Metlakatla, British Columbia, an 'isolated' missionary village, was
established in 1862 by William Duncan, an Anglican missionary, and a group of
Tsimshian on the Northern Northwest Coast. The village was widely praised for
its success in 'civilizing' its group of Northwest Coast Native people, but, by
1880, was plagued by turmoil between Duncan and Church and government
authorities. The turmoil in Metlakatla, B.C. led to an unprecedented move when,
in 1887, Duncan and the majority of the villagers relocated to Annette Island in
Southern Alaska. Along with this move to United States jurisdiction came shifts
in the construction and representation of the colonial project at Metlakatla.
Metlakatla, B.C., represented as a model village of equal and subordinate
workers, was full of internal fractures which could be viewed through
disjunctures among the various representations of the site. With the move to
Alaska, the representations of Metlakatla, once constructed in the vein of
homogeneous worker's housing promoted in England during the era of
Evangelical reform, shifted to present a middle class, American village which
participated in capitalism and leisure activities.
This thesis attempts to link the shifting representations of the colonial
project of Metlakatla to both local and broader political movements. The shifts
correspond to changing views toward the Indian and assimilation, shifts from a
Canadian/British terrain to an American one, changing notions of the worker
and emerging fears of communism, and shifts in the technology used to capture
photographic representations of the site. In addition to these broad trends, the
shifting constructions of the community of Metlakatla may have corresponded to
the navigation of a very specific Alaskan political terrain and to changing
dynamics within the community.
Thus, through an examination of the visual representations of Metlakatla,
B.C. and Metlakatla, Alaska, this thesis attempts to complicate the understanding
of this well known colonial project on the Northern Northwest Coast. In
addition, by relating these images to the broader political climate with which the
site was engaged, the paper shows fractures within the community and possible
explanations for the dramatic transition in the representation of Metlakatla in its
second setting in the United States.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/9017 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Pastor, Monica Leigh |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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