The Burden of History: Colonialism and the Frontier Myth in a Rural Canadian Community

Front Cover
UBC Press, 1999 - History - 237 pages
This book is an ethnography of the cultural politics of Native/non-Native relations in a small interior BC city - Williams Lake - at the height of land claims conflicts and tensions. Furniss analyses contemporary colonial relations in settler societies, arguing that "ordinary" rural Euro-Canadians exercise power in maintaining the subordination of aboriginal people through "common sense" assumptions and assertions about history, society, and identity, and that these cultural activities are forces in an ongoing, contemporary system of colonial domination. She traces the main features of the regional Euro-Canadian culture and shows how this cultural complex is thematically integrated through the idea of the frontier. Key facets of this 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 ritual celebrations of the city's heritage.
 

Contents

Culture and Colonialism in Rural British Columbia
3
The Burden of History
27
Pioneers Progress and
53
Regional Identities Pioneer Traditions
79
Indians Whites and CommonSense Racism
104
The Land Claims Public Forum
138
Negotiating Indianness in
164
Conclusions and Comments
186
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1999)

Elizabeth Furniss is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Calgary.