Anishinabeg are not strangers to photography. Like many Indigenous communities in North America and elsewhere, Anishinabeg have a history of being pictured by governments, artists, and researchers working within the confines of colonial thought and practice. Not surprisingly, much of this colonial artwork has drawn considerable scholarly critique, calling attention to issues including misuse of power, cultural appropriation, assimilation, and misrepresentation. While this work continues to be significant in contributing understanding of how colonialism played out visually and materially, it may also unintentionally generate the misconception that Indigenous Peoples were only the subjects of the camera or had little or no authority over the photographic experience. Indeed, photography has its own history and place within the creative practices and traditions of many Indigenous Peoples. This research project explores the role of Anishinabe photography in the reclamation and continuance of Anishinabe stories, memories, and knowledge among Anishinabe families with ancestral and present day ties to Anishinabe lands in the northwest region of Ontario. As a result of imposed colonial legislation, Anishinabeg in this region have been displaced from their traditional lands, which has had direct consequences on their ability to retain their language, culture, and life skills. Today, Anishinabeg live in the aftermath of colonial violence perpetuated against their ancestors. The severing of land and kin connections has left many Anishinabeg struggling with issues including loss of identity and sense of belonging. Despite of these ongoing challenges, Anishinabeg have struggled to recover and maintain their knowledge, language, sovereignty, and spirituality through various personal and shared activities and initiatives. This research incorporates a research framework that integrates visual, narrative, and material strategies to directly confront the aforementioned colonial legacies of erasure and disappearance of Anishinabeg. It seeks to explore and privilege Anishinabe experiences and stories by weaving together various theoretical and methodological threads of decolonization, photography, place, visuality, materiality and memory. Through processual and creative ways of bringing together and experiencing photographs, it contributes to understandings of the significance of photography to Indigenous-led efforts directed towards decolonization, including cultural revival and continuity, sense of belongingness, identity, and caring for relationships among person, place and land. This research intervenes in Anishinabe lands, stories, and experiences that fall outside the jurisdiction of the Indian Act or “official” dominant versions of history and therefore provides a powerful counter narrative that seeks to both destabilize widely accepted colonial myths and contribute to Anishinabe sovereignty. Major findings of this research position Anishinabe photographs as highly relational and social things that may help configure and congeal a host of relationships between people, the land, and their ancestral past. It introduces new ways of working with and through historical family photographs—ways that are grounded in existing Anishinabe material and embodied practices. Through these practices it contributes knowledges about the past that can be acquired through these practices. As such, it offers new sets of relationships that strengthen individual ties to the ancestral past in ways that both honour our responsibilities to our ancestors and their teachings as well as our commitments to generations ahead of us. / Graduate

My dissertation examines literary portraits of education in French- and Arabic-language literature from the Maghreb. The texts that I study recount their protagonists' experience, as students or teachers, in the school system following independence in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. I focus, in particular, on debates relating to the "Arabization" of education. Arabizing education in the Maghreb was considered a fundamental act of decolonization, yet its promotion of a single national language provoked much criticism. I examine how authors use literary depictions of the classroom to treat critical topics surrounding language policy, national identity projects, the legacy of the colonial past, and the future of the education system. The chapters of this work explore four critical issues in discussions of education: the relationship between "colonial" and "postcolonial" education systems, the place of Amazigh (Berber) minorities in an Arabized education system, the effect of education on gender dynamics, and the "economics of education" which exclude many students from social mobility. This work examines thirteen literary texts, seven written in French and six in Arabic: `Abd al-Ghani Abu al-`Azm's Al Darih and Al al Darih al-akhar, Leila Abouzeid's Ruju' ila al-tufulah and Al- Fasl al-Akhir, Wahmed Ben Younes's Yemma, Karima Berger's L'enfant des deux mondes, Maissa Bey's Bleu blanc vert, Wahiba Khiari's Nos silences, Fouad Laroui's "L'Etrange affaire du cahier bounni," Mohamed Nedali's Grâce à Jean de la Fontaine!, Brick Oussaïd's Les coquelicots de l'oriental, Habib Selmi's Jabal al-`anz, and Zohr Wanissi's Min Yawmiyat Mudarrisah Hurrah. I adopt a comparative disciplinary approach, connecting the literary form of works to a larger discussion of the social roles of literature. I argue that the texts I examine are all concerned with the tension inherent in using the literary form to engage in discussion, and often critique, of the educational institutions that provide conditions for literature's existence. My dissertation elucidates the stakes of this complicated relationship between education and literature in the Maghreb, asking how it is continuing to evolve. There is a marked anxiety in each of these works as to whether the student will become a reader of the literary text. This anxiety colors approaches to all of the issues that surround education, and brings into question the place of literature in contemporary Maghrebi cultures.

