Entrepreneurship-based factors to foster climate adaptation among Indigenous communities Indunil Prabodha Dharmasiri Ebawala Pitiyalage ABSTRACT (ACADEMIC) This thesis investigates the factors that cause the emergence of entrepreneurship to foster climate adaptation responses among Indigenous communities. These factors can influence, enhance, or degrade the potential for entrepreneurship in the climate change adaptation context. While these factors are well-studied for non-Indigenous communities, they remain understudied for Indigenous communities' contexts. The objectives of this study are to identify the factors that shape the emergence of entrepreneurship to foster adaptive responses to climatic risks faced by Indigenous communities and to assess the identified entrepreneurship-based factors through a case study. I followed a two-stepped methodological approach through a systematic literature review and a case study analysis among Sri Lankan Indigenous 'Vedda' communities. The systematic review included 65 peer-reviewed articles from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, and the case study analysis involved 90 in-depth semi-structured interviews with nine Indigenous communities in Sri Lanka. I found 15 entrepreneurship-based factors that shape the emergence of entrepreneurship to foster climate adaptation. I categorized those 15 factors under five key themes. They are learning (crop failure, learning, prior entrepreneurial experience), institutions (social networks, institutional support, overcoming the agency-structure paradox), place (resource (un)availability, location, environmental risk factors), capacity (access to information, entrepreneurs' psychological traits, access to capital) and strategy (business characteristics, product range, market characteristics). I applied these factors to the Sri Lankan Indigenous community context and assessed them through case studies. My study frames the potential of entrepreneurship to foster climate adaptation among Indigenous communities. Further, the study provides insights for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in making climate change adaptation-related Indigenous policies and broader-level applications, such as the development of new adaptation measures to reduce the risks of climatic changes through entrepreneurship. / Master of Science / Entrepreneurship-based factors to foster climate adaptation among Indigenous communities Indunil Prabodha Dharmasiri Ebawala Pitiyalage GENERAL AUDIENCE ABSTRACT My study explores how entrepreneurship occurs to support Indigenous communities in adapting to the challenges and risks posed by climate change. I studied the factors that either help or hinder the emergence of entrepreneurship aimed at adapting to climate change. While these factors are well-studied in non-Indigenous communities, there is not much research on these factors focused on Indigenous contexts. My study aimed to identify the factors that support the emergence of entrepreneurship as an adaptive response to climate change and to apply those factors to the Sri Lankan Indigenous communities context. I used two main methods in this study. Firstly, I conducted a systematic review of the literature to explore documented knowledge on this topic through databases such as Web of Science and Scopus. Secondly, I conducted in-depth interviews with Indigenous community members ('Veddas') in Sri Lanka. This research identified 15 key factors that influence the emergence of entrepreneurship in response to climate change. I grouped these factors into five key themes: learning (crop failure, learning, prior entrepreneurial experience), institutions (social networks, institutional support, overcoming the agency-structure paradox), place (resource (un)availability, location, environmental risk factors), capacity (access to information, entrepreneurs' psychological traits, access to capital) and strategy (business characteristics, product range, market characteristics). I applied these factors to Indigenous community context in Sri Lanka and assessed those factors through detailed case studies. The findings of my study highlight the potential for entrepreneurship to support Indigenous communities in adapting to climate change. This research has important implications for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to develop policies and measures to promote entrepreneurial activities within Indigenous communities.

This investigation focuses on the decision making relative to plants by Native Americans on one of the oldest and most continuously occupied reservations in the United States, the Mashantucket Pequot Nation. Within an agency framework, I explore the directions in which decision making about plants were changing from 1675-1800 A.D. I evaluate plant macroremains, specifically progagules (seeds), recovered from ten archaeological sites and the historical record from the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation, located in southeastern Connecticut. I demonstrate how decision making about plants related to food and medicinal practices during the Colonial Period were characterized by heterarchical choices that allowed the Mashantucket Pequot to retain their sense of economic and cultural autonomy from their colonizers. This type of problem-directed agency analysis will aid in placing Indigenous individuals and communities into the contexts of colonization as more active participants in their own past, and as long-term stewards of the environment. More specifically, this dissertation shows that even as small a space as the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation is a rich testimony to the 11,000-year history, and continues to provide important information about how households and communities (re)conceptualize their socio-natural worlds under the most severe constraints.

