This project is concerned with examining the impact of colonial administrations on post-independence state behavior in Southeast Asia. Despite a similar historical context, the region exhibits broad variation in terms of policy preferences after independence. Past literature has focused, largely, upon pre-colonial or independence era factors. This project, however, proposes that state behavior is heavily determined by a combination of three colonial variables: indigenous elite mobility, colonial income diversity, and institutional-infrastructure levels. It also constructs a four-category typology for the purposes of ordering the broad variation we see across post-colonial Southeast Asia. Utilizing heavy archival research and historical analysis, I examine three case studies in the region, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, that share a common colonial heritage yet exhibit markedly different post-independence preferences. Vietnam's colonial legacy is characterized by high indigenous elite mobility, medium colonial income diversity, and medium-high levels of institutional-infrastructure. This creates a state where the local elites are capable and socially mobile, but lack the fully developed skill sets, institutions and infrastructure we see in a Developmental state such as South Korea or Taiwan. As a result, Vietnam is a Power-Projection state, where elites pursue security oriented projects as a means of compensating for inequalities between their own social mobility and acquired skills, institutions and infrastructure. In Cambodia, indigenous elite mobility and colonial income diversity are both low, creating an entrenched, less experienced elite. Medium levels of institutional-infrastructure enables the elite to extract wealth for class benefit. As a result, the state becomes an instrument for elite enrichment and is thus classified as Self-Enrichment state. Laos' colonial history is characterized by low levels of indigenous elite mobility, colonial income diversity, and institutional-infrastructure levels. Laos' elite are deeply entrenched, like their counterparts in Cambodia. However, unlike Cambodia, Laos lacks sufficient institutional-infrastructure levels to make wealth extraction worthwhile for an elite class. Laos' inability to execute an internal policy course, or even enrich narrow social class, categorize it as a Null state. The theory and typology presented in this project have broad applications to Southeast Asia and the post-colonial world more generally. It suggests that the colonial period, counter to more recent literature, has a much greater impact on states after independence. As most of the world is a post-colonial state, understanding the mechanisms for preferences in these states is very important. / Political Science

This thesis looks at three seasons of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) radio show Canada Reads – 2014, 2015, and 2016. I examine how each year’s debates over reconciliation (2014), inclusive multiculturalism (2015), and Canada’s role as a global refuge (2016) commonly presume a national mythology that Indigenous peoples have either disappeared or become “Canadian.” I argue that despite the show’s desire to build a better society through encouraging Canadians to read Canadian books, the debates featured on Canada Reads reflect the way assumed Canadian control of Indigenous lands is embedded in the language of Canadian literature and culture to both limit the political disruptiveness of Indigenous presence and reproduce ongoing colonial domination. Central to my argument is the sad truth that, even as the show invites diverse critiques of Canadian society, it nonetheless favours stereotypical narratives of Canadian multiculturalism, benevolence, and civility, and by doing so buttresses Canada’s unchanged status as a settler colonial state. I track and evaluate ruptures in the show's civil language and decorum by reading moments of debate when the logical foundations of these stereotypical national narratives are challenged. Thus, this thesis examines not only what panelists say to each other, but also what their dialogue says to other Canadians. I argue that panelists’ critiques of the nation drawn from their readings of the books - readings that are not so much holistic interpretations of books but strategies for winning the Survivor-style game - are welcomed by the show’s annual social justice themes which then use them to purvey the nation’s virtuous liberalism. Ultimately, my analysis traces how the civil protocols of the program through these three seasons reproduce conflicts between Indigenous peoples and Canadians by reinforcing the inequity of the arrangements of the existing nation-state. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Though it is often taken for granted with an assumed naturalness, settler colonial sovereignty relies on the settler state’s realization of Indigenous territorial dispossession, and the erasure of indigeneity. More than singular or historical events, dispossession and erasure are ongoing, and are best understood as contemporary, and structural, features of settler governance because of the continued existence of Indigenous nations. As a result, seemingly stable settler states (such as Canada) are in a constant state of insecurity, due to Indigenous nations’ competing claims of authority. As such, settler states are continually working to (re)produce their own sovereign authority, and legitimacy. This text argues that knowledge is central to the (re)production of settler sovereignty, and hence, settler colonialism. Understood this way, knowledge is both produced and also productive. What we ‘know’ is not only framed by the cosmologies and ontologies through which we make meaning of the world, but it also serves as an organizing tool, structuring what interventions we imagine to be possible. Focusing on government policymaking, this text documents the erasure of Indigenous knowledges, cosmologies, and imaginaries from settler colonial governance practices. It does so through an analysis of the Aboriginal Peoples’ Survey, the settlement of, and territorial allotment in, British Columbia and provincial land management policies such as the Forest and Range Evaluation Program. Using this empirical work, it argues that this erasure enables the reification of settler imaginaries over Indigenous territory, which in turn creates the conditions within which settler colonial authority is legitimized and sovereignty continually remade through policy interventions. While the text largely centres on territory in what is today Canada, it also offers a view into the way in which (settler) coloniality more broadly is continually upheld and remade. Indeed, when viewed through the lens of a global colonial order, the continual remaking of settler sovereignty enables the constitution of international and global politics. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / For many, Canada as a multicultural and inclusive country stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans, and north to the Arctic circle is taken for granted. However, what we recognize as Canada in 2020 has only existed since the 1999 formation of the Territory of Nunavut, and even the territory that comprises Canada only came into formation with Newfoundland and Labrador’s 1949 entry into Confederation. This is to say that Canada in its current form is not natural. Rather, it was constructed over time through the incorporation and colonization of Indigenous lands and territories. This dissertation argues that despite an official discourse of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, and the need to renew settler Canada’s ‘most important’ relationship, colonization remains ongoing. Looking to federal demographic statistics and provincial land use and management policy, it argues that settler authority being continually re-made through the government knowing Indigenous peoples and their territories in ways that legitimize colonization as the normal pursuit of “peace, order and good government.”

