This research examined the potential for protected areas with camas (including tall camas, Camassia leichtlinii (Baker) Wats., and common camas, C. quamash (Pursh) Greene; Liliaceae (Agavaceae)) habitat to support the renewal of Central Coast Salish camas traditions while at the same time maintaining and even expanding their ecological restoration and conservation goals. For many generations Central Coast Salish Peoples of northwestern North America have cultivated camas plants and harvested, processed, and consumed their edible bulbs in large quantities. Today, after camas use has almost completely disappeared from their lives, some Indigenous peoples are working to restore camas habitats and cultivation practices on southern Vancouver Island and neighbouring areas. Tall camas and common camas can still be found growing in many Garry oak ecosystems, which, due to the decreased range and the large proportion of rare species found within them, are frequently the focus of ecological restoration and conservation efforts. I interviewed people from the resource management and First Nations communities to gain an understanding of the current interests, opportunities, challenges, and potential approaches for incorporating traditionally based camas harvesting and management into protected areas today. Protected areas were identified as important areas for teaching traditional plant cultivation techniques to younger generations, and as bulb and seed banks for ethnoecological restoration projects. Overall, managers of protected areas and First Nations participants were receptive to collaborating on management of camas populations. Anticipated or existing challenges or concerns included ecological uncertainties of harvesting disturbance, ensuring safety, finding funding, and gaining trust. I conducted one season of experimental camas harvesting in a Garry oak savannah near Duncan, BC within an ecological preserve and monitored the effects of this harvesting on the extant camas populations, on surrounding plant communities, and on soil porosity. Harvesting of, primarily tall, camas bulbs, at both low and medium intensity, did not affect the weight or abundance of camas bulbs or the quantity, stem height or flowering/fruiting potential of the camas populations in the following year. Harvesting significantly reduced the abundance of Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis) and common snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus, but significantly increased the abundance of Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius) common cleavers (Galium aparine), hairy cat’s ear (Hypochaeris radicata), and nipplewort (Lapsana communis). Harvesting significantly reduced the level of soil compaction. Using the insights gained from the interviews and experimental harvesting I have proposed an “Ethnoecological Restoration Support Model”. This model explains how protected areas can support cultural restoration both within and outside of protected areas while maintaining and even expanding upon current conservation and restoration goals. / Graduate / 0329 / 0740 / 0471 / kproctor@uvic.ca

This thesis explores a recent innovation in First Nations health, the formation of Canada's First provincial-wide First Nations Health Authority (FNHA). Analyzing this service model against Indigenous assertions of a Treaty Right to Health expressed in the Numbered Treaties, I argue that the realizations of the Treaty Right to Health cannot solely be met under neoliberal models of increased Indigenous capacity in health care service administration. I assert that these models of devolution do not enable Treaty First Nations to achieve Indigenous self-determination in accordance with Treaty rights, relationships and responsibilities. The current discourse on First Nations health care only minimally accounts for the Treaty Right to Health, and where it does, it is devoid of Indigenous understandings of a Treaty Right to Health that encompasses access to healthy lands, waters, and livelihood for an achievement of holistic wellness. Mobilizing an Indigenous auto ethnographic approach which accounts for my own embodied positionally, this thesis problematizes the exclusion of holistic visions of health and well-being against settler governments' orientations toward a neoliberalized health care system. This thesis extends a comparative analytical lens to the political mobilizations of Indigenous advocacy bodies in the province of British Columbia, whose efforts under the New Relationship paradigm in Indigenous-state relations has resulted in an unprecedented practice of health care devolution. / Graduate

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) related to protected areas (PAs) originated in the 1980’s in Zimbabwe, Africa, in the buffer zone communities of Africa’s National Parks. CBNRM attempted to address the problems associated with colonial, protectionist style ‘fence and guns’ conservation management approaches, which excluded resource-based communities from conservation areas. CBNRM attempts to meet the biodiversity conservation objectives of conservation areas, and the sustainable development and livelihood objectives of neighbouring communities. While CBNRM initiatives have been well documented internationally over the past decades, little is known about the status of CBNRM within Canada. In order to bridge this knowledge gap and to link trends in conservation and protected areas management internationally to Canada and to British Columbia (BC), this thesis examines the potential for community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) affiliated with BC's Protected Area System. “Potential” is determined by comparing the situation in BC to the international CBNRM experience. The study draws on a sample of Conservancies from the categories of the BC Protected Area (PA) System, focusing particularly on the nine Sea-to-Sky Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP) Area Conservancies and neighbouring First Nations communities: Squamish, L’il’wat and In-SHUCK-ch. Information has been obtained through interviews (guided by semi-structured questionnaires) conducted with BC government informants and First Nations representatives, supplemented by key documents. The questionnaire examined the potential for CBNRM according to a.) the community's perspective: potential (costs and) benefits of the protected area, including goods and services, cultural and social benefits and sustainable economic development opportunities provided by the protected area; and benefits of community involvement in natural resource management and protected area governance; and b.) the conservation perspective: benefits through community cooperation in biodiversity conservation within the targeted protected area. Other factors that have been identified through the international experience to affect CBNRM initiatives, such as use regulation; tenure; policies and legislation; awareness of and support for the protected area; and community capacity were thoroughly examined across all sources of information. This study finds that there is potential for CBNRM affiliated with the BC PA system in protected area designations such as ‘Conservancies’. Potential relates to the role of CBNRM in biodiversity conservation, meeting the aspirations of BC’s First Nations communities, and in recognizing First Nations as legitimate stakeholders in protected areas and conservation management. As in the international experience, numerous social, political, economic and other factors present opportunities and challenges to the adoption of CBNRM in BC. This thesis concludes with key recommendations for protected areas and conservation management in BC and Canada and identifies opportunities to further explore key topic areas that arose from the research findings.