European Cultural Landscapes in Manitoba - an Interethnic Perspective

Summary

Within the discourse of settler experiences in North America the ‘European Colonizer’ is all too often viewed in monolithic terms. Moving forward ideas of agency and hybridity, which can transgress the over-embellished ‘contact line’ between Europeans and Indigenous peoples as well as the boundaries that serve to differentiate groups within these categories, requires sensitivity to the scales of social life as well as the situated historical moments that saw people coming together for a variety of purposes. This paper will explore the experiences of two ethnic groups that settled in south-western Manitoba in the 1870s and 1880s Icelanders and Highland Scots. While they received multiple benefits, frequently denied to others, and can be seen as empowered colonizers, they also experienced the sharp end of colonialist attitudes An investigation into the material dimensions of their settlements and interactions with others serves to disrupt the primacy of an ethnically-based history so central to the story of European settlement, allowing for the creation of novel forms of culture and tradition that resist the necessity of ‘Old World’ labels.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Perspectives on Inequity: European and Indigenous Voices in the North American Landscape   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-27,07