Reclaiming women's history in the region of Marion, Montana through a hermeneutic of place and the stories of three individuals: Kau'xuma'nupika, Gail Peters Little and Arlene Wehr Lapierre.

摘要

Feminist historians have shown that the annals of western conquest have privileged the discourse of dominant groups at the expense of those who have been marginalized. Feminist content analysis allows me to assess the presence or absence of women and their voices in the historical and archival records of this region. This dissertation crosses chronological boundaries in presenting women's history through the lives of three individuals---Kau'xuma'nupika, Gail Peters Little, and Arlene Wehr LaPierre---who lived in the same locale, but during different time periods---colonial, post-depression era, and the turbulent sixties.;As a feminist, cultural-historical study it explores alternative approaches to research utilizing a hermeneutic of place as the primary methodology. As an interpretive framework it guides my search for understanding the lived experiences of individuals in a particular place and provides a relational rather than a linear approach to historical analysis.;Through my engagement with the place of Marion---a small, rural town in the wilds of western Montana---I came to focus on the stories of three women whose own relationships with this place inspire us to look more closely at the historical and cultural forces that have shaped North America. Being in place---walking and sleeping on the land, learning the topography, the landscape, listening to the stories and myths of this particular place and the people who lived there---served to shape and influence this place-based historiography.;Edward Relph's phenomenological discourse of place, particularly in terms of insideness/outsideness and authentic/inauthentic sense of place, provides a conceptual framework for presenting my analysis of the meanings of place as they are revealed through the narratives of Kau'xuma'nupika, Gail Peters Little, and Arlene Wehr LaPierre.