Our Last Frontier: Imperialism and Northern Canadian Rural Women's Organizations.

A 1967 convention report of the Federated Women's Institutes of Canada (FWIC) revealed that this national rural women's organization was experiencing very slow progress in its attempts to establish itself in the Northwest and Yukon Territories. Based on material from Library and Archives Canada, including correspondence from Native women themselves, this paper helps to explain why this longstanding women's organization failed in the Far North. The Women's Institutes were working with imperialist assumptions about the homogeneity of women's experiences that failed to take into account the realities of life in the North, for both Native and non-Native women alike. Beginning with Diefenbaker's 'Northern Vision' and the heightened nationalism expressed in anticipation of Canada's centennial in 1967, this paper traces the WI's twenty-year attempt to establish its presence in what was referred to as 'the last frontier of the Institutes' - the Yukon and Northwest Territories. In 1988 FWIC leaders concluded that they `did not have adequate funding or personnel to make an impact on the northern regions of our country.' This paper explores the reasons for that failure, arguing that the leaders' imperialist notions about race, region, and gender provide a more adequate explanation for the difficulties than claiming it was simply a lack of funds or personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]