The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) regime has been developing a voluntary climate change mitigation mechanism that is called ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries; and the Role of Conservation/Conservation of Forest Carbon Stocks, Sustainable Management of Forests, and Enhancement of Forest Carbon Stocks in Developing Countries’ (REDD-plus). One of the most important aspects of the implementation of REDD-plus activities is that the activities should not violate the rights of indigenous peoples that live within and near the forest areas. This research has identified at least three main approaches that can be used by indigenous peoples to protect their rights in the context of REDD-plus. The first approach is the UNFCCC approach that uses the UNFCCC regime to protect indigenous peoples in the context of REDD-plus. The second approach is the human rights approach; it uses human rights treaties and their bodies, the regional commissions and courts on human rights, as well as the UN bodies and special rapporteur that are pertinent to indigenous peoples’ issues to protect indigenous peoples in the context of REDD-plus. The third approach is the financial approach that uses the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD Programme) and the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) to protect indigenous peoples in the context of REDD-plus. In order to increase the protection of indigenous peoples in REDD-plus, a coherent approach needs to be created and enhanced through cooperation and coordination by the parties that are directly or indirectly involved with the three respective approaches listed above. It should be noted that the available protection for indigenous peoples in the context of REDD-plus are currently insufficient to quickly address cases where the rights of indigenous peoples have been violated in REDD-plus activities. In order to address this insufficiency, as well as to achieve a coherent approach to protecting indigenous peoples in the context of REDD-plus, the research recommends the establishment of a REDD-Plus Committee supported by a REDD-Plus Panel to develop and increase the protection of indigenous peoples in REDD-plus, should REDD-plus is placed outside the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). On the other hand, if REDD-plus is placed under the CDM then the research recommends the establishment of a Committee on REDD-Plus under the CDM and a Panel on the CDM. The existence of the pertinent committee and panel can be expected to bring benefits in the context of REDD-plus as well as in wider contexts, such as climate change, human rights, and international law through its contribution to reduce the risks of the negative effects of the fragmentation of international law.

Magister Artium - MA / This study is situated in the context of multidisciplinary discourse on the pervasive problem of food insecurity in the southern African context. More specifically, it is situated in the context of the Centre of Excellence in Food Security, located at the University of the Western Cape and its project on “Food Ethics and Values” (with Prof Ernst Conradie as principal investigator). It will contribute to discourse on food security from the perspective of the discipline of religious studies and more specifically African Traditional Religion (ATR) and the indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) associated with that. The consumption of food naturally plays a significant role in African Traditional Religion – as is evident from various taboos on food consumption, rituals with prescriptions on food, calendar-based festivities, but also from daily life in rural villages. In reflecting on food in such rural villages, the focus is often on the consumption of meat (chicken, goats, cattle, but also rodents and other wildlife) and of grains like maize. However, vegetables traditionally also formed part of a family’s daily diet. In pre-colonial times, such vegetables were not necessarily cultivated since some indigenous vegetables were harvested based on indigenous knowledge available amongst village elders and traditional healers. The Chionekano-ward includes some 42 villages with an estimated population of around 1020 persons. Through a process of snowball sampling, semi-structured interviews were conducted with village elders and traditional healers who have knowledge of such indigenous vegetables. Where appropriate interviews were followed up with focus groups discussions in particular villages.

This thesis explores technologies of power that operate in British Columbia’s policy for consultation with Indigenous peoples about proposed land and resource decisions. I use the concept of settler colonialism to analyze the contents of British Columbia’s consultation and accommodation policy to assess whether and how the policy is oriented toward settler-colonial relationships. I analyze a British Columbia provincial policy document entitled Updated Procedures for Meeting Legal Obligations When Consulting First Nations Interim. By focusing on this policy document, I examine how power operates through settler state law and policy. I critically analyze three technologies of power that operate in British Columbia’s consultation and accommodation policy: the administrative law principle of procedural fairness, recognition politics, and the assumption of legitimate settler sovereignty. I consider how the policy’s focus on process reveals colonial power dynamics. Furthermore, I argue that recognition politics operate in the policy because Indigenous difference is recognized and some space is made for Indigenous actors to exercise authority, however the settler state retains final decision- making authority, which shows a colonial hierarchy of power. Finally, I consider how the assumption of legitimate settler state sovereignty that underlies B.C.’s law and policy is a source of authority through which the settler state has various types of power under the policy, including definitional power and final decision-making power. / Graduate

