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The Miistakis (mountains) in Paahtomahksikimi (Waterton Lakes National Park) are sacred for Niitsitapi. The experience of fasting in the mountains is what brought us our healing wisdom from thousands of years ago. When we fast, we call the mountain by its name, for its spiritual presence to be connected to us. The colonial erasure of Blackfoot names and the imposition of European names by colonizers disrupted that relationship, and our access to practise Itaksiistsimoo’pi (Vision Quest) and fasting. I bring a Blackfoot methodology based on lived experience and the transferring of oral history, of knowing from land, and of my language, Niitsipowahsin (Blackfoot). I bring this knowledge transferred from time immemorial, of the relationship between mountains and the Itaksiistsimoo’pi (Vision Quest), into the learning space. My purpose is to record the impact of the mountains no longer being called by their Blackfoot names, and to begin decolonizing the process of obtaining a PhD.

This thesis examines the representations of sex between men in the British Columbia and Washington press from 1866 to 1910. During this period, B.C. and Washington newspapers covered both local and international sex scandals involving men engaging in sex with other men or boys. I explore the way this coverage illustrates that representations of sex between men were intertwined with issues of identity, as the press drew on various identity categories, such as race, reputation and social connections, and age, to position men accused of having sex with other men as either opposed to or in line with national and transnational goals. I argue that, in the press coverage of sex between men, the deviancy associated with men engaging in sex with other men was constantly being negotiated based on the identities of accused men.

This thesis examines how postwar Dutch immigrants who came to southern Alberta re-created their self-understanding in light of their new situations. Oral history interviews which I conducted with nine of these postwar Dutch immigrants are the main sources for this study and are integral throughout. Because the nine individuals whom I interviewed were all members of Calvinist Reformed churches, both in the Netherlands and in southern Alberta, my study focuses on that segment of the Dutch immigrant population. I argue that, despite the dislocation they felt and the steep learning curve they experienced after immigrating, the nine individuals whom I interviewed re-created their identities in southern Alberta by firmly grounding themselves in the various Reformed churches and church communities which they joined and created.