Complexities of indentity in Montana's border regions: between rivers and ridges, an anticolonial exploration of indigenous and settler texts in the Two Medicine Region

Abstract

This dissertation undertakes a comparative analysis of three Montana novels: Debra Magpie Earling's The Lost Journals of Sacajewea (2023), James Welch's Fools Crow (1986), and Ivan Doig's Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987) to examine how these novels, whose characters converge in the Two Medicine region, reflect Montana as a borderland and liminal space. The Lost Journals of Sacajewea claims rhetorical sovereignty by centering Sacajewea's voice as she traverses the upper Missouri and Yellowstone regions in her early life and during the Corps of Discovery, highlighting the complexities of survivance (Gerald Vizenor) and reclaiming Montana regions as Indigenous space. Fools Crow situates the late 1860s Montana Territory as a contested zone marked by Blackfeet/Pikuni survival amid colonial encroachment, foregrounding Indigenous negotiations of identity and belonging in the face of colonial dispossession. Dancing at the Rascal Fair chronicles the experiences of Scottish immigrants in the Two Medicine country, exploring how settler communities navigate the realities of colonial settlerism. Guided by the following research questions: (1) How do these novels represent Montana as a borderland and liminal space? (2) In what ways do their protagonists and communities negotiate identity, belonging, and survivance or survival in these liminal spaces? (3) What does a comparative, anticolonial, borderlands-theory-driven reading reveal about the intersections and divergences of Native and settler experiences in Montana? The dissertation synthesizes and critiques mainstream borderlands theory (Gloria Anzaldua's mestiza consciousness and nepantla) and Indigenous epistemologies, drawing on the work of seminal scholars, including Gerald Visenor, Jodi Byrd, Vine Deloria Jr., Scott Richard Lyons, Mishuana Goeman, and others, to develop an anticolonial literary criticism. No existing scholarship directly compares Fools Crow, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea through this theoretical framework. The dissertation's original contribution lies in its synthesis of Indigenous and mainstream borderlands theory, its comparative analysis of Earling and Welch alongside Doig, and its insistence on the ethical and political stakes of reading Montana's borderlands literature through an anticolonial lens. Ultimately, the study reveals both intersections of shared experiences, particularly regarding land, memory, narrative authority, and the complex dynamics of the Montana borderlands.