The Line Which Separates: Race, Gender, and the Making of the Alberta-Montana Borderlands [Paperback]

Assistant Professor Sheila McManus PhD (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0888644345 | ISBN-13: 978-0888644343 | Publication Date: May 2005

In the late nineteenth century the forty-ninth parallel was a key site of Canadian and American efforts to shape their respective nations and to create national identities. The international border sliced through Blackfoot country, creating the Alberta-Montana borderlands yet the dynamic arising out of this region’s landscape, aboriginal people, newcomers, railroads, and ongoing cross-border ties proved to challenge each government’s efforts to colonize and nationalize this region. Shelia McManus makes an important and useful comparison between American and Canadian government policies and attitudes regarding race, gender, and homesteading. Drawing on government maps and reports, oral testimony, and personal papers, The Line Which Separates explores the uneven way in which the borderlands divided a previously cohesive region.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"McManus relies on two types of primary research materials. The first is government documentation, namely annual reports produced by the US Department of the Interior and the Canadian Department of Agriculture. McManus rightly recognizes the research value of the annual reports in that local agents of the state often provided perspectives on Native relations, ranching, and other issues that differed from official government policy. Second, McManus utilizes the journals and remembrances of a small number of white women settlers in the region. Limited in number, these materials nonetheless provide a greater insight into social identities in the region, and McManus's use of them is her strongest contribution." Michelle Rhodes, University College of the Fraser Valley, Left History, 12.1

From the Back Cover

Nations are made and unmade at their borders, and the forty-ninth parallel separating Montana and Alberta in the late nineteenth century was a pivotal Western site for both the United States and Canada. Blackfoot country was a key site of Canadian and American efforts to shape their nations and national identities. The region’s landscape, aboriginal people, newcomers, railroads, and ongoing cross-border ties all challenged the governments’ efforts to create, colonize, and nationalize the Alberta-Montana borderlands. The Line Which Separates makes an important and useful comparison between American and Canadian government policies and attitudes regarding race, gender, and homesteading. Federal visions of the West in general and the borderlands in particular rested on overlapping sets of assumptions about space, race, and gender; those same assumptions would be sued to craft the policies that were supposed to turn national visions into local realities. The growth of a white female population in the region, which should have “whitened” and “easternized” the region, merely served to complicate emerging categories. Both governments worked hard to enforce the lines that were supposed to separate “good” land from “bad,” whites from aboriginals, different groups of newcomers from each other, and women’s roles from men’s roles. The lines and categories they depended on were used to distinguish each West, and thus each nation, from the other. Drawing on a range of sources, from government maps and reports to oral testimony and personal papers, The Line Which Separates explores the uneven way in which the borderlands were superimposed in Blackfoot country in order to divide a previously cohesive region in the late nineteenth century.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: The University of Alberta Press (May 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0888644345
• ISBN-13: 978-0888644343
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,343,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting insights, great perspective, April 6, 2009

By 

V. Carroll (Blackfeet Country) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Line Which Separates: Race, Gender, and the Making of the Alberta-Montana Borderlands (Race and Ethnicity in the American West) (Paperback)

The author has presented an interesting perspective on regional history. Being a person who lives in the area she's writing about, with personal connections to the people she's writing about, I found her insights refreshing.