Flowers and Weeds: Negotiating the Contemporary Doukhobor Diaspora

This thesis is an autoethnographic study of the contemporary Doukhobor diaspora, and is based on interviews conducted with Doukhobors from the West Kootenays, British Columbia. The participants’ imagined ideas of home and homeland are considered through diasporic discourse, as well as Canadian multicultural policy, in order to understand the complex and often ambiguous relationship these individuals have to their Canadian and Russian identities. The study is further informed by a brief history of the Doukhobor people, as well as ramifications and rewards of conducting autoethnography within the existing West Kootenay Doukhobor community.