Sawatsky, Lukas2025-09-162025-09-162025-08-232025-08-23http://hdl.handle.net/1993/39380This thesis resists the grand narrative of Canadian music history by examining Canadian choral works through a settler colonial theoretical framework. I specifically focus on the politics of translation and the relationship between text and music. I exemplify my methodology in this thesis with a brief discussion of R. Murray Schafer's Miniwanka: Moments of Water (1971), explaining how his use of Indigenous words constitutes a form of extractive composition, or a use of Indigenous culture undertaken without the consent of those to whom it belongs in a settler-colonial context. I then apply this methodology to my primary case studies: Imant Raminsh’s Along the Flower Trail: Earth Chants (1982) and Andrew Balfour’s Nagamo (2022). Both works engage with the politics of translation: Raminsh sets Indigenous song in English translation, and Balfour sets English texts translated into Cree and Ojibway. I contrast Raminsh’s extractive methods with Balfour’s unsettling methods to point the way towards a reinvigorated musical practice that avoids reifying settler colonialism. These close readings provide methods to further understand Canadian music history and its close relationship with settler colonialism.engCanadian Choral musicSettler Colonial TheoryAndrew BalfourImant Raminsh