The following study was conducted over 21 months in the South Pacific. I served as Academic Coordinator for World Learning’s SIT’s Study Abroad program in Samoa for three semesters. While overseeing independent study projects, facilitating working relationships, and promoting cross-cultural communication among the American and Pacific Islander/Samoan tertiary students, I concluded that -- through cultural immersion, experiential education and deliberate, academically fostered communication and discussion both Western and Indigenous identities are capable of converging to better mutual and lasting understanding. I spent ten months in Samoa completing my field research and five months in New Zealand completing my library research. Over the course of three academic semesters, this study evolved through my volunteer work with the group Rotaract Samoa, my research and teaching experiences with an experiential education programme, and indirectly incorporating 36 American students from various US tertiary institutions participating in the SIT Study Abroad’s Pacific Communities and Social Change semester in Samoa, and over 120 Pacific Island students and staff on the University of the South Pacific (USP) campus in Alafua, Samoa. Encouraging American students to foster relationships with indigenous peoples offered insights into the process and progress of the students’ shared interactions. Students were uncomfortable and awkward in their initial associations, however, over time, through the program’s immersion techniques, the students learned valuable lessons, about Samoan culture and themselves as human beings. I found the use of experiential education programmes and convergence methodology in multicultural learning environments ultimately promoted multi-perspective, culturally responsive student development. I collected my data through interviews, participant-observations, surveys, questionnaires, volunteering and teaching. I analysed my data using a self-reflexive anthropological perspective.

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This thesis works towards deconstructing stereotypical images of Indigenous women that frequent the pages of popular literature. It calls attention to the ideological foundation of Euro-Canadian literature, which is informed by a White-christian-patriarchy. That literature, as an institution of the Euro-Canadian nation, propagates images of Indigenous women as Indian princesses, squaw drudges, suffering helpless victims, tawny temptresses, and loose squaws. Consequently, Euro-Canadian literature imprisons us in images that foster both racist and sexist stereotypes and that encourage violence against us. Margaret Laurence's short story "The Loons" and William Patrick Kinsella's "Linda Star" provide illuminating examples of some of those images. While these writers do not represent all non-Indigenous people who write about Indigenous women, both of these writers are extremely popular Canadian writers whose stories are often read in elementary schools, high schools, and universities. At the centre of this thesis is Maria Campbell's semi-autobiographical Halfbreed. Campbell's Halfbreed significantly challenges Euro-Canadian literature's White-christian-patriarchal ideology by contextualizing the narrative in an Indigenous-gynocratic ideology. Her book destabilized White-Euro-Canadian liberals' complacency when, as an indigenous woman, Campbell named Euro-Canadians oppressors and identified Euro-Canadian power structures that illegally, unjustly, and intolerably imposed on her people's way of life. This thesis concludes that Campbell's Halfbreed encouraged many Indigenous people to appropriate the White-Euro-Canadian colonizer's English language to write ourselves out of oppression by re-claiming our self--which is ideologically rooted in autochthonous and gynocratic cultures.

The study focuses on the current status of the Sami indigenous community of Sweden and on the implementation of the concept of self-determination for indigenous peoples, as presented by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) of 2007. Nowadays, even if the Sami community of Sweden can enjoy several political, economic, social and cultural rights, a lot remains to be done concerning the development of their self-determination because several international principles related to indigenous rights have not been implemented so far.   Therefore, the aim of the study is to explore how the Sami people of Sweden define and understand the principle of self-determination for indigenous peoples and how they would like to implement it in the future, while also focusing on what can be learned from their particular situation from a conceptual perspective. To achieve that, the research has been mainly based on a field study carried out at the end of April 2014 and at the beginning of May 2014. Several representatives belonging to different Sami political parties and Sami stakeholder’s organisations have been interviewed on the field. Moreover, two academic researchers and one public relations officer have also been contacted and interviewed afterwards to offer a different perspective on the topic.   The findings of the study indicate that the interviewees have highlighted three main issues while defining the concept of self-determination for indigenous peoples: the importance of recognition and self-identification, the respect of indigenous traditions and the protection of traditional lands. Besides, many ideas mostly based on the development of the Swedish Sami Parliament have also been mentioned while thinking about the future. The study has also shown that the indigenous position in Sweden is quite paradoxical because even if the Sami people have some rights, they do not have self-determination as the current situation is still dominated by the state. Finally, another major aspect of the findings has also indicated that self-determination is mainly about changing attitudes between the states and indigenous peoples.

