Canadians have developed a vocabulary of regionalism, a cultural shorthand that divides Canada into easily-described spaces: the Arctic, the Prairies, the Maritimes, and Central Canada, for example. But these artificial divisions obscure the history of edge places whose identity is drawn from more than one region. The region north of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, is a place on the edge of the boreal forest whose self-representations, local history, and memorials draw heavily on a non-prairie identity. There, the past is associated with the forest in contrast to most Canadians' understanding of Saskatchewan as flat, treeless prairie. This dissertation presents the history of the north Prince Albert region within a framework that challenges common Saskatchewan and Canadian stereotypes. Through deep-time place history, layers of historical occupation in the study region can be compared and contrasted to show both change and continuity. Historical interpretations have consistently separated the history of Saskatchewans boreal north and prairie south, as if the two have no history of interchange and connection. Using edge theory, this dissertation argues that historical human occupation in the western interior found success in the combination of prairie and boreal lifeways.<p> First Nations groups from both boreal forest and open plain used the forest edge as a refuge, and to enhance resilience through access to resources from the other ecosystem. Newcomer use of the prairie landscape rebranded the boreal north as a place of natural resources to serve the burgeoning prairie market. The prairies could not be settled if there was not also a nearby and extensive source for what the prairies lacked: timber and fuel. Extensive timber harvesting led to deforestation and the rise of agriculture built on the rhetoric of mixed farming, not King Wheat. The mixed farming movement tied to landscape underscored the massive internal migrations from the open prairies to the parkland and forest edge.<p> Soldier settlement, long viewed as a failure, experienced success in the north Prince Albert region and gave a model for future extensive government-supported land settlement schemes. South-to-north migration during the 1920s was based on a combination of push and pull factors: drought in the Palliser Triangle; and a strengthening northern economy built on cordwood, commercial fishing, freighting, prospecting and fur harvesting, as well as mixed farming. The economy at the forest edge supported occupational pluralism, drawing subsistence from both farm and forest, reflecting the First Nations model. As tourism grew to prominence, the Saskatchewan dual identity of prairie/forest led to the re-creation of the north Prince Albert region as a new vacationland, the Playground of the Prairies. The northern forest edge drew thousands of migrants during the Great Depression. Historical analysis has consistently interpreted this movement as frantic, a reactionary idea without precedent. Through a deep-time analysis, the Depression migrations are viewed through a new lens. The forest edge was a historic place of both economic and cultural refuge and resilience predicated on the Saskatchewan contrast of north and south.

Memento Mori, Latin for “remember thy death,” implores us to be mindful that death is both inevitable and inescapable. What of the records created during the process of dying and about death? Based upon wide-ranging archival research into primary documents, this thesis explores the rich sources of both official, public records, and personal, private ones, relating to mortality on the small-town Canadian frontier before 1950. The community of Red Lake, Ontario, which was established on the frontier as the result of the Red Lake gold rush of 1926, is the subject of a case study. Rather than merely cataloguing sources, this thesis illustrates that by adapting aspects from such archival appraisal methodologies as macroappraisal and documentation strategy, one is able to make available to researchers a wider range of sources relevant to the themes of dying and death. Specifically, by employing a documentation strategy methodology to identify and illuminate the records of human activities surrounding the functions of dying and death, archivists can offer to researchers the opportunity to locate relevant records wherever they may physically be. Since this is an Archival Studies thesis, it does not provide an historical analysis of dying and death, but is an archival study of the types of records related to the theme of mortality on the Canadian frontier: how those records were created, their character, and their capture and preservation in a small community. This thesis is organized into three chapters and a conclusion. Chapter One explores some relevant trends in the secondary literature of three fields: archival appraisal and description, small town or local development on the frontier, and dying and death as human activities. Chapter Two sets the context in which the thesis analyzes mortality on the frontier by outlining the relevant history of the Red Lake District of Northwestern Ontario and its pioneers. The focus is especially on the gold-mining boom years from the mid-1920s until shortly after the Second World War. The heart of the thesis, Chapter Three, is a case study of the various records creators, human activities, and resultant records related to mortality. It is organized according to three phases or functional categories surrounding dying, death, and memorialization. The conclusion summarizes the usefulness of the case study, in light of the literature review in Chapter One. It also suggests areas of further research, including aspects not covered herein, of the records of dying and death on the Canadian frontier. The documentation strategy, adapted from the original methods employed by archivists Helen Samuels and Richard Cox, was found to work best when deployed as a research and descriptive tool for exploring and documenting the records of mortality, more so than its original purpose as an acquisition tool. The strategy has wide-ranging usefulness discovering and then describing a “virtual” documentation universe relating to record-generating human functions and activities. / February 2008

