Stories exist throughout S’olh Téméxw, the traditional territory of the Stó:lõ people in
the Lower Fraser Valley of British Columbia, of subterranean tunnels connecting
disparate locations. These stories, recounted in archival records and by contemporary Stó:lõ community members, provide a gateway into Stó:lõ spiritual connections to place.
Through the tunnels, I will explore the complexities of a subterraneous spiritual
geography – what is significant about the tunnel stories and what they can say about the way that Stó:lõ people relate to the place world of the valley. Central to this thesis is ideas of imagining and re-imagining space. Through the exploration of the tunnel stories, and the complex and often cross-cultural research relationships that they are recounted in, I hope to show that the connections the tunnels provide can bring distant places, both physical and mental, together in a social imagination. This thesis focuses on the relationships that the tunnel narratives describe – relationships between people and places, researchers and storytellers, physical and metaphysical landscapes, and cultural ways of imagining the space of the valley.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/2965 |
| Date | 24 August 2010 |
| Creators | Robbins, Margaret Louise |
| Contributors | Lutz, John S. |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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