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Identity, Integration, And Assimilation Recorded In Manitoba's Polish And Ukrainian Cemeteries, Lukasz Albanski, John C. Lehr

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Polish and Ukrainian rural cemeteries in southeastern Manitoba reflect the process of negotiating complex religious, geographic, and ethnic identities within Canadian society. Before 1914 the identities of Slavic immigrants from eastern Europe to western Canada were influenced more by religious affiliation than by geographic origins. This Slavic population, now assimilated into mainstream Anglophone society, retains elements of Polish and Ukrainian on grave markers as expressions of difference and acts of resistance against total homogeneity. In rural Manitoba grave markers record the process of exogamy and cultural blending, while cemetery landscapes replicate the social relationship between cultural groups from the same …