Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Summer 2007
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 27, No. 3, Summer 2007, pp. 207-08.
Abstract
Drawing upon the writings of post-structuralists, cultural geographers, and feminist post-colonial scholars, Sheila McManus illustrates that although the West was critical to American and Canadian nation building, the late nineteenth-century Alberta-Montana border remained tenuous and challenged national consolidation on both sides of the line. Three pairs of chapters outline how Canada and the United States tried to incorporate their respective Wests into larger visions of nationhood and make the forty-ninth parallel a meaningful marker for regional residents.
The first two chapters illustrate how both governments sought to know and manage their western regions through surveys, maps and land policies. The second pair explores the treatment of the Blackfoot and their responses to white incursions. Even as both countries sought to contain "their" aboriginal peoples on reserves, persistent Indian mobility highlighted the weaknesses of the border and governmental controls. The final two chapters address the linkages between immigration policies, idealized notions of who should settle the West, and who actually came. Assumptions about the western landscape, ethnicity, and gender strongly influenced the formation of government policies, but settler diversity defied federal hopes for the region. Even the arrival of white women- supposedly the final step in the colonization process- challenged the strength and meaning of the nation-state in this western borderland.
Comments
Copyright 2007 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln