The exploratory study focused on First Nation students and First Nation education counsellors within Ontario. Using an interpretative approach, the research sought to determine the relevance of the counsellors as a potentially influencing factor in the students’ post-secondary program choices. The ability of First Nation education counsellors to be influential is a consequence of their role since they administer Post-Secondary Student Support Program (PSSSP) funding. A report evaluating the program completed by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada in 2005 found that many First Nation students would not have been able to achieve post-secondary educational levels without PSSSP support. Eight self-selected First Nation Education counsellors and twenty-nine First Nation post-secondary students participated in paper surveys, and five students and one counsellor agreed to complete a follow-up interview. The quantitative and qualitative results revealed differences in the perceptions of the two survey groups as to whether First Nation education counsellors influenced students’ post-secondary program choices. Students perceived themselves to be their greatest influence, while the counsellors felt their influence was greater once students made their program decisions, through encouragement and follow up support. The study raised questions regarding challenges faced by First Nation education counsellors to provide consistent academic, personal and cultural/social supports to their sponsored students. While the study suggested the role of First Nation education counsellors had evolved little from its original financial-administrative role and toward a more rounded offering including interpersonal, academic and cultural supports, in keeping with an educational decolonization process, counsellors face chronic program under funding and are under-staffed. To enhance First Nation students’ academic success, federal and provincial governments and First Nations are encouraged to further support First Nation education counsellors with greater training opportunities (expansion of the Ontario Native Education Counselling Association’s Native Counsellor Training Program), a higher ratio of counsellors to students, and support and promotion of their ability to provide interpersonal and academic counselling. The study challenged First Nation education counsellors to seek more opportunities to maintain consistent engagement with their students, especially with more autonomous or older students. First Nation students were also challenged to seek more from their counsellors than sponsorship.

This thesis contributes to the literature on language revitalization, a hopeful branch of research that counters the foreboding conclusions of language shift studies. It is based on data collected in May, 1998, at Cumberland House, an Aboriginal community in northeastern Saskatchewan. Fifty-five community members participated in six focus groups organized by the following criteria: administrators, school board trustees, elders, parents, students and teachers. These research participants expressed their vision, expectations, and needs related to an Aboriginal Language Immersion Pilot Program proposed by the Northern Lights School Division. Community members envisioned an education that contributes to their children's Cree and Anglo-Canadian bicultural competence. They expected the Cree immersion program in the provincial school would develop their children's Cree and English bilingual fluency. They needed training, administrative support, materials and ongoing communication between school and community. Factors that instill a sense of optimism about this language revitalization effort, include the role and status of the school, and the strong bonds of kinship and friendship in this community context. The process and content of the research project records the development and product of a research relationship between Aboriginal people. It attests to the value of community involvement in language planning and illustrates the beneficial attributes of community-based participatory action research. Overall, the thesis informs the topic of decolonization at the personal, community, and institutional level.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 33-35).

This dissertation examines the educational journey of a Chicano educator; from his early experiences with colonization while growing up in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas to his role as a lecturer in a First Year Experience course at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) along the U.S. - Mexico border. Ultimately asking the question, "what is his role as a Chicano educator?" and can the once colonized decolonize his own classroom? / text

Inconsistent modern tribal government political leadership standards are common throughout Indian Country. There is an urgent need to address the causes and effects of tribal political instability and the root of this instability which lies in the lack of leadership and the absence of a realistic leadership identity, specific to nations like the Northern Cheyenne. The modern concepts of tribal leadership are inconsistent, undefined, and if they do exist these concepts are incompatible with traditional Indian culture, spirituality, and community needs. Traditional Cheyenne concepts of leadership are rooted in the oral tradition and the Cheyenne ceremonial practices.This is a study of the Northern Cheyenne change in leadership concepts and the loss of traditional concepts of leadership during the time after their last armed resistance and before the establishment of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Constitutional government. The history of Northern Cheyenne Nation is comprised of heroic triumphs and tragedies. Throughout this rich history, there have been spiritual and political leaders who have contributed to the survival of the Northern Cheyenne people. Leadership, from the perspective of the Cheyenne, and the traditional Cheyenne governing system were rooted in spiritual teachings, ceremonies, and sustained through serving the people. These ancient concepts of leadership allowed for stability. These traditional concepts were destroyed through colonization, and this led to political dysfunction.The goal of this study is to first identify the traditional concepts leadership, then identify the significant changes in these concepts of leadership to discuss how these changes have led to the current political instability of the Northern Cheyenne government. What were the major changes in traditional Cheyenne leadership and governance that occurred between 1876 and 1935? How did these changes in traditional leadership and governance occur? What traditional political, spiritual, and economic institutions of the Cheyenne were changed and how were they changed? What was Cheyenne leadership and governance like after the establishment of a reservation and after the establishment of an Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) constitutional government? What can the Northern Cheyenne people expect in the future of tribal leadership and government?

This dissertation examines the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japan’s ambitious attempt to create a new order in East Asia. Most studies on Japan’s new order focus on either the imperial center (Japan) or the periphery (individual East or Southeast Asian nations). This dissertation, however, brings together both. It discusses the Japanese effort to envision a postwar world, and at the same time shows how Japan’s new order was mobilized and co-opted by nationalist leaders in the Philippines and Burma. By focusing on dynamic imperial networks rather than simple models of unidirectional diffusion, this dissertation seeks to paint a more nuanced picture of World War II in the Asia-Pacific. Simple dichotomies fail to capture the complicated nature of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Co-Prosperity Sphere was neither a mere euphemism for Japanese imperialism and wartime actions, nor a sincere project aimed at the liberation of Asia. Instead, the Sphere is better understood as a process or contest of beliefs, one that could not be controlled by any single group or invading force. This process took shape as an effort to envision a postwar world while in the midst of war. Elites in Tokyo dreamed of a postwar Japan-led international order. Elites in Burma and the Philippines, on the other hand, remained focused on their domestic orders, and viewed independence as of paramount importance. This study highlights the evolution and contested nature of Japan’s new order, and shows how multiple parties—both in Japan and across Asia—impacted the shape the wartime empire would take. Moreover, my dissertation makes an important contribution to the history of empire and decolonization by unpacking the significance of the Japanese interregnum in Southeast Asia. It demonstrates that decolonization in Southeast Asia was more than an unintended consequence of World War II. Whether through extended participation in government, state building measures, or the creation of new governmental institutions, Southeast Asian leaders made conscious use of the Japanese empire to prepare for postwar independence. / History

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / English / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Angola’s civil war in the mid-1970s has an important role to play in the ongoing debate within the diplomatic history community over how best to explain American foreign policy. As such, this dissertation uses the Angolan crisis as a case study to investigate and unravel the reasons for the American covert intervention on behalf of two pro-Western liberation movements: the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), led by Holden Roberto, and Jonas Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. That Angola is a late 20th century example of foreign intervention is not disputed. However, the more significant and difficult questions surrounding this Cold War episode, which are still debated and which directly relate to the purpose of this study, are first, “Why did the United States involve itself in Angola when it had previously ignored Portugal’s African colonies, preferring to side with its NATO partner and to maintain its distance from Angola’s national liberation movements?” Was it really, as the Ford Administration asserted, a case of the United States belatedly responding to Soviet expansionism and Kremlin-supported aggression by Agostinho Neto’s leftist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Secondly, “Exactly when did the United States intervene, and was this intervention largely responsible for the ensuing escalation of violence and external involvement in Angola affairs?” In other words, as suggested by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, was the Soviet Union’s intervention in response to the American decision to allocate $300,000 to Holden Roberto’s National Front in January 1975? If so, then contrary to the Ford Administration’s official account of the crisis, the United States - and not the Soviet Union - was the initial provocateur in the conflict that left the resource-rich West African nation in a ruinous, perpetual state of warfare into the early 21st century.