Using Indigenous epistemology blended with qualitative methodology, I spoke with forty-five Indigenous people about navigating the problematic processes for multiple American Indian identities within different contexts. I examined Indigenous identity as the product of out-group processes (being invisible in spite of the prevalence of overt racism), institutional constraints (being in the unique position where legal identification validates Indian race), and intra-ethnic othering (internalizing overt and institutionalized racism which results in authenticity policing). I find that overt racism becomes invisible when racist social discourse becomes legitimized. Discourse structures society within the interactions between institutions, individuals, and groups. Racist social discourse becomes legitimized through its normalization created within social institutions--like education, media, legislation, and family. Institutions shape social norms to make it seem right to enact racial violence against, and between, Indigenous Peoples, using stereotypes, racist labels, and laws that define "Indian" race by blood quanta. Ultimately, Indigenous Peoples can reproduce or contest the legitimized racism of Western social norms. Therefore, this work explores the dialectical and reciprocal relationship between notions of structure and agency as represented in negotiations of Indigenous identity.

In 2001, Cowichan Tribes successfully negotiated the protection of an important cultural landscape, preventing imminent logging and development through a treaty-related measures (TRM) agreement with British Columbia (BC), Canada and the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group (HTG). This was the first land protection TRM in BC which protected 1700 hectares at Hw’teshutsun, located in the Cowichan Valley on southeast Vancouver Island, BC. The TRM followed the declaration of a “tribal preserve” by Cowichan Tribes (Cowichan Tribes, 2000a) and a ceremony between five Hul’q’umi’num’-speaking communities to share, “protect, preserve and maintain Hw’te shutsun for the use and benefit of present and future generations” (Cowichan Tribes, Stz’uminus First Nation, Halalt First Nation, Lyackson First Nation and Penelakut Tribe 2000). This protection TRM is notable as it is an exercise of provincial jurisdiction which attends to the cultural, rather than ecological, value of Hw’teshutsun: legislative actions undertaken through the TRM protect Hw’teshutsun in accordance with Hul’q’umi’num’ teachings. In effect, the TRM is an entanglement of Hul’q’umi’num’ and Canadian law which has resulted in the protection of an off-reserve Hul’q’umi’num’ cultural landscape – a green, forested area observable in satellite imagery amidst a territory that is over 85% privately owned and devastated by logging and urban development. In such a context, the work done by Cowichan Tribes leadership is a significant achievement, a successful assertion of their jurisdiction to protect a Hul’q’umi’num’ cultural landscape in accordance with their teachings. This thesis documents the work done by Cowichan Tribes in asserting their authority and jurisdiction at Hw’teshutsun through both their own legal pathways and in relation to municipal, provincial and federal governments to prevent logging and the construction of a dump and a race car track. Teachings shared by Cowichan Elders and knowledge keepers about Hw’teshutsun stem from an intimate knowledge of “place” (for examples of intimate relationships with place, see Basso 1996; Mohs 1994; Thom 2017; Charlton 2018; Thornton 2008), which is reflected in Hul’q’umi’num’ law (Morales 2014; McLay et al. 2008; Morales and Thom 2020). Through extensive work by Cowichan Tribes leadership, teachings about the integrity of the landscape – particularly quiet and seclusion around places within Hw’teshutsun – shaped exercises of provincial jurisdiction, protecting a large area through rather than typical mitigation strategies that seek to shrink Indigenous peoples’ relationships with the land to tiny, isolated sites. Understanding these legal entanglements opens possibilities for innovative governance that attends to Indigenous peoples’ teachings of places and their enactments of their own laws shaping the governance of shared landscapes. / Graduate

The Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) outlined 94 Calls to Action (CTA) that are essential to address reconciliation in Canada (TRC, 2015). Five (Calls 87-91) of those CTA were related to sport. One of those Calls, Call 90, emphasized the need for national sport organizations (NSOs) in Canada to create inclusive policies and programming with an emphasis on anti-racism awareness and training. Similarly, safe sport in Canada was created as an initiative to address maltreatment, discrimination, and harassment in sport. In 2019, the federal government mandated NSOs to create safe sport policies and programming. However, there has been no such mandate to implement the TRC's CTA. The TRC's CTA 90 and safe sport have been treated as separate issues and there has been no effort to see how these two initiatives could inform each other. Through the use of Bacchi's (2012) "What's the Problem Represented to be" approach and applying a settler colonial lens to my analysis, I investigated how NSO staff and safe sport policymakers are constructing safe sport in Canada and if that included addressing anti-Indigenous racism. Through 10 semi-structured interviews from participants representing a total of eight NSOs as well as archival research of safe sport and equity, diversity, and inclusion policies, I found that the participants and the policies produced three discourses: 1) Anti-Indigenous racism does not require a separate policy; 2) policies alone are insufficient: Safe sport education and resources are needed to address anti-Indigenous racism; 3) the TRC's CTA are not being treated as a priority by Sport Canada but NSOs want to act in consultation with Indigenous organizations. These discourses provide insights into how NSOs are constructing safe sport in Canada, leaving anti-Indigenous racism unproblematized, and thus furthering settler colonialism.

Since the Supreme Court of Canada's Calder (1973) decision, Canada has been forced to recognize that Aboriginal title exists. As a result, Canada has indirectly recognized that Indigenous peoples were self-governing prior to British occupation, however, there has yet to be a comprehensive and adequate articulation of the ongoing sovereignty of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Indigenous Nations across Turtle Island have questioned to what degree Canada "owns" their lands, and have done so in a myriad of ways. Primarily, I centre my critical analysis on Canada’s land claims policy regime and its relationship to the Supreme Court of Canada's jurisprudence regarding Aboriginal title. I ask: a) what does it mean for Canada to "give" land back to Indigenous Nations that it does not hold title to in the first place, and b) by what strategies has Canada come to claim sovereignty and radical title over Indigenous lands? These questions may only be answered by uncovering the political rationalities and objectives that Canada has enacted and sought since the establishment of the colony under British colonialism. I argue that the project of settler-colonialism, as a form of governmentality, is an unfinished project that constantly seeks the erasure of Indigenous peoples and polities in favour of white-settler society.

Recently, the issue of poverty amongst indigenous people has become a significant topic in literature on social policy and development studies. The literature mainly looks at this issue in terms of an unequal and one-sided relationship between the mainstream society and an indigenous minority group. This thesis seeks insights into the more diversified circumstances and experiences of poverty amongst indigenous people. The following questions are addressed: (1) Why and how is the poverty of indigenous people reproduced over time and space? (2) How can we understand patterns of differentiation between indigenous people? (3) What is the balance between structural opportunity and constraint in the lives of indigenous people? (4) To what extent do people exercise agency to cope with or overcome their poverty situations? The thesis adopts an ethnographic approach, including participant observation and interviews in four villages of Taiwanese indigenous people. It explores the connections between poverty dynamics and diversified patterns of socio-economic action amongst indigenous people. Hogget and Greener¿s model of agency, which contains the essential theoretical views of Giddens (the ability of agents to act) and Bourdieu (the embedded corporeal disposition of human agents) are used to make sense of this exploration. The thesis finds that the actions of indigenous people as human agents are differentiated. Actions are not only motivated by strategic plans and emotions but are also influenced by the agents¿ socio-economic positions, such as their occupations and education and those of their parents. The differentiated socio-economic activities of agents, in turn, have a strong effect on the stratification of their living standards. / World Bank.

