Keith Thor Carlson

Keith Thor Carlson. The Power of Place, The Problem of Time: Aboriginal Identity and Historical Consciousness in the Cauldron of Colonialism.

In this richly textured and innovative study, Keith Thor Carlson reinterprets Stó:lõ identities from the first smallpox epidemic of the late eighteenth century to the burgeoning west coast political movement in 1906.  By situating identities in temporal and spatial contexts, Carlson explains how the emergence of a supra-tribal political identity was not a product of colonialism but a repudiation of divisive state policies.  This complex recounting of how social structure and transformative events shape historical consciousness and collective identities is a brilliant example of how Aboriginal histories can be written and explored on their own terms.