Les relations entre l'État canadien et les Autochtones sont, depuis 1876, principalement régies par la Loi sur les Indiens. Le 9 octobre 2001, le ministre des affaires indiennes et du Nord canadien présente à la Chambre des communes la Loi sur la gouvernance des Premières nations (LGPN), projet de loi qui, d'affirmer le ministre, constitue une politique charnière en droit fédéral canadien. En effet, la LGPN a pour objet de compléter et de modifier la Loi sur les Indiens afin de préparer, selon les dires du ministre, les communautés autochtones à leur éventuelle émancipation politique. Le discours du gouvernement canadien suggère que la LGPN ouvre la voie à la décolonisation du droit fédéral autochtone puisqu'elle rompt avec l'approche coloniale inhérente à la Loi sur les Indiens. Une grande majorité d'Autochtones s'oppose toutefois à l'adoption de ce projet de loi, l'interprétant comme une reconduction de la politique colonialiste fédérale. L'objectif du présent mémoire est de déterminer si la LGPN annonce véritablement la fin des rapports coloniaux entre le gouvernement canadien et les Autochtones ou si, au contraire, elle n'est que l'expression moderne d'une mesure législative colonialiste. Notre analyse se fonde sur une grille d'identification du colonialisme que nous aurons préalablement établie. Après avoir démontré que la Loi sur les Indiens constitue un exemple paradigmatique de colonialisme, nous tenterons de déterminer si la LGPN se distingue véritablement de la Loi sur les Indiens. Nous conclurons que, bien que comportant certaines mesures positives, la LGPN témoigne de 1'hésitation du gouvernement canadien à changer la nature des relations qu'il entretient avec les Autochtones. / Since 1876, relations between Aboriginals and the federal Crown have always been defined by the Indian Act. On October 2001, the First Nations Governance Act (FNGA) was introduced in the House of Commons by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northem Development. According to the Minister, the bill is pivotaI in seeking to amend and complement the Indian Act in order to prepare Aboriginals for their future political emancipation. The purported purpose of this new policy is to operate a fundamental shift away from the colonial approach ofthe Indian Act. However, the majority of Aboriginals are opposed to the enactment of the bill since, in their view, it only entrenches the colonial approach embraced by the federal govemment's policies. The purpose of this thesis is to determine whether the FNGA will in fact shift away from the colonial approach of the govemment toward Aboriginals or if, on the contrary, is about modemizing colonialism. Our analysis begins with a definition of a framework using indicators to identify colonialism which we will have previously drawn up. Using this framework, we will first demonstrate the colonialist nature of the Indian Act, to then determine whether the FNGA in fact distinguishes itself from the Indian Act. While the FNGA contains sorne steps in a direction of shift away from the colonial approach, it largely reveals that the Canadian govemment still hesitates to change the nature of its relationship with Aboriginals. / "Mémoire présenté à la faculté des études supérieures en vue de l'obtention du grade de maître en droit". Ce mémoire a été accepté à l'unanimité et classé parmi les 5% des mémoires de la discipline. Commentaires du jury : "Excellent mémoire qui formule clairement la problématique pertinente et qui l'utilise très efficacement dans l'analyse des résultats de la recherche, laquelle est très impressionnante par ailleurs."

Performing Resistance/ Negotiating Sovereignty: Indigenous Women’s Performance Art In Canada investigates the contemporary production of Indigenous performance and video art in Canada in terms of cultural continuance, survivance and resistance. Drawing on critical Indigenous methodology, which foregrounds the necessity of privileging multiple Indigenous systems of knowledge, it explores these themes through the lenses of storytelling, decolonization, activism, and agency. With specific reference to performances by Rebecca Belmore, Lori Blondeau, Cheryl L'Hirondelle, Skeena Reece and Dana Claxton, as well as others, it argues that Indigenous performance art should be understood in terms of i) its enduring relationship to activism and resistance ii) its ongoing use as a tool for interventions in colonially entrenched spaces, and iii) its longstanding role in maintaining self-determination and cultural sovereignty. / Thesis (Ph.D, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-30 09:07:41.999