The past is often used by political figures in the present in order to achieve political goals by manipulating a feeling of identity, based upon a shared history, among their followers. The extent to which a political leader may alter narratives of the past to meet his or her own needs is governed by certain constraints and laws of structure, as Appadurai and Sahlins have argued (Appadurai 1981; Sahlins 1985). However, the credibility of a leader is affected by such factors as how well that leader fills the cultural construct of a leader's role and adheres to the community's expectations. At Kahnawake, a Mohawk community near Montreal, I found that the amount of authority granted to individual factional leaders in their interpretation of the Iroquois Confederacy's Great Law of Peace reflected the degree to which each leader behaved as a Confederacy chief or orator should, and also reflected the degree to which the leader obeyed social norms, particularly that of not advocating violence against fellow Mohawks. My findings add to the growing body of anthropological literature on the uses of the past by demonstrating in a specific case study how interpersonal relationships between leaders and a community affect the leaders' credibility and authority over the past.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.26276 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Harrison, Regina |
| Contributors | Morantz, Toby (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| 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 |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Anthropology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001446438, proquestno: MM99904, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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