This case study examines the attitudes of Jarainese people (an indigenous group in Gia Lai province of Vietnam) towards bilingual education related to bilingualism, the maintenance of the native language, its use in their own communities, and its perceived importance within formal schooling. The research employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods by which the data were collected. Quantitative data were obtained via 345 questionnaires administered to Jarainese students (N=173) and their grandparents and parents (N=172). Qualitative data were obtained via individual interviews of 13 parents and 5 focus group interviews with students. The qualitative data analyses were reported in three narratives as examples of the views of parents, and as thematic interpretations of the student focus groups. The findings reported in this thesis revealed the high degree of ethnic and cultural identity reported through the attitudes of the Jarainese people towards the use of the mother tongue and its maintenance. Jarainese people use their mother tongue to consolidate their ethnic and cultural identity and solidarity. However, the results revealed that Jarainese children tend to use more Vietnamese in their daily life whereas their parents and grandparents retain their oral native language. Additionally, there was a low level of self-reported literacy in Jarainese across the individuals surveyed. The findings disclosed that both languages are seen as important by the Jarainese people. They indicate that Jarainese people do not reject Vietnamese, because it is considered as a language of educational, social and economic advantages and advancement; however, they show the desire of the Jarainese people to affirm their cultural identity by retaining their native language. Despite this desire, the results demonstrated how impacts from the social milieu such as mass media, education and national dominance of Vietnamese hinder the maintenance of Jarainese. The findings confirm the results of other research in the field concerning the benefits and challenges of promoting bilingual development and preserving the native language. The results also confirm a link between demographic dimensions such as level of education, occupation, and living areas, and language attitudes. Furthermore, parents’ attitudes seem to influence their children’s perspectives toward bilingualism. In conclusion, this case study provides further evidence for the importance of values and knowledge related to bilingualism, as well as the need for bilingual development. This evidence is taken from a relatively unique context of the study: i.e., the communist context of Vietnam and under-studied indigenous minority groups in this area of the world. Hence, implications of the findings for bilingual education and regional language policy consideration are discussed. It recommends that the Vietnamese Government and education sector should pay greater attention to, and provide more support for, Jarainese people’s struggles to provide Jarainese children with minority language education. In addition, it is important to specify that a bilingual education program and a regional language policy should be considered and implemented in order to create environments in which Jarainese – Vietnamese bilingual children can develop and promote their bilingual proficiency and knowledge of bilingualism.

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Contemporary Indigenous women's literature illustrates how American Indian women facilitate adaptation from "traditional" communities to diverse urban communities. The objective of this study is to examine how Northern Athabascan women lead in communities which are not exclusive to these Indigenous peoples. The use of Athabascan values such as self-sufficiency, hard work, practice of traditions, caring, sharing, family relations, and respect for elders and others, can be seen as one example of how women lead in non-"traditional" communities. This thesis examines Athabascan women leaders who have worked at two seasonal Native-owned hotels in Alaska as a case study to examine how women lead. By analyzing the women of Doyon Tourism Inc. through the framework of Athabascan values, evidence of cultural continuity can be seen through the sustained use of "traditional" values.

This dissertation addresses native activism in response to United States and Mexico border enforcement policies on the U.S.-Mexico border among indigenous peoples whose communities are divided by the international line. Fieldwork for the dissertation was conducted in collaboration with an indigenous grassroots community organization with members in both the U.S. and Mexico who advocate for rights of border mobility among native border peoples. This work discusses the impacts of border enforcement policies on native community cultural maintenance, local interpretations and uses of international human rights tools, and the challenges faced by U.S.-Mexico border native activists in communicating their ideologies to a broader public. This work further addresses the complex identity construction of Native Americans with cultural ties to Mexico, and conflations of race and nationality that result in distinct forms of intra-community racism.

There exists a fundamental difference in how today's Hopi youth are growing up from that of their parents and grandparents--Hopi youth are not acquiring the Hopi language. This sociolinguistic situation raises many questions about the vitality and continuity of the Hopi language.Two key findings emerged from the study of three Hopi young adults. First, the study showed that cultural experiences are key to developing a personal and cultural identity as Hopi, but a linguistic competence in Hopi, especially in ceremonial contexts, is fundamental to acquiring a complete sense of being Hopi. Secondly, the effect of modern circumstances apparent in behavior and attitude among Hopi is evidence of another shift--a move away from a collective maintenance of language as cultural practice to the maintenance of language and cultural practice as a personal choice of use.

