Global ETD Search

1	The Evolution of "Monsters" in North American Exploration and Travel Literature 1607-1930 Shoalts, Adam January 2019 (has links) In the first two centuries of European exploration of North America, accounts of monsters, including ones given by Indigenous guides, were largely accepted by Europeans as reflecting actual creatures. Gradually, under the influence of a range of factors, this dynamic shifted over time. Continued exploration, the spread of Enlightenment ideas, and changing material circumstances led to a decline in the belief in monsters—or at least put the belief in them beyond respectability, thereby enlarging the cultural gulf between various Indigenous cultures and European explorers and settlers, or at least the social elite of that latter group. In Canada, as argued here, the “sasquatch” was a hybrid creation combining Indigenous and European traditions; the windigo was an Indigenous monster tradition; the “grisly bear” was predominately a monster of the European imagination. Perceptions of each in European exploration literature followed a similar trajectory of increasing skepticism. Each evolved from creatures that were depicted as innately hostile or dangerous into somewhat more benign pop culture images as they lost their potency once the frontier receded and North America urbanized. As the gap in perspectives on monsters widened in exploration and frontier literature over the course of the nineteenth century, new narratives emerged that were much more negative in their depictions of Indigenous peoples. Frequently, this negativity, when connected with monster legends, depicted Indigenous peoples as cowardly or superstitious. With the sasquatch, European stereotypes about Indigenous people had by the 1870s partially supplanted what had once been a sense of genuine mystery regarding this frontier legend. The exploitation of windigo stories to portray Indigenous peoples as cowardly and superstitious also arose mainly after the 1870s, as earlier generations of explorers and fur traders had exhibited more receptive attitudes. Meanwhile many voyageurs and lower status trappers retained beliefs on monsters closer to their Indigenous counterparts, and as a result were often lumped into the same category as sharing premodern, superstitious beliefs by their social elites. Finally, in the third example, the “grisly bear” became a bloodthirsty monster in the European settler imagination. It was the last mainstream European monster myth, before it too largely faded away in the face of skeptical inquiry. However, such skepticism, voiced normally from afar, frequently misunderstood and misconstrued the nature of these legends, and the truths they had contained. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Monsters Sasquatch Windigo Grizzly Bear Explorers Exploration Literature
2	Subversion and the Storyteller: Exploring Spirituality and the Evolution of Traditional Narratives in Contemporary Native Literature in Canada Shultis, Elizabeth E. 10 1900 (has links) <p>This thesis explores the intersection of storytelling and spirituality in contemporary Native literature in Canada. The invocation of the oral tradition and its history will be examined in the works of Eden Robinson, Joseph Boyden, and Harry Robinson, as each author attempts to orient his or her narratives within a First Nations framework. By gesturing towards orality in their written literature, these authors acknowledge the dialogic nature of a narrative that has been shaped by ancestral experiences and memory and thus write against the colonial master narrative of the contemporary Canadian nation-state. In Joseph Boyden's <em>Through Black Spruce</em>, Eden Robinson's <em>Monkey Beach</em>, and the transcribed collections of Harry Robinson's stories, the invocation of orality becomes the vehicle through which to explore Indigenous ways of knowing and traditional spiritual beliefs. This thesis first considers the ways in which the mode of storytelling allows each author to create a new narrative that introduces readers to an Indigenous perspective on the processes of history. It then examines the evolution of specific spiritual beings from traditional narratives into contemporary settings as a way to explore neocolonial attitudes and the compromised contexts of modern Indigenous life in communities across Canada that continue to be haunted by a legacy of colonialism. I end with an exploration of the potential for healing that each author envisions as communities move into a decolonization process through the regeneration of tribal languages, a reconnection to sacred space, and a reimagining of the Canadian master narrative and its colonial interpretation of history.</p> / Master of English storytelling spirituality windigo oral tradition Monkey Beach Through Black Spruce Harry Robinson Literature in English, North America Literature in English, North America
3	Cannibal Wihtiko: Finding Native-Newcomer Common Ground Chabot, Cecil January 2016 (has links) Two prominent historians, David Cannadine and Brad Gregory, have recently contended that history is distorted by overemphasis on human difference and division across time and space. This problem has been acute in studies of Native-Newcomer relations, where exaggeration of Native pre-contact stability and post-contact change further emphasized Native-Newcomer difference. Although questioned in economic, social and political spheres, emphasis on cultural difference persists. To investigate the problem, this study examined the Algonquian wihtiko (windigo), an apparent exemplar of Native-Newcomer difference and division. With a focus on the James Bay Cree, this study first probed the wihtiko phenomenon’s Native origins and meanings. It then examined post-1635 Newcomer encounters with this phenomenon: from the bush to public opinion and law, especially between 1815 and 1914, and in post-1820 academia. Diverse archives, ethnographies, oral traditions, and academic texts were consulted. The cannibal wihtiko evolved from Algonquian attempts to understand and control rare but extreme mental and moral failures in famine contexts. It attained mythical proportions, but fears of wihtiko possession, transformation and violence remained real enough to provoke pre-emptive killings even of family members. Wihtiko beliefs also influenced Algonquian manifestations and interpretations of generic mental and moral failures. Consciously or not, others used it to scapegoat, manipulate, or kill. Newcomers threatened by moral and mental failures attributed to the wihtiko often took Algonquian beliefs and practices seriously, even espousing them. Yet Algonquian wihtiko behaviours, beliefs and practices sometimes presented Newcomers with another layer of questions about mental and moral incompetence. Collisions arose when they discounted, misconstrued or asserted control over Algonquian beliefs and practices. For post-colonial critics, this has raised a third layer of questions about intellectual and moral incompetence. Yet some critics have also misconstrued earlier attempts to understand and control the wihtiko, or attributed an apparent lack of scholarly consensus to Western cultural incompetence or inability to grasp the wihtiko. In contrast, this study of wihtiko phenomena reveals deeper commonalities and continuities. They are obscured by the complex evolution of Natives’ and Newcomers’ struggles to understand and control the wihtiko. Yet hidden in these very struggles and the wihtiko itself is a persistent shared conviction that reducing others to objects of power signals mental and moral failure. The wihtiko reveals cultural differences, changes and divisions, but exemplifies more fundamental commonalities and continuities. Windigo wihtiko wendigo cannibal Native-Newcomer Aboriginal Indigenous intercutural culture cross-cultural James Bay Cree Mushkego Indigenous law court anthropology trans-cultural psychiatry madness monstrous insanity monster problem of evil power-knowledge Foucault religion spiritual Christian mission inter-religious common ground fur trade Rupert's Land Hudson's Bay Company Colonialism imperialism British North America postcolonial postmodern penal law insanity defence values ideals

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