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.

This research explored the experiences of immigrant-descendant and immigrant faculty members as they approach the work they are invited to contribute to reconciliation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action (2015b) through their roles as post-secondary educators. The purpose of this research was to better understand the experiences of immigrant-descendant and immigrant faculty to inform how they can be supported in reconciliation work, particularly as they contemplate engagement in the consciousness-raising, ally work, and institutional changes that are required as we walk in a new way with Indigenous Peoples. On the journey towards reconciliation that Truth and Reconciliation Commission Chair Justice Murray Sinclair (Ojibway) envisions (Macleans, 2015), this research further considers why and how we might come together as Indigenous Peoples, immigrant-descendants and immigrants, stopping at fires of action along the way that collectively encompass the circle surrounding reconciliation (Newman, 2018). Two central concepts interweave throughout the commitment to creating ethical spaces of engagement (Ermine, 2007) and the practice of research as ceremony (Wilson, 2008, S. Wilson, personal communication, February 2, 2020). Given the dearth of literature available at the time of writing that directly related to this research, a range of philosophical and theoretical scholarship and works of practitioners provided the foundation. These sources shared a focus on social transformation and included formative works by Dewey (1939), Freire (1970/2000, 1973), Habermas (1994, 2002) and Bronfenbrenner (1979), highlighting Habermas’ communicative action theory and Bronfenbrenner’s ecosystem of human development. Additional works by practitioners such as Bishop (2015), DiAngelo (2011), Gehl (n.d), hooks (1990), Luft and Ingram (1955), Sennet (2015), Sensoy and DiAngelo (2017) Snowden and Boon (2007), and Wheatley and Frieze (2011) provided further insight into creating ethical spaces for engagement. Rooted in my emerging understanding of my ontological stance as a relativist and a tendency towards the epistemological perspective of constructivism, aligning with the interpretive paradigm, the research took an anti-oppressive research approach (Potts & Brown, 2015) informed by the Indigenist research paradigm (Wilson, 2007, 2008). Following exploration of narrative inquiry in the dominant culture and as practiced by Indigenous scholars, a narrative approach was undertaken to gathering data. Individual conversations were held with 15 participants, all faculty members at Royal Roads University, a small public post-secondary institution in what is now called Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. A group conversation with eight of the participants followed the individual conversations. Nine themes emerged from the meaning making process that followed these conversations: locating self, clarifying purpose, institutional challenges, relationships with Indigenous Peoples, relationships with Indigenous Knowledges, curriculum, teaching, self-reflections, and what might help. A framework based on the intersection of self-assessed competence and confidence in a given context was developed to provide an empirical heuristic (St. Clair, 2005) to provide insight into the experience of faculty members at Royal Roads, faculty members at other institutions, and perhaps for ally work in different contexts. Throughout the study, I recorded my autoethnographic observations. These observations revealed cultural epiphanies that provided insight into my “deeper level thoughts, interests and assumptions” (Ermine, 2007) and supported ongoing critical reflection of the work as it unfolded. This dissertation concludes with reflections of the work overall, identifying some of the research limitations, suggesting recommendations for future action and research and reflecting on the tremendous impact that this has had, and will continue to have, on me personally and professionally. / Graduate

The following research examined a survey on the identity and feelings of inclusion among alumni of Loyola Marymount University’s Marriage and Family Therapy with Specialization Training in Art Therapy graduate program. The survey found that a majority of the responding alumni did not feel their identities were represented in multiple aspects of the program, and there was a clear call to action for more representation of diversity. More research on the subject is needed to expand a variety of art therapy programs to better understand implications of art therapy pedagogy on identity, representation, and inclusivity within the art therapy community.

Public apprehension about religious diversity has pervaded Canadian headlines at an increasing pace, particularly during the past fifteen years. Urban centres and suburban and rural communities alike have seen clashes over the manifestation of diverse belief systems in daily life. From immigrant ‘codes of conduct,’ a ‘charter of values,’ controversy over the wearing of the Sikh kirpan in school, to bans on religious vestments and symbols worn by public servants including teachers, conflict and socially divisive misunderstandings are often the unfortunate fruits of ignorance about the ‘other.’ Many religious actors at the center of these stories have seen their cases ultimately adjudicated in Canada’s highest court, reinforcing the perception that religious difference is a source of conflict and division in Canadian society. In this era of global conversations about how liberal democracies approach diversity, this dissertation expands the conversation on education about religion, beliefs and worldviews in Canadian classrooms. With public education situated as a primary site for constructing democratic citizenship, the question of how this evolving dynamic of diversity is taught in schools is symbolically and practically linked to broader debates about government and societal responses to pluralism. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by interweaving thinking from the literature on pluralism, xenosophia and deep equality as a conceptual framework, with empirical work investigating what parents and educators thought Canadian public-school (primary and secondary) students should learn in order to best prepare them for living and thriving in a diverse society. Triangulated data gathered from semi-structured interviews with parents and educators (n=22), responses from a national online survey (n=190), and a textual analysis of secondary student manuals from Quebec’s Ethics and Religious Culture Program (n=5), provided a holistic vantage point from which to consider the central research questions. Analysis and interpretation of findings revealed that learning about diversity and difference were of central importance, however, there were fundamental concerns regarding indoctrination, rejection of majority religious privilege and even-handedness in the presentation of religious and nonreligious belief systems. Existing discourse on religious and worldview literacy education in Canada tends to focus on teaching and learning in the context of a discrete curriculum such as the Ethics and Religious Culture program. However, findings from this research suggest that increased public awareness about the religious entanglements of colonization, combined with the significant rise in the number of Canadians who hold non-religious worldviews, contribute to a rethinking of how such literacy endeavours may be better integrated into other subject areas such as civics, citizenship, history or social studies.