SELECTED THESES ON THE CIRCUMPOLAR ARCTIC

This thesis is an attempt to develop a political theory relevant to the struggled of native people in Canada. The concept of dispossession, of social separation conditioned through loss, is explored as a ground to this theory. The essential problem is that native politics has its own specific intelligibility: a materialist analysis is needed which does not lose sight of the particularity of this politics. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first two chapters examine anthropological conceptions of the Indian. Chapters three and four explore the historical context of native dispossession as it has been specifically determined by the fur industry. Chapter five specifically examines the experience of native people in Canada today. Chapter six explores the concepts of dispossession and totalisation as the basis of a framework for understanding native politics. Dispossession fundamentally implies marginalisation and separation from the social: hence the intense despair associated with native poverty and its intensely debilitating character. The dispossessed are not oppressed by and in struggle with capital directly but rather are directly oppressed by the state as a totalising power.'