Item Detail
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18793
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0
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0
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English
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The Pioneer, Ethnicity and Alberta's Community Museums
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Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
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University of Alberta
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Master's thesis
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This study uses museological theory and the interplay between frontierism and metropolitanism in western Canadian history to analyze Alberta community museum development and the role of ethnicity in what has become a dominant pioneer narrative. It focusses on ethnic community museums arguing that they have adopted a common narrative structure and rhetoric presenting the generic pioneer as conqueror, civilizer and superior moral being, to illustrate participation in an Alberta community. To express ethnic community membership they infuse the generic with elements of ethnic identity rooted in the homeland. Six case studies, classified as ethno-geographic, ethno-religious or ethno-cultural, based on the represented relationship between prairie and homeland, inform the analysis: High River's Museum of the Highwood (British/Anglo Canadian), the Bonnyville and District Museum (French), Mundare's Basilian Fathers Museum (Ukrainian), Cardston's Card Home and Court House Museum (Mormon), Dickson's Danish Canadian National Museum and Gardens and the Calgary Chinese Cultural Centre. [Author's abstract]