Esta tese tem a finalidade de apresentar estudos sobre o turismo, o território e a modernidade. Para isto, realiza-se um debate teórico e metodológico sobre os usos dos diferentes conceitos de território. Dentro desta lógica, insere-se o turismo como alavanca do desenvolvimento com base local. De uma parte, analisa-se o turismo indígena e, de outra, estuda-se o turismo em territórios indígenas. A metodologia utilizada na pesquisa de campo divide-se entre os estudos etnológicos, etnográficos, pesquisa-ação, pesquisa-participante e a literatura sobre turismo e desenvolvimento com base local. O trabalho de campo entre os Krahô ocorreu entre os anos de 2004, 2005 e 2006, permitindo levantar informações sobre a ocorrência do turismo nas comunidades e associações indígenas, assim como propor o entendimento sobre o turismo nos sentidos econômico, político, cultural e ambiental. O turismo emissivo indígena pode ser definido como aquele em que os indígenas das várias etnias viajam para as cidades locais, regionais, nacionais e internacionais para participarem de eventos (Jogos Indígenas, etc.). O turismo em territórios indígenas se define como aquele que ocorre no interior dos territórios indígenas (Feira Krahô de Sementes Tradicionais, etc.). Os territórios das populações autóctones no Brasil estão adquirindo sentido de territórios descontínuos e de territórios-rede, pois todas as etnias possuem mobilidades de seus territórios para outras territorialidades. Portanto, tanto o turismo emissivo indígena quanto o turismo receptivo em territórios indígenas contribuem para a construção da elevação da auto-estima dos índios, para a venda do artesanato e, por último, para a constituição de novas multiterritorialidades turísticas. / This thesis aims at submitting studies about tourism, territory and modernity. For such, a theoretical and methodological debate on the uses of the different territory concepts takes place. Within this logic, tourism is inserted as development with local base. On the one hand, we analyze indigenous tourism, and on the other hand, we study tourism in indigenous territories. The methodology used in the field research is divided among ethnologic, ethnographic studies, research-action, research-participant and the literature on tourism and development with local base. The field work among the Krahô took place between the years 2004, 2005 and 2006, allowing to survey information on the occurrence of tourism in the indigenous communities and associations, as well as proposing the understanding on tourism in the economical, political, cultural and environmental senses. The emissive indigenous tourism can be defined as the one where the natives of the different ethnic groups travel to the local, regional, national and international cities to take part in events (Indigenous Games, etc.). The tourism in indigenous territories is defined as the one taking place within the indigenous territories (Krahô Fair of Traditional Seeds, etc.). The territories of the autochthonous populations in Brazil are acquiring sense of discontinuous territories and network-territories, because all the ethnic groups can move from their territories to other territories. Therefore, both emissive indigenous tourism as well as the receptive tourism in indigenous territories contribute for elevating the self-esteem of the Indians, for selling handicraft and, for last, for constituting new multi-territory tourism.

No description available.

The thunderstorm encroaches, the smoky raven like clouds float over my spirit. This writing takes place at a time of mourning, a deep and lonesome sadness for family relations who have passed over the last few years, many having died of kidney disease. Yet, I cannot escape this feeling that has filled the silent spaces and the deeper meanings that lie behind spoken words. These are the words of my relations, the words that fill these empty pages, the words of an enduring past and present. As I begin, I wonder, how will I shape these passages into an articulation that may bring an illumination of all that has happened over the last few months since the inception and then ethics approval of this work. So here I shall offer an understanding of the background that brought this study forward. I will recount the progression of thought that precipitated the methodology. Like water that flows and is fluid, this writing has become realized to be ever changing, boundless and repelling conventionality. It is not just a story about living with kidney disease, this is a passage that motions and travels through history making interconnections amidst the broader social, political and contextually traditional and creative ways of being. Through the methodology of the sweetgrass porcupine quill box, living stories came forth within the context of a First Nations community. Sharing circles involving ten participants conveyed the living stories of kidney disease that illumined the significance of Indigenous Knowledge, relationality, cultural safety and equitable access. / Graduate / 2020-04-19