Canadians have developed a vocabulary of regionalism, a cultural shorthand that divides Canada into easily-described spaces: the Arctic, the Prairies, the Maritimes, and Central Canada, for example. But these artificial divisions obscure the history of edge places whose identity is drawn from more than one region. The region north of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, is a place on the edge of the boreal forest whose self-representations, local history, and memorials draw heavily on a non-prairie identity. There, the past is associated with the forest in contrast to most Canadians' understanding of Saskatchewan as flat, treeless prairie. This dissertation presents the history of the north Prince Albert region within a framework that challenges common Saskatchewan and Canadian stereotypes. Through deep-time place history, layers of historical occupation in the study region can be compared and contrasted to show both change and continuity. Historical interpretations have consistently separated the history of Saskatchewans boreal north and prairie south, as if the two have no history of interchange and connection. Using edge theory, this dissertation argues that historical human occupation in the western interior found success in the combination of prairie and boreal lifeways.<p> First Nations groups from both boreal forest and open plain used the forest edge as a refuge, and to enhance resilience through access to resources from the other ecosystem. Newcomer use of the prairie landscape rebranded the boreal north as a place of natural resources to serve the burgeoning prairie market. The prairies could not be settled if there was not also a nearby and extensive source for what the prairies lacked: timber and fuel. Extensive timber harvesting led to deforestation and the rise of agriculture built on the rhetoric of mixed farming, not King Wheat. The mixed farming movement tied to landscape underscored the massive internal migrations from the open prairies to the parkland and forest edge.<p> Soldier settlement, long viewed as a failure, experienced success in the north Prince Albert region and gave a model for future extensive government-supported land settlement schemes. South-to-north migration during the 1920s was based on a combination of push and pull factors: drought in the Palliser Triangle; and a strengthening northern economy built on cordwood, commercial fishing, freighting, prospecting and fur harvesting, as well as mixed farming. The economy at the forest edge supported occupational pluralism, drawing subsistence from both farm and forest, reflecting the First Nations model. As tourism grew to prominence, the Saskatchewan dual identity of prairie/forest led to the re-creation of the north Prince Albert region as a new vacationland, the Playground of the Prairies. The northern forest edge drew thousands of migrants during the Great Depression. Historical analysis has consistently interpreted this movement as frantic, a reactionary idea without precedent. Through a deep-time analysis, the Depression migrations are viewed through a new lens. The forest edge was a historic place of both economic and cultural refuge and resilience predicated on the Saskatchewan contrast of north and south.

In this thesis I offer a brief overview of the current legislative, regulatory and treaty frameworks impacting emergency management in British Columbia, with a particular emphasis on Crown-identified First Nation roles. I show that the regime overwhelmingly positions non-First Nation governments, contractors and other organizations to manage emergencies on behalf of First Nations. I explore emergency management as a manifold process that includes protracted planning, mitigation and recovery phases, which, unlike emergency response, are carried out with lower levels of urgency. I consider Canadian Constitution Act, 1982 (s. 35) Aboriginal rights in light of the lack of statutorily prescribed inclusion of First Nations in off-reserve emergency management, particularly at the planning, mitigation and recovery phases concluding that the jurisprudence to date (including the duty to consult and Aboriginal title) does not appear to have revolutionized the regime. While the constitutional status of Aboriginal rights should operate to insure adequate First Nation direction in each stage of emergency management, the regime continues to restrictively prioritize other constitutional priorities, such as division of powers and civil liberties. To better understand the omission, I theorize the lack of Crown implementation of s. 35 Aboriginal rights generally as an ‘obligation gap’, highlighting how an analysis of s. 35 Aboriginal rights as ‘negative rights’ fails to compel implementation of the full scope of Crown obligations implicit within the jurisprudence to date. I then offer a new framework for s. 35 as justiciable ‘recognition rights’ and juxtapose ‘recognition rights’ with the idea of justiciability of government inaction through a brief comparative analysis of socioeconomic rights in South Africa’s constitution and Canada’s constitutional Aboriginal rights. With a decided emphasis on the obligations of the Crown, this thesis attempts to offer fodder to First Nations and legal practitioners seeking to challenge the emergency management landscape where First Nations seek an enhanced role in protecting and restoring their respective territories in anticipation of, and in the wake of, disaster. For convenience and clarity, contemporary geographical and jurisdictional references to the areas now known as Canada and British Columbia are used throughout the thesis without intention to detract from the integrity of First Nation claims to their traditional and ancestral territories.

