This dissertation is an ethnography of the cultural politics of Indian/white
relations in a small, interior British Columbia resource city at the height of land
claims conflict and tensions. Drawing on the theoretical approaches of Nicholas
Thomas (1994) and Raymond Williams (1977, 1980), I show how the power that
reinforces the subordination of aboriginal peoples in Canada is exercised by
'ordinary' rural Euro-Canadians whose cultural attitudes and activities are forces in
an ongoing, contemporary system of colonial domination. In approaching these
issues through in-depth ethnographic research with both the Native and Euro-
Canadian populations and in exploring the dynamics of cultural domination and
resistance at the level of a local, rural community, this dissertation stands as a
unique contribution to the ethnographic study of colonialism and Native/non-
Native relations in Canada.
The dominant Euro-Canadian culture of the region is defined by a complex
of understandings about history, society and identity that is thematically integrated
through the idea of the frontier. At its heart, the frontier complex consists of an
historical epistemology - a Canadian version of the American frontier myth
(Slotkin 1992) - that celebrates the processes through which European explorers
'discovered' and 'conquered' North America and its aboriginal inhabitants, .
Central to this complex is the Indian/white dichotomy, a founding archetype in
Euro-Canadians' symbolic ordering of regional social relations and in their private
and public constructions of collective identity. Also central is the Euro-Canadians'
self-image of benevolent paternalism, an identity that appears repeatedly in
discourses of national history and Native/non-Native relations.
Facets of the frontier complex are expressed in diverse settings: casual
conversations among Euro-Canadians, popular histories, museum displays, political
discourse, public debates about aboriginal land claims, and the town's annual
summer festival. In each setting, these practices contribute to the perpetuation of
relations of inequality between Euro-Canadians and area Shuswap, Tsilhqot'in and
Carrier peoples, and in each setting area Natives are engaging in diverse forms of
resistance. The plurality of these strategies of resistance, rooted in different
cultural identities, biographical experiences and political philosophies, reflects the
creativity in which new forms of resistance are forged and tested in public contexts
of Native/Euro-Canadian interaction. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/6629 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Furniss, Elizabeth Mary |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 19154298 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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