Even after the colonial legacy in Africa terminated, the time of exploitation and dependency was not over yet, but rather continues under the term known as neo-colonialism. Neo- colonialism can be observed all over the world, especially in Africa, where neo-colonialism through economic dependency, cultural hegemony, political influence, and military engagement contributes to the perpetuation of poverty, inequality, and underdevelopment in the neo-colonized countries while benefiting the neocolonial powers and their elite allies. This paper examines these neo-colonial dynamics with three case studies of three distinct examples — China, France, and Russia — with different aims, strategies, and historical backgrounds concerning colonialism. Their dynamics in Africa will be analyzed using the theoretical concept of neo-colonialism, which was constructed out of existing literature, and examined with a comparative analysis using qualitative and quantitative data. This paper concludes that all three countries practice different sorts of neo-colonialism in Africa, emphasizing their engagement on varying features like economic, military, cultural, or political means. This comparative study contributes to the existing research on neo-colonial practices by extensively analyzing each case and delivering new insight by comparing these.

No / Once torn by ideological conflicts and the dominance of command economies, Southern Africa is now moving towards economic liberalism and openness. In general, the ascendancy of 'market economics' is acknowledged by its governments, albeit with different degrees of enthusiasm. Theoretically rich and empirically engaging this timely book offers a critical insight into the ensuing debate on regionalism and the process of regionalization in southern Africa.

