This presentation contains photographs taken during the Little Springs Ethnographic Investigation. These photographs are meant to supplement the information presented in the report entitled: Unav~Nuquaint: Little Springs Lava Flow Ethnographic Investigation (Van Vlack et al. 2013).

This study examines the role of place and ritual performance in the construction of subjectivities and social memories in relation to the 1890s Ghost Dance, a North American pan-Indian ritually-centered social movement that began in western Nevada and spread from the West Coast through the Great Plains during the last decade of the nineteenth century. This dissertation also explores efforts to alternatively preserve, promote, and eradicate practices representing two inherently contradictory spatial regimes, or ways of living as Beings-in-the-World. Such an analysis is done through the study of ritual and social responses to the spatial disruptions and collective identity ruptures evinced by Westward expansionism on the native peoples of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau called the Numa. This research is designed to advance knowledge of Ghost Dance ceremonial sites and ritual praxis in the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. This is done through the isolation of physiographic characteristics, performance characteristics, and cultural inscription practices contributing to the selection, valuation, and use of particular ritual settings for Ghost Dance performances. I hypothesized that three types of sites, World Balancing Places, Regional Balancing Sites, and Local Balancing Sites, or Regions of Refuge, were used for ceremonialism associated with the Ghost Dance among Numic people. Type I sites are ceremonial sites that were used consistently before the arrival of Euroamericans and continued to be used during the late nineteenth century for the performance of the Ghost Dances. Both World and Local Balancing Places are Type 1 Sites. Type II sites are defined as places that were selected as ceremonial sites after encroachment activities made the performance characteristics of Type I Sites nonviable. The social unit of the present analysis is the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. The current methodological framework has been formulated with the intent of producing a holistic treatment of Numic ritual landscapes as evidenced in Ghost Dance ceremonial sites. To this end, I have adopted an intersubjective and iterative approach that utilizes performance and narrative studies, behavioral archaeology, cultural landscape studies, and phenomenology. This research aims to contribute to the theory and methodology underscoring National Historic Preservation efforts.