This thesis draws upon literature from the fields of oral history and Indigenous Studies to look at how Palestinians are using memories and shared narratives in spaces of indigenous resistance in Haifa and the Galilee. Looking beyond collecting and archiving, I have focused on commemorative activities and projects lead by various civil society actors in which oral history plays a central role. Taking a bottom-up qualitative approach my data is derived from in-depth interviews, informal conversations, participant observation and textual analyses, gathered between 2013-2016. This has resulted in an interdisciplinary thesis which conceptualizes Palestinian memory as a form of Indigenous resistance. The Palestinian community in the 1948 Territory, unlike many of their brethren, remained on the physical site of the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing. This fact is an important and defining one, their physical presence on their land has influenced their identity and their collective narrative which is so heavily influenced by oral histories. Their subsequent exclusion and segregation from the Israeli Jewish settler population whilst creating spatial and temporal limitations, has at the same time allowed for an assertive Palestinian identity and narrative to develop without being assimilated into the settler structure. Memory in particular plays a huge role in the assertiveness of this Palestinian community and this thesis examines how they are being harnessed to challenge both the epistemic and physical erasure of Palestine whilst at the same time creating new forms of political and cultural agency to recreate Palestinian space. At the same time as their exclusion from Israel, the Palestinian community in the 1948 Territory have also been largely marginalized from the Palestinian national project. Therefore, it has mostly been up to them to create space for themselves in which futures can be imagined. This imagined future is based on memories of Palestine before the settler colonization and reinforced by commemorations return activities, which actively challenge the reality that the Zionist State deems irreversible. The outcome of this research is the understanding that in certain Palestinian spaces in the 1948 Territory, there has been the development of a memory politics which is distinctly future orientated and has decolonizing potential.

This thesis is a study of knowledge practices in contemporary eastern Tibetan villages, where indigenous knowledge, the modern state's rationality and modern science intermingled. The place is rich in the interplay of forms of knowledge. Based on ethnographic observation and reading in hydropower archives, I focus on local knowledge controversies, where there were clashes between the claims of villagers on the one hand, and local officials and visiting scientists on the other. Through the collection of controversies, I observed how different knowledge claims came into contact or conflict with each other, how these conflicts were resolved either in acquiescence or in coordination, and how a conclusion about knowledge was reached in each particular case. In challenging some common assumptions about knowledge production, the thesis makes a contribution to knowledge studies. When researching this subject, scholars have generally studied either the suppression of folk / native knowledge by modern science, or the pure local forms of knowledge as a means of resistance against scientificization. The thesis argues that in contrast to this standard presumption, an alternative form of knowledge production exists. Suppression or resistance are not the only options, hybridization can also be a procedure to produce knowledge, where the outcome is not necessarily purely scientific or purely folk. The case studies I examine do not show either a ruthless plunge into the universe of modern science or an eradication of the modern side and a return to entirely local knowledge. Although modern meteorology prevailed in the face of Tibetans' claims for compensation for destruction of crops by a storm, villagers on the wind-impacted farmlands deconstructed and re-legitimized the science of weather, they did not merely face a simple choice between science and the folk. In another case, villagers clashed with one another on how to delimit the mountain boundary in legal documents, and the state officials took a passive role in these controversies: the geographical entity was not born through suppression, but through villagers' free intellectual movement on the knowledge landscape, from state forestry archives, to local foraging histories, to personal biographies. A controversy over activities related to hydropower manifests the absence of suppression most clearly. Villagers clashed with scientists over seismic damage to local houses, with each side seeking to prove that the damage was or was not caused by a hydropower explosion experiment. The resulting memorandum of understanding that resolved the controversy does not certify scientific explanation nor the folk claim, but is rather a hybridization of incompatible elements from both sides. In this way, the outcome of knowledge-formation through controversies in these Tibetan villages did not fit straightforwardly with the 'logics' of either side. Nevertheless, they were made intelligible and valid as a knowledge in place, in time, and as produced by local groups of people. Simple suppression does not explain local knowledge formation, knowledge derives from complex interplays between scientific, indigenous and administrative practices and narratives.