The dismantling of apartheid in South Africa provides educational researchers with the opportunity to explore many issues in education one of which being knowledge and its epistemology. Since colonization Africa has been mainly a consumer of Western knowledge and hardly a producer of new knowledge. Generally indigenous knowledge is taken by Western scholars and then sold to its motherland dressed in Western garb. Because of colonization and subsequent apartheid rule the progress of indigenous ways of knowing was marginalized and only Western ways of knowing were promoted. Indigenous ways of knowing need to be debated not only by scholars in the main but also by the science learners in African schools. Hence this study firstly explores the beliefs of a large group of grade 11 Physical Science learners about school science and indigenous knowledge and secondly explores how these learners negotiate relationships between school science and indigenous knowledge. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2004.

The original face-to-face encounter of American Indians in portraits and pictorial field studies reiterates the encounter between the colonial state, settlers and Indigenous communities. Mechanical reproduction had extended visual technologies creating a revolution in communications which began with the early use of the woodcut (around 1461). A tradition of portraiture from the eighteenth century then re-imagined American Indian peoples for new social and political uses. This dissertation begins by introducing the frontier representations of artists Benjamin West, George Catlin, Paul Kane and William G. R. Hind. Attention then shifts to the collaborative relation between photographer and subject required by the photographic technology of the period. The pictorial contact moment was an interactive communication between photographer and subject. Hence the image-making contact moment is a dialogue, an interchange. Thus the image became a meeting ground where cultural processes were intersubjective and where the present interacted with the past. At the centre of these representations is a two-way looking within a dialogical imagination. As colonial powers expanded and increased control territorially, changes in the dialogic relations were marked in the subject’s presentation of self, the artists’ renditions and the photographer’s aesthetics. Earlier artists like Benjamin West in “The Death of General Wolfe” (1770) used the publishing industry to challenge monologic stereotypes. However, as colonial powers exerted greater repressions, lucrative popular culture industries like the Wild West Shows constituted an imagined frontier which called for several other perspectival approaches: Lakota Chief Red Cloud used the photographic medium for peace activism and community building, Harry Pollard’s photojournalism documented Indigenous communities in Alberta and Edward S. Curtis’s pictorialism became a genre of ethnography in the twenty volume, "The North American Indian". Using a historical framework and interdisciplinary methodologies, this dissertation examines early representations of the North American West in a dialogue as a frontier of difference iterated through technologies of illustration and photography.

The original face-to-face encounter of American Indians in portraits and pictorial field studies reiterates the encounter between the colonial state, settlers and Indigenous communities. Mechanical reproduction had extended visual technologies creating a revolution in communications which began with the early use of the woodcut (around 1461). A tradition of portraiture from the eighteenth century then re-imagined American Indian peoples for new social and political uses. This dissertation begins by introducing the frontier representations of artists Benjamin West, George Catlin, Paul Kane and William G. R. Hind. Attention then shifts to the collaborative relation between photographer and subject required by the photographic technology of the period. The pictorial contact moment was an interactive communication between photographer and subject. Hence the image-making contact moment is a dialogue, an interchange. Thus the image became a meeting ground where cultural processes were intersubjective and where the present interacted with the past. At the centre of these representations is a two-way looking within a dialogical imagination. As colonial powers expanded and increased control territorially, changes in the dialogic relations were marked in the subject’s presentation of self, the artists’ renditions and the photographer’s aesthetics. Earlier artists like Benjamin West in “The Death of General Wolfe” (1770) used the publishing industry to challenge monologic stereotypes. However, as colonial powers exerted greater repressions, lucrative popular culture industries like the Wild West Shows constituted an imagined frontier which called for several other perspectival approaches: Lakota Chief Red Cloud used the photographic medium for peace activism and community building, Harry Pollard’s photojournalism documented Indigenous communities in Alberta and Edward S. Curtis’s pictorialism became a genre of ethnography in the twenty volume, "The North American Indian". Using a historical framework and interdisciplinary methodologies, this dissertation examines early representations of the North American West in a dialogue as a frontier of difference iterated through technologies of illustration and photography.