En collaboration avec Anita Rousselot Dir. adj. SSS, Inf., B. Sc. chef en soins de 1ère ligne du Centre de Santé et des Services Sociaux de Pessamit / Les populations autochtones doivent avoir des ressources pour la petite enfance culturellement sécurisantes, qui soient respectueuses de l’identité culturelle des autochtones, qui visent l’équité et promeuvent l’autonomisation, car la colonisation a créé dans ces populations une méfiance due au racisme et à la discrimination vécus. Dans la communauté de Pessamit, située sur la Côte-Nord du Québec, une étude qualitative descriptive a été réalisée. Dans une perspective de « sécurisation culturelle » et d’acceptabilité des soins, le but de cette étude était d’explorer les barrières et les facilitants influençant la participation et l’engagement des familles autochtones avec des enfants âgés de 0-5 ans dans les ressources de la communauté. Quinze entrevues semi-dirigées ont été réalisées. De l’analyse thématique se dégagent divers thèmes comme « les défis liés à la parentalité avec un enfant », « le soutien des proches et de la famille » et « le développement personnel des parents ». Plusieurs barrières ont été identifiées, entre autres, « la méconnaissance et le manque de cohérence » et « les besoins non comblés ». Nombreux facilitants ont également été relevés comme « les services accueillants et sécuritaires » et « la disponibilité et l’accessibilité des intervenants et des ressources ». Une des recommandations était une table de concertation pour la petite enfance afin de développer et de renforcer les ressources communautaires pour les familles. Ces nouvelles connaissances aideront le centre de santé de Pessamit à promouvoir la participation et l’engagement des familles dans les ressources. / Indigenous peoples need to have culturally safe early childhood resources (i.e., respect the cultural identity of the indigenous peoples and promote empowerment and equity), since these populations have significant mistrust due to a long history of racism and discrimination associated with colonization. In Pessamit, an Indigenous community located on the North Coast of Québec, a descriptive qualitative study was conducted. Using the perspectives of cultural safety and acceptability of care, the aim of this study was to explore the facilitators and barriers of Indigenous families with children 0 to 5 years old participating and engaging in the community’s early childhood resources. Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted. Using thematic analysis various themes were identified, such as “the challenges of parenthood with a child”, and “support from friends and family” “the personal growth of parents with a child”. Several barriers were named, including “lack of knowledge and consistency” and “unmet needs”. Many facilitators were also named like the “friendly and safe services”, and “the availability and the accessibility of care-providers and resources”. One key recommendation made was to implement an early childhood round Table to further develop and strengthen the community resources for young families. This new knowledge will help the Pessamit Health Centre to promote the participation and engagement of families in the community’s early childhood resources.

Indigenous people in Canada have suffered through immense trauma since colonization, and child welfare agencies have contributed to the assimilation of Indigenous children. This research explores the stories of Indigenous people who have been in the care of Children’s Aid Society in Ontario and how they have experienced their plan of care. Every child in the child welfare system has a plan of care completed by their worker at regular intervals. This document is intended to review the child’s progress in various dimensions of their lives and facilitate goal-setting for the future. The plan of care is a standardized document that is created from a Western perspective and thus does not necessarily reflect Indigenous culture or the child’s true self. Using a mixed methods approach with a strong emphasis on Indigenous Methodologies, two Indigenous young adults shared their stories about their experiences with plans of care. In addition, an Indigenous key informant provided context from an Indigenous perspective on how plans of care can be improved for Indigenous children in care. To understand the plan of care document from a child/youth’s perspective, the author of this research asked a co-worker to complete a plan of care on their life. A critique of this experience is shared in this study. Findings suggest that experiences with plans of care can vary significantly, and depend greatly on the relationship between the young person and their child welfare worker. The two Indigenous young adults valued participation in their plan of care and found the goal setting to be useful when they were consulted. However, it is determined that the child welfare worker can bring Indigenous culture into the document in creative ways. These findings lead to recommendations for change at the micro and macro levels involving greater opportunities for relationship-building, space for young people to participate, and including Indigenous knowledge in child welfare practice. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

<P> This dissertation explores literary representations of North American Indigenous people in eighteenth-century British texts. Throughout the century, "Indians" appeared frequently in British print culture, in newspapers, periodicals, and travel narratives, but the primary focus in this work is on imaginative writing such as novels, plays, poetry, and essays. Many of these texts are surprisingly overlooked, and scholarship regularly diminishes the significance of Indians in literature during the period. I argue that these texts explore modernity through Indigenous subjectivity, and ultimately contribute to the shaping of modem British identity. </p> <p> While the figure of the Indian is often thought of as a primitive "noble savage," Indians were also used to negotiate modem discourses which Britons were beginning to encounter throughout the eighteenth century. The important developments in British culture during the time, such as the forming of a unified British identity, the rise of capitalism and consumerism, and empire, impacted the lives and identities of Britons, and the Indian was used as a kind of "other self' to negotiate their effects. This dynamic began with texts surrounding the 1710 visit by four Iroquois "Indian kings" to London a few years following the Acts of Union, and increased mid-century as conflict in the colonies escalated. First Nations people began to play an important strategic role and were more frequently encountered by British soldiers and travellers, which led to a rise in textual representation in the metropolis. Both as critics of European culture and discursive sites upon which to project emerging cultural forces, Indians functioned as imagined modem subjects; by the end of the century, the figure of the Indian became appropriated by the Romantics and other writers, and the hybrid Briton who internalized Indigenous fortitude and cultural tenacity became the corrective to the decadence and corruption of European culture. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)