The thesis identifies a development integral to contemporary German documentary cinema that has not yet been taken into academic consideration: namely a new will to depict the regional, the rural, or Heimat. I have organised the research under precisely these three thematic motifs: the rural (Chapter One), the regional (Chapter Two), and Heimat (Chapter Three). The importance of the rural and the regional has to date been largely overlooked by academics in the field of film studies. Yet in the context of Germany they are key cultural markers – both are fundamental to the deep‐rooted German cultural concept of Heimat. Heimat, on the other hand, has attracted the recent attention of film scholars; their focus, however, has been mainly limited to historical analyses. I have implemented a number of theoretical frameworks in order to model a much‐needed understanding of this emerging German cinema. My examination of representations of the rural is rooted in a geographic approach to the medium of film, with an emphasis on the shaping (or lack thereof) of cinematic landscapes. My investigation of representations of the regional benefits from ethnographic concepts such as Other‐ing and exoticism. My discussion of a revival of Heimat on screen is based on historical analyses of the genre of the Heimat film. These theoretical frameworks are guided by close textual analysis of eight case study films spanning the period 1999 – 2007: Die Blume der Hausfrau (Dominik Wessely, 1999), Out of Edeka (Konstantin Faigle, 2001), Schotter wie Heu (Wiltrud Baier and Sigrun Baier, 2002), Herr Wichmann von der CDU (Andreas Dresen, 2003), Ich kenn’ keinen – Allein unter Heteros (Jochen Hick, 2003), Die Blutritter (Douglas Wolfsperger, 2004), Durchfahrtsland (Alexandra Sell, 2005), Full Metal Village (Sung‐Hyung Cho, 2007). The thesis not only identifies and analyses this new development in German cinema but also contextualises it in an academic framework.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of place-making in a war-altered landscape. It describes over a decade of resettlement efforts in a village in northwest Cambodia. As war drew to a close in the late 1990s, land on the former frontlines was allotted to those willing to risk occupancy on possibly mined terrain. Area resettlement was driven by need, forged by hope, and fraught with physical risk and material dangers. Food security and the prospect of acquiring land rights required settlers’ physical presence in and active engagement with the materialities of a forested landscape strewn with the remnants of war and the ruins of earlier settlements. Residents' conceptual and corporeal engagements with place were influenced by longstanding Khmer depictions of the srok, the ordered and cultivated landscape of agriculture and human dwelling, and the prai, the wild and fecund landscape of the forest, replete with powerful but often malevolent spirits. The srok was the landscape that the inhabitants of Handsome village longed to dwell within and struggled to create. The area’s pre-war reputation as a famously fertile agricultural zone had drawn many of its residents to risk the hazards of resettlement. The dream of the srok drove residents' actions in the actively dangerous, ever fluctuating terrain. In addition to being envisioned, the place was intimately known and directly experienced through the corporeal bodies of its inhabitants and their engagements with its material assemblages. Making the srok involved arduous physical effort in a constantly shifting material environment along with concentrated social and conceptual work. Resettlement did not merely entail hewing fields out of forests and removing mines and ordnance, but also encompassed attempts to transition into peacetime—to move from soldiering to farming, to come to rest after years of mobility and displacement, and to recreate social and moral order. This study analyzes successes and failures in place-making processes, illustrating how different aspects of landscape posed both affordances and constraints to these processes. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which material assemblages contributed to uncertainty in place-making efforts, illustrating that the material dimensions of landscape may resist as much as they acquiesce to human alteration. On a material level, place-making was a struggle that pitted human agency and will against an active and agentive landscape. Village residents were interacting with material environs in a constant state of change and becoming. The unsettling material traces of the past and the continuing threat some remnants posed in the present contributed to the ongoing indeterminacy residents experienced about the state and contents of the once famous ground. The landscape that residents sought to form and fix was always in danger of undoing its formation and categorization and revealing itself to be something else. Yet despite their failures at establishing and fixing the srok in the constantly shifting landscape of Handsome village, residents maintained their quest to transform the present configuration of place into the landscape and the future that they desired.

The intention behind this work was to re-imagine the possibilities for productive landscapes within our city. The purpose of this practicum is to design opportunities for people to become more self-sufficient, self-sustaining and less-dependant on the current food system through productive urban landscapes. This practicum proposes that we design a strong network of city wide productive landscapes in order to provide people with the space to grow, trade, buy or sell good quality food at a fair and just price. Through a set of strategies derived from research, observation and experience, we can design a new way of looking at landscapes within our city in order to create a connected, resilient, fair and sustainable food system within Winnipeg.

Relationships and connections with our traditional, spiritual, cultural practices, and the physical landscapes of our traditional territories are inherent to our Kwagu’ł being. This thesis research explores how developing relationships with landscapes contributes to cultural identity. My research project focuses on using digital video to document an experiential journey of Kwagu’ł community members as they experience a Kwagu’ł origin site in their traditional territories of T’sax̱is (Fort Rupert, BC), a small remote village on northern Vancouver Island. I specifically examine how being in a particular place might influence their identification processes as they reflect on Kwagu’ł practices, values and beliefs. According to our Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw nino’gad (knowledgeable ones), wellness balances and integrates the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual elements of our being. The disruption of these fundamental elements of wellness is a legacy of Indigenous people’s encounter with colonialism. These factors ultimately affect our behaviour, and therefore, our identity. In this film, titled “Identity Through A Journey With Our Ancestors”, I explore: 1) how an experiential journey to Kwagu’ł origin sites contributes to a Kwagu’ł person’s perception of who they are and where they come from; 2) how Kwagu’ł people develop a coevalness with their ancestors, their ancestral ontological practices, teachings and ideologies; and ask 3) how Kwagu’ł people should embody this knowledge so that it creates meaningful connections to Kwagu’ł identity in light of socioeconomic and cultural changes of our contemporary environment? This paper accompanies the film and elaborates on the deeper understanding of cultural identification practices of aboriginal people that stems from a discussion of origin sites and their meanings. K’waxalikala (tree of life) frames this inquiry, and it illustrates relationships and connections that are important to our life-long learning both on an individual and collective basis. / Graduate / mariehunt@cablerocket.com