In Chile’s neoliberal economy, large-scale timber plantations controlled by national and multinational forest corporations have expanded significantly on traditional indigenous territories. Chile’s forestry sector began to expand rapidly in 1974, the year following the military coup, owing to the privatization of forest lands and the passing of Decree 701. That law continues to provide large subsidies for afforestation, as well as tax exemptions for plantations established after 1974. As a consequence, conflicts have developed between indigenous communities and forestry companies, with the latter actively supported by government policies. The Mapuche people, the largest indigenous group in Chile, have been demanding the right to control their own resources. Meanwhile, they have been bearing the physical and social costs of the forestry sector’s growth. Since democracy returned to Chile in 1990, governments have done little to strengthen the rights of indigenous peoples. Government policy in this area is ill-defined; it consists mainly of occasional land restitution and monetary compensation when conflicts with the Mapuche threaten to overheat. This, however, is coupled with heavy-handed actions by the police and the legal system against Mapuche individuals and groups. From a political ecology perspective, this thesis examines how indigenous communities resort to various political strategies to accommodate, resist, and/or negotiate as political-economic processes change, and how these responses in turn shape natural resource management and, it follows, the local environment. My findings are that the environmental and social impacts associated with landscape transformation are shaped not only by structural changes brought about by economic and political forces but also, simultaneously, by smaller acts of political, cultural, and symbolic protest. Emerging forms of political agency are having expected and unexpected consequences that are giving rise to new processes of environmental change. Evidence for my argument is provided by a case study that focuses on the political strategies followed by the Mapuche movement. I analyze the obstacles that are preventing the Chilean government from addressing more effectively the social, economic, and cultural needs of indigenous peoples through resource management policies. Government policies toward the Mapuche have not encompassed various approaches that might facilitate conflict resolution, such as effective participation in land use plans, natural resource management, the protection of the cultural rights of indigenous communities, and the Mapuche people’s right to their own approaches to development. Employing Foucault’s notion of governmentality, I argue that, while the Mapuche have widely contested the state’s neoliberal policies, they have nevertheless been drawn into governing strategies that are fundamentally neoliberal in character. These strategies have reconfigured their relationship with the state, NGOs, and foreign aid donors. Operating at both formal and informal levels of social and political interaction, this new mentality of government employs coercive and co-optive measures to cultivate Mapuche participation in the neoliberal modernization project, while continuing to neglect long-standing relations of inequality and injustice that underpin conflicts over land and resources.

An Indigenous wholistic framework is used to examine the question "what makes a university a successful place for Aboriginal students?" This study moves away from a student deficit discourse by critiquing universities from an Indigenous methodological and theoretical approach in terms of (a) how Indigenous knowledges were defined and found in universities and (b) how Indigenous understandings of success, responsibility, and accountability resonated in three universities in British Columbia, Canada. This research is grounded in Indigenous theory; however, social reproduction theory was used to explain power structures inherent in the mainstream educational system. The Indigenous research process involved a mixed methods approach. Approximately 60 interviews and four sharing circles were held with a total of 92 participants representing various stakeholders across the institution. In addition, the Undergraduate Baccalaureate Graduate Surveys (UBGS) were analyzed to contextualize Aboriginal undergraduate student experiences over the last 10 years. A major finding is that respectful relationships between Aboriginal stakeholders and university faculty and leaders are key to universities becoming more successful places for Aboriginal peoples. This study shows how Indigenous knowledges were present, as pockets of presence, in the academy in programs and through Indigenous faculty, staff, and students. As sites of Indigenous knowledges, First Nations Centres played a critical role by wholistically supporting the cultural integrity of Aboriginal students and being agents of change across the institution. Indigenous wholistic understandings of success challenged hegemonic definitions that emphasized intellectual capital to include the physical, emotional, and spiritual realms. Kirkness and Barnhardt's (1991) 4Rs were used to critically examine the responsibilities of universities to Aboriginal higher education. The following institutional responsibilities were presented: relationships, such as the seen face through Aboriginal presence, having authentic allies, involving Aboriginal communities, and enacting agency; reciprocity and relevance, which addresses issues of limited financial resources, increasing retention and recruitment, and putting words into action; and respect for Indigenous knowledges. Institutional accountability from the Indigenous framework went beyond neo-liberal discourses, to include making policy public, surveillance from inside and outside the institution, and the need for metrics and benchmarks.