The rise of organised pan-Indianism in the early twentieth century has been well documented by scholars. However, this body of scholarship has been predominantly 'top down' occupied with the pan-Indian movement at a national level, and the Native Americans who were at the forefront of it. Conversely, this thesis takes a 'bottom up' approach through examination of grassroots Native Americans, and through a local lens in Oklahoma, and adds their voices to the dialogues about Indian identity in this period. A systematic examination of oral history sources held in the Doris Duke Collection reveals who these grassroots individuals were and how they expressed their identities. Moreover, it explores how they formed shared pan-Indian identities in this period. These sources underline the complex process of identity for indigenous individuals and ultimately show that identity was multi-layered for them. This layered identity was a reflection of the need indigenous people had to maintain and protect their indigenous identities. They did not respond to this period by merging the different facets of their identity to one synthesised identity. They did not want to fully assimilate into America and yet also did not fully reject America or White lifestyles. Instead, they used “survival strategies” to keep these different elements alive. This thesis demonstrates that Indian identities did emerge from Oklahoma in the early twentieth century amongst this grassroots group. They were influenced by the circumstances of Oklahoma and national pan-Indian ideas. The individuals who expressed such identities heard these influences in different ways and ultimately, constructed their own layered identities.

Introduction: In 2007, the Ministry of Health in Malawi issued a directive banning traditional birth attendants (TBAs) from delivering mothers and ordered all mothers to access skilled birth attendants in health facilities (MoH, 2007b). Anecdotal reports showed that the influx of pregnant mothers to the health facilities resulted in mothers delivering on make shift beds on the floor and sometimes without the assistance of the skilled provider. The badly stretched health care system continues to force mothers to deliver with the assistance of TBAs who have gone underground for fear of being fined. Purpose of the study: The purpose of this study was to explore stakeholders’ perceptions of the changing role of TBAs in order to obtain a greater breadth of understanding of the reasons why home births persist in the rural areas of Central West Zone (CWZ), Malawi. Methods: The study employed a mixed method concurrent triangulation design in which 24 health facilities in the districts of Ntcheu, Dedza, Lilongwe and Mchinji, in CWZ, Malawi were included. A non-probability purposive sampling method was used to select 24 health facilities that provide Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care (BEmONC) services in rural areas of CWZ. A randomly selected sample was used to collect quantitative data from mothers, using an interview schedule. These were mothers (n=144) who had come to access maternal and neonatal health care but had previously sought the help of a TBA to deliver. A total of 55 nurse midwives who worked in the 24 health facilities and who were available and willing to participate responded to a structured interview schedule. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS version 19. Qualitative data were collected using focus group discussions (FGDs) with TBAs (n=4 FGDs, with 6-7 respondents in each discussion group) who lived in the catchment areas of the selected BEmONC sites. Single in- depth interviews were conducted with TBA trainers (n=10) in the districts and health professionals (n=12) from the Ministry of Health and Nurses and Midwives Council of Malawi. Data were analyzed manually. Findings: The findings showed that the moratorium on TBAs was implemented without consultation with the relevant stakeholders and as a result, many mothers in rural areas continued to seek the services of TBAs. Untrained TBAs took advantage of the opportunity and together with some trained TBAs who were afraid of punishment went underground to practice. Maternal and neonatal health care in BEmONC facilities were deficient as the health care system struggled with challenges such as the lack of adequate and humane accommodation for waiting mothers, critical shortages of staff, drugs and supplies and negative health care worker attitudes. In addition, long distances and the lack of empowerment of rural women prevented mothers from seeking skilled birth attendants. The study concluded that even though the government had issued a moratorium on TBAs, the health care system is not coping. Recommendations: It is recommended that having moved away from the TBAs, there is no need to revert to using them since that would mean perpetuating harmful and substandard care for mothers. In addition, TBA services would undermine the government’s efforts to improve skilled birth attendance. However, the system needs to urgently deal with the challenges that rural mothers encounter in trying to access skilled birth attendance.