Le diabète de type 2 affecte en moyenne 29% de la population adulte crie d’Eeyou Istchee (CEI). Afin d’identifier les plantes médicinales possédant un potentiel antidiabétique, des interviews ont été réalisés dans les communautés CEI de Wemindji et Oujé-Bougoumou. Utilisant une approche quantitative, les espèces mentionnées ont été classées et comparées à la pharmacopée des communautés avoisinantes. Seize et 25 plantes ont été mentionné à Wemindji et Oujé-Bougoumou, respectivement. Sept nouvelles espèces de plantes et une de champignon se sont ajoutées à la liste des espèces à potentiel antidiabétique, bien que la plupart de celles mentionnées pendant les interviews soit en communes à la pharmacopée CEI générale, démontrant ainsi leur importance culturelle. Des analyses phytochimiques sur deux de ces espèces, Rhododendron groenlandicum et Sarracenia purpurea, ont été réalisées à partir d’échantillons récoltés à différents endroits du territoire eeyouch. Bien qu’aucun patron n’ait été détecté dans la variation des composantes biologiquement actives chez S. purpurea, les composés phénoliques chez R. groenlandicum, particulièrement la (+)-catéchine, l’(-)-epicatéchine et la quercétine-3-galactoside, varient spatialement en fonction de paramètres d’insolation telles la radiation solaire ou la photopériode. Les échantillons de cette dernière espèce, testés in vitro dans le bioessai de l’adipogenèse des cellules adipocytes murines 3T3-L1, augmentent l’accumulation intracellulaire des triglycérides, leur conférant ainsi une activité diabétique semblable à la rosiglitazone. Cependant, cette activité était plus faible dans les échantillons à haute teneur en quercétine, cela pouvant ainsi avoir un impact sur la qualité d'un produit de santé naturel fabriqué à partir de cette espèce. / Type 2 diabetes has reached epidemic proportions among Canada’s aboriginal populations and affects on average 29% of adult Cree of Eeyou Istchee (CEI). In collaboration with the Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay and the CIHR team in Traditional Antidiabetic Aboriginal Medicines, interviews were held in the CEI communities of Wemindji and Oujé-Bougoumou to identify potential antidiabetic plants. Using a quantitative approach, species mentioned were ranked and compared to the pharmacopoeia of other participating communities. Sixteen and 25 plants were mentioned in Wemindji and Oujé-Bougoumou respectively. Seven new plant and one fungal species were added to the list of potential antidiabetic species, although most of those mentioned were common to the general CEI pharmacopoeia, thus supporting the cultural importance that they hold. Phytochemical analyses of two of these species, Rhododendron groenlandicum and Sarracenia purpurea, were made from accessions harvested throughout Eeyou Istchee. While no pattern was detected in the variation of S. purpurea’s biologically active compounds, phenolic compounds from R. groenlandicum, specifically (+)-catchin, (-)-epicatechin and quercetin-3-galactoside, varied spatially as a function of insolation parameters such as solar radiation or photoperiod. Samples from the latter, tested in vitro in the 3T3-L1 murine adipocytes adipogenesis bioassay, increased the intracellular accumulation of triglycerides, thus conferring it a glitazone-like antidiabetic activity. This activity, however, was weaker in accessions with high quercetin content, which could have an impact on the quality of a natural health product made from this species.