"Unforgetting the Dakota 38" projects a nuanced light onto the history and memory of the mass hanging of thirty-eight Dakota men on December 26, 1862 following the U.S.-Dakota War in Southcentral Minnesota. This thesis investigates the competing narratives between Santee Dakota peoples (a mixture of Wahpeton and Mdewakanton Dakota) and white Minnesotan citizens in Mankato, Minnesota—the town of the hanging—between 1862 and 2012. By using settler colonialism as an analytical framework, I argue that the erasing of Dakotas by white historical memory has actively and routinely removed Dakotas from the mainstream historical narrative following the U.S.-Dakota War through today. This episodic history examines three phases of remembrance in which the rival interpretations of 1862 took different forms, and although the Dakota-centered interpretations were always present in some way, they became more visible to the non-Dakota society over time. Adopting a thematic approach, this thesis covers events that overlap in time, yet provide useful insights into the shaping and reshaping of memory that surrounds the mass hanging. White Minnesotans routinely wrote Dakota peoples out of their own history, a key element of settler colonial policies that set out to eradicate Indigenous peoples from the Minnesota landscape and replace them with white settlers. While this thesis demonstrates how white memories form, it also focuses on Dakota responses to the structures associated with settler colonialism. In so doing, this thesis argues that Dakota peoples actively participated in the memory-making process in Mankato between 1862 and 2012, even though most historical scholarship considered Mankato devoid of Dakota peoples and an Indigenous history. / Master of Arts / The U.S.-Dakota War wracked the Minnesota River Valley region of Southcentral Minnesota. Following a bloody and destructive six weeks in late-Summer 1862, President Abraham Lincoln ordered the mass execution of thirty-eight Mdewakanton Dakota men as punishment for their participation. This controversial moment in American history produced unique and divergent memories of the Dakota War, the hanging, and the Mdewakanton Dakota place in white American society. This thesis examines the memories that formed between 1862 and 2012, highlighting Dakota perspective and memories to shed new light on the history of this deeply contested event. By doing so, we gain new understandings of Mankato, the U.S.-Dakota War, and the mass hanging, but also a realization that Dakota peoples were always active in the memory-making process even though many have considered their participation nonexistent.

This study looks at social studies teachers' perceptions of Malawi's national identity as it is promoted through Malawi's primary school social studies education. The following research questions were posed: 1) What are teachers' perceptions of national identity in Malawi? 2) What are teachers' perceptions of Malawi's primary school social studies curriculum? and 3) What are teachers' perceptions of the practice of constructing national identity through primary school social studies curriculum in Malawi? The recent revision of Malawi's social studies curriculum allows for a new analysis on the relationship between Western neocolonialism and its affect on the shaping of Malawian national identity, as exampled by Malawi's social studies program. This study will therefore contribute to existing literature regarding the role of social studies education and the construction of national identity as well as the impact the West has on the maintenance of African national identity. Using semi-structured interviews with ten practicing primary school social studies teachers and one social studies curriculum specialist in the Domasi district, Southern Region of Malawi, I found that Malawi's social studies currciulum is promoting Malawian national identity as perceived by the interviewees. However, the interviewees illuminated contextual factors that hinder the implementation of the new curriculum. / Master of Science

Assigned Disaster at Birth is the scifi surrealist autofictitious diary and scrapbook of a queer space alien stuck in a humanoid body, a trans transhuman, written mostly in verse. The space alien speaker of these poems moves through multiple marginalized human identities ultimately remembering it isn't human at all. Through these poems, the speaker forms solidarities with nonhuman kin, reclaiming the memory lost to colonialism and civilization of what it means to be nonhuman and more-than-human. / Master of Fine Arts / Assigned Disaster at Birth is a poetry collection that takes the form of a queer and trans space alien's diary and scrapbook. This queer space alien is stuck in a humanoid body amidst humans who are violent towards the alien and the planet, on a planet that is a capitalist hellscape. As the alien survives physical violence, emotional abuse, alienation, it begins to remember it isn't human at all. In doing so, the alien opens itself up to connection with nonhuman life.

The everyday person living in the United States does not first encounter ethics of material culture and collecting solely by visiting a museum. This MA Thesis seeks to look at how action-adventure "treasure-hunting" media introduces people to fields such as archaeology, anthropology, and museum studies through entertainment media. Frameworks of settler colonialism are used to understand the intentionality behind and subsequent impact of these films in a US-based context. Media effects theories of cultivation, framing, and agenda setting are also applied to understand how messages are facilitated through media such as the Indiana Jones (1981-2024), National Treasure (2004-2023), and "Outer Banks" (2020- ) franchises. The core aim for future thought and research is to understand how museums and filmmakers alike may more ethically and equitably represent people and material culture. / Master of Arts / In the United States, the allure of museums is supported by action-adventure "treasure-hunting" media, like the Indiana Jones (1981-2024), National Treasure (2004-2023), and "Outer Banks" (2020- ) franchises. Settler colonial ideologies, which seek to legitimize white settlers' relationship to the land in the United States, are present in the production and consumption of this media. Communication-based media effects theories, which explain how media messages influence an audience's point of view as a result of the media they consume, support that there is a relationship between action-adventure "treasure-hunting" media and museums on audience outlook.

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