Over the last ten years, there has been extensive scholarly debate about the nature of
settler colonialism and the category ‘settler’. The central problem animating this
dissertation is the question of how we understand the position of a settler group like the
Doukhobors in Canadian settler colonialism. In 1899 approximately 7,500 members of
the Doukhobor religious movement fled oppression in Russia and arrived in Canada with
the hope of creating an earthly paradise based on communal economy, mutual aid,
pacifism, and an anarchistic theology. Less than a decade after fleeing Tsarist oppression
in Russia and settling in the Canadian prairies, the Doukhobors once again came into
conflict with a government; this time the conflict revolved around land and compliance
with homestead regulations. This moment marked the beginning of more than half a
century of provincial and federal government attempts to assimilate recalcitrant factions
of the Doukhobor community. A number of tactics including opportunistic land policy,
imprisonment, removal and forced education of children, legislation targeting communal
property and inducements to integrate into mainstream Canadian society were employed
by provincial and federal governments to make the Doukhobors into proper settler subjects.
By examining these government attempts to re-make Doukhobor subjectivity in
the image of an idealized Anglo-settler identity, this project sheds light on the broad
process through which ‘settlers’ are ‘made’ by government action. Drawing on archival
iv
sources, this dissertation exposes the intersection of Canadian government policy, and
colonial ideas, directed towards Indigenous peoples and the Doukhobors from 1899 until
1960. I examine this intersection through the themes of land, education, and colonial
knowledge creation in government reports. The dissertation finds that the twin elements
of settler colonialism—settlement and dispossession—must be considered as a unified
political project. During the period under study there is significant transfer of ideologies
and policies between those officials working on the assimilation of settlers and those
working toward the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. The dissertation concludes that
an important element of the category ‘settler’ is its political nature, and therefore its
contingent and contestable nature. / Graduate / 0615 / adam.burke.carmichael@gmail.com
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/7737 |
| Date | 10 January 2017 |
| Creators | Carmichael, Adam Burke |
| Contributors | Eisenberg, Avigail I. |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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