Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
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Item Rainfall and the resettlement of the Pacific Northwest(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2023) Griffis, Corey Lane Rowlett; Co-chairs, Graduate Committee: Catherine Dunlop and Mark FiegeThe Pacific Northwest has a reputation for rainfall. The region's relationship with that reputation is not uniform: some love it, some hate it, some deny that it should even exist. But this reputation -- and the role of rainfall in regional identity and everyday life -- has historical roots. This thesis considers rainfall as a powerful environmental force with profound impacts on the history of the Pacific Northwest. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, diaries, letters, advertisements, promotional pamphlets, newspaper articles, travelogues, and other primary source documents, this thesis reframes the imperial and colonial history of the Pacific Northwest through the lens of rainfall. I cover the period between 1543 and about 1900. My argument is that rainfall has had visceral, embodied impacts on how Euro-Americans encountered, perceived, and experienced the Pacific Northwest for almost five centuries. Rainfall played a key role in discouraging almost all interest in permanent colonial settlement from 1543 through around 1830, and the rainy season profoundly shaped the rhythms of both the maritime and overland fur trade. Throughout this period, Indigenous knowledge of rainfall formed a point of leverage against imperial power. Beginning in the 1830s, American promoters flipped the script, emphasizing rainfall in narratives of the Northwest's potential as a haven for white agrarianism. Just like early navigators and fur traders, however, settlers struggled to adapt to the rhythms of the rainy season, which created new forms of isolation and inequality. The response of settler society to rainfall's power has been to terraform the environment to try and control how rainfall manifests upon the landscape. As climate change fundamentally alters human-environment entanglements and reinforces structural inequities in how people experience weather and climate, it is also challenging our senses of place, of home. Rather than seeking new ways to dominate our changing environments and insulate ourselves further from the elements, we need to imagine new ways of living with weather and climate that are resilient, equitable, and grounded in the everyday dignities and indignities of being human. By learning to live with rainfall, we can redefine what it means to call the Northwest home.Item Gichi Bizhiki (Grandfather Buffalo): Anishinaabe sovereignty, the seasonal round, and resistance to the colonization of the web of life, 1780-1890(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2021) Ramaker, Jill Falcon; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mary MurphyGichi Bizhiki (Grandfather Buffalo): Anishinaabe Sovereignty, the Seasonal Round, and Resistance to the Colonization of the Web of Life is an Indigenous environmental history of the years 1780 through 1890, in which many Anishinaabeg departed the wild rice- centered food system and fanned out across the Northwestern Plains from the Red River Valley to the Rocky Mountains, as they adapted to buffalo culture. The Anishinaabeg practiced the seasonal round, a highly complex pattern of movements on the land to hunt, harvest, cultivate, and trade foods as part of a holistic way of life, patterned on ancestral reciprocal obligations to place. From the 1600s forward, Euro-American colonizers, in support of industrial and capital development in Europe and eastern North America, extracted natural resources from Turtle Island including animal furs and robes, minerals, forests, and overtook land for monocropping. Euro-American colonization of the web of life to which Anishinaabe people belonged rendered the Anishinaabe seasonal round way of life unsustainable. Further, colonial policies attempted to suppress all aspects of Anishinaabe life including language, knowledge, and spiritual life. In response to colonial persecution, Anishinaabeg 'ran with the archives,' (their ceremonies) as it was unsafe for their children to be identified as Anishinaabeg. Following Anishinaabe western movement, this study tells the story of how Anishinaabe resisted colonization. Research methods included drawing on archival sources from Canada and the United States, and culturally-congruent sources including ceremony, traditional stories, ancestral knowledge of cultural leaders, language, and time spent on the land. This history is presented as one Indigenous view contributing to the field of History. This dissertation concludes that Grandfather Buffalo, the one that has stood for Anishinaabeg and their kin for millennia, is a central source of Anishinaabe sovereignty and the center of the Anishinaabe economy, the kinship network of exchange. Further, the Anishinaabe food system, the seasonal round, was sustainable for millennia because it was critically embedded in the holistic Anishinaabe way of life. Worldview is an essential factor in lifeway sustainability. Finally, by their words, deeds, and movement, Anishinaabeg resisted colonization of the web of life, or what Anishinaabeg refer to as 'all our relations'.Item Real Indians making real art: how indigenous artists struggle for creative sovereignty and identity in the contemporary art world and market(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2021) Aspensen, Ceilon Hall; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Walter FlemingThe problem presented is that Indigenous artists have been excluded from mainstream art venues and limited to exhibition in museums that only include collections of Indigenous art primarily limited to the pre-1890s era. Not having Native American artists' work regularly on display in contemporary art museums makes a powerful statement about the validity of contemporary Indigeneous art. This also limits the ability of Indigenous artists to exercise sovereignty over their own work and careers, by limiting their access to mainstream exhibition venues. Many modern Indigenous artists have found their work not taken seriously because of their ethnic identity and the expectations of the field of reception concerning the style of Native American art. Some contemporary Indigenous artists struggle to make a living creating the kind of art they choose to make, despite the general popularity of their work, because of these expectations. Limitations on marketability come from the modern art market itself and collectors who think of Indigenous art from an erroneous definition of 'traditional,' or from local tribal pressures to create only art that preserves the traditional culture of the tribe. The methods employed in this study were two-fold: an investigation of museum practices and available literature on contemporary Indigenous art, and interviews with eleven indigenous artists which served as case studies, employing a central tenet of CRT (Critical Race Theory) by which BIPOC (Black and Indigenous People of Color) people are able to tell their own stories. The results of this investigation are the identification, and legitimization of contemporary indigenous art by Indigenous artists residing in the northern