With Inuit identifying as a people beyond nation-state boundaries, and Nunavummiut and Greenlanders as citizens of Canada and Denmark, the right to self-determination has followed distinct trajectories in the jurisdictions examined in my thesis. Nunavut has a constitutional mandate to be responsive to the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, paradoxically intensifying the relationships with the federal government towards further devolution and maintaining an ethnic divide trespassing territorial lines. Envisioning statehood, Greenland has chosen to gradually break economic ties with Denmark and in mainstreaming its governance capacity it appears to be branching off ethnocentric policies. In what seem opposing pathways, autonomous postsecondary education institutions are positioned to mitigate the notional extremes the right to self-determination calls upon. By comparing institutions steering through conflicting missions, this thesis illustrates the ways in which the right to self-determination operates against the backdrop of regained geopolitical prominence of the Arctic Region. Applying a legal theoretical framework to the scholarship of indigenous education this thesis raises a number of issues in carrying forward the right to self-determination once indigenous peoples regain control over their destinies. Issues regarding social stratification challenging the politics of representation indicate that achieving some form of autonomy does not necessarily result in social justice as the indigenous rights advocacy scholarship suggests. Considering the Inuit right to self-determination as a process right rather than an outcome, this finding highlights internal pluralities challenging the reification of Inuit identity on the basis of cultural, political, and socioeconomic difference. This thesis advocates for examining the contingencies that shape Inuit multiple allegiances accounting for peoples vantage geopolitical positioning. As Inuit redefine their position in the local, national, and global spheres, important knowledge is produced overcoming the single overriding of identity politics. Recognizing that Inuit knowledge is knowledge in context, the author contends, may lead to new ways for postsecondary education to uphold the Inuit right to self-determination.

The aim of this project is to investigate the transmission of knowledge, and cultural values on the margins of the colonial agenda. The oral traditional accounts, and lived experience of Kéhté-yatis Charles F. Queskekapow, in the community of Kinoséwi Sípíhk [Fish River], are examined through the lens of a postcolonial Indigenous research paradigm. As a synthesis of an Indigenous perspective, and Euro-Western research methodologies, consisting of an open-ended interview approach, and the local Indigenous knowledge, the goals and objectives of this project are: 1) to determine the role of the Kéhté-yatis(ak) [Elders], 2) establish the local interpretation of Kéhté-yatis onakatamakéwina 3) to determine the impacts of colonialism had on the transmission of traditional knowledge, and culture 4) to analyze the impacts of colonization on the broader concept of community. This research locates the detrimental impacts of colonialism, the loss of identity in the historical context, and endeavors to contribute to affirmation of our cultural practices, and values in the present.

With Inuit identifying as a people beyond nation-state boundaries, and Nunavummiut and Greenlanders as citizens of Canada and Denmark, the right to self-determination has followed distinct trajectories in the jurisdictions examined in my thesis. Nunavut has a constitutional mandate to be responsive to the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, paradoxically intensifying the relationships with the federal government towards further devolution and maintaining an ethnic divide trespassing territorial lines. Envisioning statehood, Greenland has chosen to gradually break economic ties with Denmark and in mainstreaming its governance capacity it appears to be branching off ethnocentric policies. In what seem opposing pathways, autonomous postsecondary education institutions are positioned to mitigate the notional extremes the right to self-determination calls upon. By comparing institutions steering through conflicting missions, this thesis illustrates the ways in which the right to self-determination operates against the backdrop of regained geopolitical prominence of the Arctic Region. Applying a legal theoretical framework to the scholarship of indigenous education this thesis raises a number of issues in carrying forward the right to self-determination once indigenous peoples regain control over their destinies. Issues regarding social stratification challenging the politics of representation indicate that achieving some form of autonomy does not necessarily result in social justice as the indigenous rights advocacy scholarship suggests. Considering the Inuit right to self-determination as a process right rather than an outcome, this finding highlights internal pluralities challenging the reification of Inuit identity on the basis of cultural, political, and socioeconomic difference. This thesis advocates for examining the contingencies that shape Inuit multiple allegiances accounting for peoples vantage geopolitical positioning. As Inuit redefine their position in the local, national, and global spheres, important knowledge is produced overcoming the single overriding of identity politics. Recognizing that Inuit knowledge is knowledge in context, the author contends, may lead to new ways for postsecondary education to uphold the Inuit right to self-determination.

This thesis provides preliminary, qualitative research that explores whether there is a common understanding of Aboriginal public servant leadership within the British Columbia (BC) Public Service. An interpretive, grounded theory approach underpinned by attention to Indigenous methodologies was used in this thesis. Research was conducted using semi-structured interviews with 22 self-identified Aboriginal peoples within the BC Public Service. The results identify properties of three analytical perspectives of leadership that interact in the context of Aboriginal public servants in British Columbia: (1) individual; (2) Indigenous, traditional or family setting; and (3) bureaucracy/public service. A linking theme across these analytical perspectives, “it’s personal not individual”, is proposed that influences an approach that interviewed Aboriginal public servants use in their professional positions and in their daily life. This study concludes that although there is not one specific understanding of leadership among Aboriginal public servants, their personal commitment to improving the well-being of their peoples may be the basis for their leadership work to facilitate and build bridges of understanding between communities and government. In addition, there is a call to non-indigenous public servants to consider their own leadership and share responsibility for bridge building alongside their Aboriginal colleagues. / Graduate / 0617 / fionnamain@gmail.com

Thesis (M.A. (Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Thesis (M.A. (Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.