Who can be a citizen?: Decoding the "law of the land" in contemporary Manitoba politics

• Main Author: Gill, Sheila Dawn
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 1999
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/13804; http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape10/PQDD_0006/MQ46176.pdf

grantor: University of Toronto This thesis decodes key aspects of the "law of the land" operating in contemporary Manitoban society. Focusing on 'white' elite political performances of the official national story, I contend that (a gendered, classed, heterosexed) racism underwrites the shifting and disparate instances of 'what' and 'who' a Canadian citizen can be, both in the letter of the law, and in the diverse lived realities of the 1990s. Combining discourse analysis with tools of critical geography, my work speaks back to the decreed 'unspeakability' of racism in Manitoba's Legislature. I contend that the 1995 prohibition on the use of the word "racist" in the House is consistent with the amnesic context of (post)colonial Canadian society and its celebrated 'anti-racist' nationalism. In response to the extremity of systemic violence experienced by First Nations peoples in the Canadian past and present, my analysis gives priority to the ordering of Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relations in Manitoba. M.A.