This article, written by Glenn Drexhage, Communications Officer – UBC Library/Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, appeared in the BCLA Browser: Linking the Library Landscape online newsletter (vol.1, no.1 2009). For more information, please visit the BC Digitization Symposium 2008 website at: http://symposium.westbeyondthewest.ca and the BCLA Browser website at: http://bclabrowser.ca.

Cette étude a pour but de vérifier l’association entre l’insécurité alimentaire et les apports nutritionnels des Premières Nations vivant sur les réserves de la Colombie-Britannique, ainsi que la présence d’interactions de la nourriture traditionnelle dans la relation entre l’insécurité alimentaire et les apports nutritionnels. Un rappel de 24h et le questionnaire sur l’insécurité alimentaire du HFSSM adapté par Santé Canada provenant de la First Nations Food, Nutrition and Environment Study (FNFNES) ont servi pour les analyses statistiques chez 493 femmes et 356 hommes dans 21 communautés de Premières Nations de la Colombie-Britannique. Aucune association entre l’insécurité alimentaire et les apports nutritionnels totaux n’a été observée dans notre échantillon. Par contre, la nourriture traditionnelle interagissait dans la relation entre l’insécurité alimentaire et les apports nutritionnels pour plusieurs nutriments chez les hommes et chez les femmes. Chez les femmes, la qualité nutritionnelle pourrait jouer un rôle important dans la relation entre l’insécurité alimentaire et les apports nutritionnels. Chez les hommes, des différences dans les comportements alimentaires pourraient être associées au manque de nourriture traditionnelle chez ceux ayant manifesté une insécurité alimentaire grave. Enfin, les interactions de la nourriture traditionnelle dans la relation entre l’insécurité alimentaire et les apports nutritionnels laissent croire que les hommes et les femmes souffrant peu ou pas d’insécurité alimentaire ajoutent ce type d’alimentation à leurs apports quotidiens. À l’inverse, ceux et celles qui souffrent d’insécurité alimentaire grave utiliseraient la nourriture traditionnelle pour remplacer la nourriture commerciale. / The aim of this study was to verify the association between food insecurity and dietary intake of First Nations living on reservations in British-Columbia and to assess interactions of traditional food in the relationship between food insecurity and dietary intake. We analyzed data for 493 women and 356 men in 21 First Nations communities in British-Columbia using a 24h-food recall and the Health Canada adapted version of the HFSSM Food security questionnaire from the First Nations Food, Nutrition and Environment Study (FNFNES). We did not find any association between food security and total dietary intake for women and for men. However, traditional food was found to be interacting in the relationship between food security and total dietary intake for many nutrients for men and women. For First Nations women, diet quality could have a major impact in the relationship between food insecurity and dietary intakes. For men, differences in dietary behaviours could have been associated to a lack of traditional food in the worse cases of food insecurity. Moreover, interactions of traditional food in the relationship between food security and total dietary intake leave us to believe that men and women, from moderate food-insecure and food-secure households, add this kind of food to their daily intake whereas men and women from serious food-insecure households seem to replace commercial foods with traditional foods.

