| Summary: | This thesis investigates the "discourse of conservation" as it is both articulated and critiqued in three texts written by women in the nineteenth century. 'A Plea for Emigration; Or, Notes of Canada West' (1852), written by Mary Ann Shadd and addressed to a Black American audience, critiques romanticized discourses of nationalism and freedom, and reconfigures characterizations of Black emigrant populations in the period from destitute, nai?ve refugees to keen critical thinkers, successful merchants, and agents of national security. 'Burlington Bay Beach and Heights in History', an historical pamphlet written by Mary Rose Holden of the Onondaga Nation and published by the Niagara Historical Society in 1897, conceptualizes European history in a First-Nations frame--one that structurally contains the European presence within the borders of a formerly established, and presently enduring, Six Nations community. Her revisionist history situates First Nations people as valuable demonstraters of successful government. Catharine Parr Traill's 'Stories of the Canadian Forest, Or, Little Mary and her Nurse', published in 1856, teaches (and implicitly questions) the complex social stratification of colonial Canada in various conversations between a nurse and her upper-class charge. These three texts provide a significant comparative example of how the discourses of conservation can be considered a locus for linguistic structures that work to cultivate access, even for disenfranchised individuals, to self-determination, political participation, and governance over land use.
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