First sovereignty, then settler colonialism: Shelisa Klassen, Land, Sovereignty, and Migration during an era of change: Manitoba, 1870s, PhD dissertation, University of Manitoba, 2022 | settler colonial studies blog

First sovereignty, then settler colonialism: Shelisa Klassen, Land, Sovereignty, and Migration during an era of change: Manitoba, 1870s, PhD dissertation, University of Manitoba, 2022

11Jan23

Abstract: Manitoba began the 1870s as an Indigenous province, entering Confederation in the aftermath of the well-studied period of the Red River Resistance of 1870. By the 1880s, Manitoba’s power structures and land were largely in settler hands, and the province was being promoted as a fertile land of opportunity for immigrants. This dissertation is concerned with the years of transition during the 1870s where settlers immigrated to Manitoba and through the mechanisms of laws, immigration, and violence asserted control over the region. The newspapers and immigration literature downplayed the violence and dispossession that was occurring while depicting an optimistic view of Manitoba intended to recruit immigrants. Settler fears and anxieties about life in Manitoba shaped the newspaper coverage of the first decade of the new province. The myth of Canadian sovereignty over Manitoba in the 1870s was repeated until the settler population was large enough to make the claim believable. During the 1870s the small settler population in Manitoba worked to grow their numbers through immigration and to change how land was understood and claimed, and much of this work was done in the pages of the local newspapers.

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