When a black student threw feces against a bronze statue of British imperialist, Cecil John Rhodes, located at the University of Cape Town (UCT), it sparked the formation of the #RhodesMustFall (#RMF) student movement in March 2015. The Black-led #RMF movement sought to decolonize the university by confronting institutional racism and patriarchy at UCT through a series of disruptive and creative tactics including occupying university buildings and erecting a shack on campus. As part of their decolonization process, black students tried to make sense of their experiences in a predominantly white university by de-linking from UCT’s dominant model of Euro-American knowledge to construct their own decolonial framework comprised of Pan-Africanism, Black Consciousness and Black radical feminism. A few weeks later in May 2015, students at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom who were inspired by the student movement at UCT, created the #RhodesMustFall Oxford movement, using the Rhodes statue at Oriel College as a focal point in their call to decolonize the university. This dissertation explores the formation of the radical #RMF student movements at UCT and Oxford—referred to as the Fallist movements. I first consider what led the #RMF movement at UCT to adopt a decolonial framework centered on Black radical feminism, Black Consciousness, and Pan-Africanism, and then examine how the #RMF’s decolonial framework generated the emergent idea of “Fallism” that extended beyond the students’ demand for the Rhodes statue to fall. Finally, I assess the ways in which the formation of #RMF Oxford was influenced by the #RMF movement in Cape Town. The #RMF mission statement characterized the black experience at UCT as “black pain” or as “the dehumanization of black people” informed by the “violence exacted only against black people by a system that privileges whiteness”. In order to better understand their experiences of black pain, student activists de-linked from the university's dominant knowledge production systems that privileged whiteness through its epistemic architecture. The #RMF UCT movement’s de-linking or “epistemic disobedience”, was also employed by students at Oxford who wanted to integrate “subjugated and local epistemologies” into the Eurocentric university curriculum. Based on this empirical analysis of the #RMF’s engagement in epistemic disobedience at both UCT and Oxford, I argue that the university occupies a paradoxical position for Black and other marginalized bodies: it is simultaneously empowering and dehumanizing; it offers the possibility of acquiring knowledge that could serve as a liberatory tool from the violence of socio-economic marginality (Black liberation), while at the same time, the physical and epistemic architecture of the university can create an oppressive, alienating space for Black, queer and disabled bodies among others (Black pain). This assertion leads me to experiment with developing Fallism into an emergent decolonial option that emanates from acts of epistemic disobedience to unveil the hegemonic intellectual architecture of the university. Through a combination of 98 interviews, one year of observations, and document analysis, this study offers insights into the formation and evolution of the #RMF student movements at UCT and Oxford, while contributing to a critical understanding of the university’s paradoxical epistemic architecture.

This dissertation examines the intersecting changes of African decolonization and the post-World War II internationalization of public health by showing how Cameroonian and French health officials shaped global health programs on the ground in the 1950s and 60s. I approach this topic through the lens of two tightly interwoven developments in Cameroon: the history of colonial mobile health teams created by French military doctors and the advent of postwar global disease eradication campaigns. While colonial medicine and international health are typically treated as distinct historical subjects, I argue that global disease eradication programs in this period in Cameroon relied entirely on colonial mobile health teams and their reformulation after independence as a basis of infrastructure, personnel and knowledge. I specifically assert that Cameroonian and French health officials positioned mobile health teams as cornerstones of national health policy and regional health coordination in Central Africa and, in turn, as the basis for operations of attempted global disease eradication programs within Cameroon. As Cameroonian, French and international health officials negotiated the work of the mobile health teams through decolonization and the first decade of the independence, they were moreover charting new structures of authority and control over medicine and public health between the global and the local, and forging an international politics of public health rooted in the particular tensions of decolonization in the country. My project thus demonstrates how Africans charted new models for public health through decolonization, models that reflected both the deeply enduring impact of empire and a new post-colonial politics.

The purpose of this research is to seek out Indigenous perspectives on literacy in Indigenous Language Revitalization (ILR), and to explore the role of print literacy in ILR in British Columbia. The central research question of this study is: does print literacy play a role in language revitalization? Through qualitative interviews and an extensive literature review, this thesis explores community-based language revitalization initiatives in Indigenous communities, as described by Indigenous language champions and scholars. In international forums, literacy is often discussed in terms of development goals, functionalism, and economic success. However, literacy is “socially and historically situated, fluid, multiple, and power-linked” (McCarty, 2005, p. xviii), and it is inextricably linked to political, historical, and cultural contexts (Grenoble & Whaley, 2005). This study concludes that these contexts are vital to defining the role of literacy in Indigenous communities. Every community has its own historical, political, social, environmental, technological, and philosophical context for language learning, and as such, literacy plays a different role in every community. Furthermore, the role of literacy can be expected to change over time, much like languages shift over time. This research also demonstrates that literacy, situated within Indigenous-controlled education and language initiatives, can contribute to larger goals of decolonization. / Graduate