plains, through legal definitions, cultural and ethnic identities, individual artistic identities, and traditional and contemporary art production practices. It also explores how genealogies of concepts as they relate to indigneous art, as well as cultural reception, contribute to diffusing theories of art history where indigenous art is concerned. The author demonstrates and concludes through the findings of this study that the work of modern Indigenous artists qualifies as contemporary art by any definition, and that style is irrelevant when making that determination.Item It's all about the dough: food, literature, and the American dream(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2022) O'Brien, Emily Marie; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mary MurphyThe intersection of the environment, literature, and the culinary history of the North American West is under-investigated and requires further study to determine the ways in which focusing on these intersections reveals more about American foodways. By examining three community cookbooks, three corporate cookbooks, three works of literary fiction, and the archival contents of America Eats, a subsidiary of the Federal Writers' Project, this paper investigates sociocultural interactions in the United States between 1930 and 1959, particularly in Montana. Research revealed the connection between rural and urban through the presence of advertisements and brand-name products in community cookbooks, while corporate cookbooks displayed the depth of culinary-related gendered ideology in twentieth century America. Further investigation highlighted the interconnections between distinct foodways, the environment, and Western literature during the time period in question. This paper concludes that Montana foodways between 1930 and 1959 exhibit the last remnants of regional uniqueness prior to the widespread culinary homogenization in postwar America. Additionally, this study revealed the importance of preserving culturally and geographically specific foodways to bridge gaps among communities both rural and urban. Ultimately, this study concludes that the food present in Montana between 1930 and 1959 in all its iterations--literary, physical, and in the space between perception and creation in the world of advertising--is representative of the vestiges of a unique regional foodway.Item Schools of empires: the role of higher education and colonization in the American West and Japan(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Colgrove, Clinton Allen; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Michael ReidyThe historical relevance of the role of the university is related to research in both local and global exchanges, the accessibility to forms of higher education, and the decentralization and use of scientific knowledge. Using institutions at Gottingen, Amherst, New York, Bozeman, and Sapporo, this dissertation interrogates how geographical space, settler colonialism, and socio-cultural contexts inform scientific, agricultural, and engineering practices, research, and education from the nineteenth into the twenty-first century. Beginning with Wilhelm von Humboldt's twin pillars of academic freedom and the combination of research and teaching, this dissertation traces the migration of approaches to higher education from German schools to the American East. American conceptions of higher education evolved as educators like Frederick A. P. Barnard called for reform and academics returned from abroad. In the 1860s, the land grant school and the school of mines provided models to reshape the educational and geographical landscape of the country. As settlers colonized the American West, boosters established new schools based on civic or religious interests before state and industrial entities funded other institutions. In Montana, proximity to mining facilitated the establishment of its first school of mines and political interests led to the decentralization of the state schools. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan sought new forms of knowledge to strengthen its imperial rule, and in the colonization of Hokkaido, Kiyotaka Kuroda identified the land grant model displayed under William Smith Clark's leadership in Massachusetts as the ideal example to adopt. Both case studies demonstrate higher education's adaptability and its tenuous relationship with government expectations and funding. As Japan's empire crumbled, evolving geopolitical matters influenced the American government to increase federal funding opportunities leading to the alignment of schools and programs with the Academic-Military-Industrial Complex. Laboratories such as the Electronics Research Laboratory at Montana State University demonstrate how this relationship affected new forms of technology and research. Based on archival research and personal interviews, this dissertation analyzes the historical, multifaceted role of the university, its accessibility, and how Humboldtian ideals, reflected in practice, shape our understanding of the present and future role of higher education.Item Cultural super volcano: a cultural history of Yellowstone's hot spot via eco-paranoia(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Atwood, Erin; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Brett WalkerPeople who experienced previous natural disasters later develop a characteristic of miscalculating risk in current and future natural disasters due to the emotional intensity of fear clouding their capability to estimate their true danger in such scenarios. Eco-Paranoia is termed in this thesis as a foundational reasoning for the miscalculation. The oversight of risk due to overrunning fear currently elevates anxiety towards Yellowstone National Park's anticipated super eruption. What fuels these fears and causes humans to exhibit irrational decisions during natural disasters? Outside influences such as the mass media, first-hand disaster experience, historic response to cultural shifts in ideologies, and human response to fear and insecurities generate the miscalculated risk that results in a shift in human thinking and behavior. An analysis into the experiences of Mt. St. Helens survivors is included to help interpret modern human response to volcanic eruptions into a speculation of reaction with a Yellowstone eruption. The need to understand the function of fear as it activates human thought and behavior is elaborated on to analyze its influencing impact. Culturally, the public attuned their attention to other characteristics of the park besides the massive hot spot below when the park was first established. Fear of a destructive explosion lingered far off in their minds. All of these historical factors lead to further understanding how and why the current public is attuned, anxious, and paranoid about destructive volcanic activity in Yellowstone National Park. Eco-Paranoia, as exhibited through this thesis discusses the influence of people's constructed beliefs and ideologies that ultimately cause them to be fearful and paranoid for something that does not necessarily deserve such worry; the clouding of calculating risk due to fear during natural disasters. By nature, humans succumb to their emotions of fear and ultimately are the cause of their distress in natural disaster situations.