Despite increasing publicity, habitat loss and fragmentation remain a serious threat to biodiversity. The main objectives of this research were (i) to study the effects of forest fragmentation on the distribution and abundance of resident birds in the fragmented littoral forests of southeastern Madagascar and temperate woodlands of southeastern Australia at three spatial scales (patch, landscape and regional) and (ii) to place the results of these case studies within the realms of the equilibrium theory of island biogeography and its descendent theories, to ascertain whether it is appropriate to use these theories to derive conservation scenarios within these threatened regions. Deforestation of Madagascar's remaining forests is considered a global concern due to both its current high intensity and the small amount of forest claimed to be remaining on the island. Surprisingly, very few studies have considered the impacts of forest fragmentation on bird diversity in Madagascar. A multi-scale study on the effects of littoral forest fragmentation and degradation on birds is therefore a major step forward for bird conservation on the island. Furthermore, prior to this study no known work has been conducted on the avifauna within the threatened littoral forests of eastern Madagascar. My results indicated that (i) the littoral forests contained bird species assemblages that were unique when compared to neighbouring forest habitats, (ii) many forest-dependent bird species were significantly affected by habitat structure and especially proximity to forest edge and (iii) many forest-dependent species were affected by landscape factors such as remnant shape and remnant size. No relationship was found between measures of landscape composition, remnant 'isolation' and bird distribution within littoral forest remnants.

Despite intense publicity, habitat loss still remains a serious threat to biodiversity. Forest destruction is its frontrunner, both in terms of physical habitat under threat and potential for biodiversity loss. In the fragmented landscape of the Taita Hills, SE Kenya, several bird species are facing the threat of extinction from forest loss. They are absent from many of the remnant forest patches and/or are showing negative effects with increasing disturbance. Using a relatively common forest-dependent bird species - the whitestarred robin Pogonocichla stellata - as a model, the current status of this ecosystem was examined, and future patterns predicted in view of the unrelenting destruction. As expected, the robin population in the largest and most intact fragment (c35 ha) was the healthiest, suggesting that this was indeed the best quality habitat patch: it had the highest population density, highest productivity (low nest predation and high juvenile to adult ratio) and lowest turnover rates. Effects of forest deterioration were evident from the fact that the medium-sized patch (c95 ha), which is undergoing severe degradation, was a worse habitat for the robin than the tiny patches (c2-8 ha): it had the lowest population density, lowest productivity (highest nest predation rates and lowest juvenile to adult ratio), and highest turnover rates. The explanation for this is twofold. Besides the smallest patches facing lower levels of habitat loss recently, they also had high levels of dispersal between them. They occasionally operated as a finegrained system with individuals moving between them in the space of a few days. In general, the robin metapopulation is demographically (rate of change, λ = 0.996) and genetically (at migration- and mutation-drift equilibrium) stable at present. The populations in the largest and smallest patches were potential sources providing emigrants that were possibly crucial in sustaining the population in the medium-sized patch (given its low productivity and high turnover rates). Overall, these findings underscore the importance of within-patch processes, both for ensuring persistence of subpopulations and providing dispersers, as well as between-patch processes (chiefly dispersal) for ensuring metapopulation persistence. Thus, by furnishing ample sample sizes that enabled work to be carried out in all fragments throughout this landscape, the model species approach was useful for identifying the need for a two-pronged conservation strategy. First, a need to focus within fragments to reduce habitat loss and degradation, and second, to address among fragment issues relating to land-use and maintaining a forested landscape, in order to enhance connectivity between patches. Finally, based on the mechanisms by which disturbance and fragmentation are affecting bird populations e.g. predator influxes from the surrounding matrix, conservation recommendations for the Taita Hills are offered.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2001. / Adviser: J. Michael Reed. Submitted to the Dept. of Biology. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-144). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on November 1, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.