Submitted by Marlene Santos (marlene.bc.ufg@gmail.com) on 2014-10-01T14:18:43Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - José Luciano Pereira Neto - 2013.pdf: 1133662 bytes, checksum: e8e6cb0e84e39329916ff784344430f7 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2014-10-01T15:32:52Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - José Luciano Pereira Neto - 2013.pdf: 1133662 bytes, checksum: e8e6cb0e84e39329916ff784344430f7 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-01T15:32:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - José Luciano Pereira Neto - 2013.pdf: 1133662 bytes, checksum: e8e6cb0e84e39329916ff784344430f7 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-10-09 / This is a research on the performance of the Portuguese Communist Party front of the decolonization process in Africa seeks to understand the role of the party in relation to the colonial question of the Provisional Government of Portugal in the years 1974-75. For this research is based on the reading of periodicals of the time, in case the Avante mainly and then the serial Movimento 25 de Abril. Both newspapers bring the discussion about the direction to take regarding decolonization, placing the positioning of the MFA, which makes positioning the PCP with regard to decolonization, and the ways that the Government should proceed to completion of the decolonization process of Portuguese Africa. / A pesquisa sobre a atuação do Partido Comunista Português, frente ao processo de descolonização em África, busca compreender a atuação do partido em relação à questão colonial dentro do Governo Provisório de Portugal nos anos de 1974-75. Para tanto, a pesquisa baseia-se na leitura dos periódicos da época, no caso, o Avante, principalmente, e, posteriormente, o folhetim das Forças Armadas, o Movimento 25 de Abril. Ambos os jornais trazem a discussão acerca dos rumos referentes à descolonização, colocando o posicionamento do Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA), que se torna o posicionamento do PCP no que se refere à descolonização, e às formas que o Governo deveria prosseguir para a conclusão do processo de descolonização da África portuguesa.

Although there is a vast body of literature on family resilience, very little represents research from an explicitly Indigenous paradigm. This research process included an Indigenous research path and a case study informed by Indigenous worldview. The data collected in both informed the findings presented here and contributed to the creation of the final model for building resilience in Indigenous families. The results demonstrate how self-determination in research, service delivery, organizational leadership, spiritual connection and individual, every-day practice can be a powerful expression of freedom, liberty and humanity. The case study maps how the self-determination of an Aboriginal organization, resulted in the creation of a program that assists violent Aboriginal men reconcile their traumatic histories, reconnect to an interconnected worldview and repatriate their responsibilities as men within a strong, healthy Aboriginal society.

Maya peoples in Guatemala continue to practice their Indigenous knowledge in spite of the violence experienced since the Spanish invasion in 1524. From 1991 until 1996, the state and civil society signed a series of Peace Accords that promised to better meet the needs of the Maya, Xinka, Garífuna and non-Indigenous groups living there. In this context, how does the current educational system meet the varied needs of these groups? My research investigates the philosophy and praxis of Maya Indigenous knowledge (MIK) in broadly defined educational contexts through the stories of 17 diverse Maya professional women and men involved in educational reform that currently live and work in Guatemala City. How do they reclaim and apply their ancestral knowledge daily? What possible applications of MIK can transform society? The findings reveal that MIK promotes social change and healing within and outside institutionalized educational spaces and argues that academia needs to make room for Indigenous theorizing mainly in areas of education, gender, knowledge production, and nation building. I analyze these areas from anticolonial and critical Indigenous standpoints from which gender and Indigenous identities weave through the text. Thus, I rely on Maya concepts and units of analyses (Jun Winaq’) guided by an Indigenous research methodology (Tree of Life) to conduct informal and in-depth interviews that lasted 2 to 4 hours. In addition, I held a talking circle with half of the participants. My analysis is founded on my own experience as an Indigenous person, my observations and participation in two Maya organizations in 2007 and a review of secondary literature in situ. The study contributes to a general understanding of contemporary Maya peoples and knowledge, and describes the theoretical validity of the Maya concept of Jun Winaq’. I argue that this concept seeks to heal individuals and a society to strengthen the Maya and all peoples. Throughout the dissertation I highlight the value of Indigenous knowledge and voices as parts of a political process that has the potential to decolonize mainstream education. I end with a graphic illustration of the elements in Maya Indigenous education and discuss future research for building a political agenda based on self-determination and healing relevant to Indigenous struggles globally.

This project explores the connections between the worlds we hope for and the worlds we help create. Over the course of several months, I conducted three sets of narrative interviews with three anti-oppression education facilitators, and a self-study with myself. Using narrative inquiry through a specifically anti-colonial lens as my method of analysis, I worked in partnership with my interview participants to draw meaning out of our interviews. Growing from these discussions, this thesis explores the work that discourses of hope do in our practices as facilitators of education for change. How do the things that we learn to hope for inform the way we teach, and the possibilities that are allowed in, or locked out, of our classrooms? In problematizing certain functions of certain discourses of hope, this study also explores the possibilities of anti-colonial hopings as a process of generating decolonizing dreams through education for change.

This project explores the connections between the worlds we hope for and the worlds we help create. Over the course of several months, I conducted three sets of narrative interviews with three anti-oppression education facilitators, and a self-study with myself. Using narrative inquiry through a specifically anti-colonial lens as my method of analysis, I worked in partnership with my interview participants to draw meaning out of our interviews. Growing from these discussions, this thesis explores the work that discourses of hope do in our practices as facilitators of education for change. How do the things that we learn to hope for inform the way we teach, and the possibilities that are allowed in, or locked out, of our classrooms? In problematizing certain functions of certain discourses of hope, this study also explores the possibilities of anti-colonial hopings as a process of generating decolonizing dreams through education for change.