portrait of white Canadian identity and the context in which that identity has been constructed. In Chapters 4 and 5, I apply the theories of life writing and whiteness to the characters of Ana, Ina, and Annie, challenging that their identities as colonizer, emigrant, and immigrant, respectively, illustrate the evolution resulting in the current white Canadian identity. Further, because Marlatt chooses these characters who occupy different positions in history, she shows her reader that contemporary Canadian white identity has grown out of colonial times, creating a continuum. The history out of which each of these women emerges is never contained because aspects of their identity carry forward into subsequent generations.

The background of our field of interest grew out of getting knowledge of an organisation called Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE). We learnt that FAWE had created schools in different African countries and that they had formulated gender responsive pedagogy. Through the methodologies of semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews with teachers, students and FAWE representatives, in addition, studies of documents, we wanted to examine what the FAWE educational strategies were and how FAWE was perceived amongst teachers and students at FAWE girls‘ school. Finally, we wanted to understand how and if gender pedagogy can help strivings towards gender equality and development. The study has a qualitative and inductive approach which implies that no theoretical framework was formulated prior to the field study. However, we have formulated a theoretical framework which has served as a tool for analyzing our findings. We have turned to postcolonial feminist theory and development theory on education and gender.Our findings imply importance of understanding the uniqueness in the Rwandan society due to colonialism and genocide, especially when it comes to formulating definitions of gender. Further the Rwandan context is important to keep in mind for donor societies, when formulating demands on Rwanda. For example we will note that international influences on the Rwandan educational system are immense, but what happens if the influences are not coherent with the Rwandan context? Since girls‘ access to education has increased in Rwanda due to among others FAWE Girls‘ School, we also underline the importance for government to meet the girls‘ needs once they have graduated in order to minimise risks of brain drain. In addition we have detected a pattern of understandings amongst the students that financial support to girls is crucial to meet their definitions of gender and gender equality; the girls view financial support as a foundation in order to reach gender equality, or for girls to be able to access arenas that previously belonged to the boys.

<p>This study focuses on the different strategies that the author uses to subvert the patriarchal and the colonial discourses which are reflected in the novel "Les Honneurs perdus" of Calixthe Beyala. In the introduction a theoretical background is given which includes feminist and postcolonial literary theories and their relation to postmodern theories and deconstruction. The introduction underlines the importance of the constitution of subject in postcolonial and feminist theories in contrast to deconstruction of subject in postmodernism and poststructuralism.</p><p>The analysis demonstrates that the novel can be seen as a female bildungsroman in the protagonist’s intent to create an autonomous identity. A gynocentric writing and the dialogue with another female character, the heroine’s antagonistic double, which includes the possibility of a female genealogy, as well as the final love to a white man, contribute essentially to transculturation and the construction of the heroine’s hybrid identity.</p><p>The second chapter of the analysis shows that the dichotomies Europe–Africa and man–woman in the binary system of the western way of thinking are very marked in the novel. Finally the third chapter points out how the different narrative techniques like the mixing of different language levels, the creation of new words, the use of irony and carnivalation, a special form of parody, as well as the intertextuality of magic realism deconstruct and subvert the heritage of colonial and patriarchal values and demonstrate the post-colonial misery both in the protagonist’s native suburb in Cameroun and in Paris.</p>