Résumé Cette thèse de doctorat porte sur le cinéma envisagé comme un agent de réappropriation culturelle pour les Premières Nations du Québec et les Inuit du Nunavut. De manière plus spécifique, nous avons cherché à comprendre comment les peuples autochtones et inuit se servent d’un médium contemporain pour prendre la parole, revendiquer leurs droits politiques et réécrire une histoire ayant été jusqu’à récemment racontée selon le point du vue de médiateurs externes. À cet effet, l’emprunt d’éléments propres aux méthodologies autochtones, autant dans la forme que dans le contenu, auront permis de faire ressortir un aspect particulier des cultures autochtones, soit la manifestation d’une pensée orale centrée autour de la notion du sacré. La première partie de cette recherche est ainsi consacrée à la théorisation d’un sacré autochtone omniprésent dans toutes les sphères de leur quotidien, et qui se transpose à l’écran sous la forme d’une esthétique particulière, que nous nommons esthétique du sacré. En outre, le visionnement et l’analyse de courts et de long-métrages autochtones et inuit ont fait ressortir avec force les principaux éléments d’une esthétique du sacré qui s’exprime entre autres à travers une éthique de travail privilégiant la collaboration communautaire et une écoute attentive de la parole de l’interlocuteur, ainsi qu’à travers la remédiation des récits issus de la tradition orale. Ainsi, l’exploration de l’œuvre documentaire d’Alanis Obomsawin met de l’avant l’importance du rôle joué par les femmes autochtones au sein de leurs communautés, celles-ci se présentant comme les principaux agents de changement et médiatrices de leur culture. Dans la même veine, l’étude du projet Wapikoni Mobile nous a permis d’esquisser un portrait nouveau de la jeunesse autochtone, les œuvres réalisées par ces cinéastes néophytes reflétant l’importance pour eux de réactualiser la tradition tout en nourrissant des liens de confiance avec leurs aînés, ces gardiens de la mémoire. Enfin, le dernier chapitre portant sur l’élaboration d’une nouvelle cinématographie inuit démontre comment le cinéma est un outil apte à traduire avec justesse les subtilités présentes dans les récits issus de la tradition orale. / This Ph.D. dissertation addresses the subject of First Nations and Inuit cinema, in Quebec and Nunavut. More specifically, we examine the role of cinema as an agent of cultural re-appropriation for Indigenous and Inuit communities, who have been using a western and contemporary medium to both claim their political and economic rights, and re-write a history that, until recently, has been told by external mediators. Therefore, choosing to borrow elements found in indigenous methodologies, will have allowed us to bring into light a particular aspect of First Nations cultures, i.e. the manifestation of an oral thought process centered on the notion of the sacred. The first part of this thesis is thus dedicated to the theorization of the sacred, a notion that is envisioned by the First Nations peoples as a way of life that can be transposed on-screen through what we chose to name the aesthetics of the sacred. Furthermore, the viewing and analysis of short and long-length films have allowed us to identify the principal elements of an aesthetic of the sacred that reveals itself in the work ethics of the filmmakers (participation of the community in the filmmaking process, attentive listening by the filmmakers of the person speaking) as well as in the remediation, on-screen, of oral tradition. Thereby, the exploration of Abénaquis filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary films has put forward the importance of the role played by native women in their communities, the latter remaining the principal agents of cultural change as well as the mediators of their stories and cultures. In the same way, examining the contents of the short films produced by the young Wapikoni Mobile filmmakers has allowed us to discover new facets of native youth, the majority of those short films reflecting a desire to update tradition while building relationships based on trust with the elders of their community. Finally, the last chapter addressing the subject of Inuit cinematography, demonstrates how cinema presents itself as the medium most fit to translate accurately the subtleties found in stories hailing from oral tradition.

Memento Mori, Latin for “remember thy death,” implores us to be mindful that death is both inevitable and inescapable. What of the records created during the process of dying and about death? Based upon wide-ranging archival research into primary documents, this thesis explores the rich sources of both official, public records, and personal, private ones, relating to mortality on the small-town Canadian frontier before 1950. The community of Red Lake, Ontario, which was established on the frontier as the result of the Red Lake gold rush of 1926, is the subject of a case study. Rather than merely cataloguing sources, this thesis illustrates that by adapting aspects from such archival appraisal methodologies as macroappraisal and documentation strategy, one is able to make available to researchers a wider range of sources relevant to the themes of dying and death. Specifically, by employing a documentation strategy methodology to identify and illuminate the records of human activities surrounding the functions of dying and death, archivists can offer to researchers the opportunity to locate relevant records wherever they may physically be. Since this is an Archival Studies thesis, it does not provide an historical analysis of dying and death, but is an archival study of the types of records related to the theme of mortality on the Canadian frontier: how those records were created, their character, and their capture and preservation in a small community. This thesis is organized into three chapters and a conclusion. Chapter One explores some relevant trends in the secondary literature of three fields: archival appraisal and description, small town or local development on the frontier, and dying and death as human activities. Chapter Two sets the context in which the thesis analyzes mortality on the frontier by outlining the relevant history of the Red Lake District of Northwestern Ontario and its pioneers. The focus is especially on the gold-mining boom years from the mid-1920s until shortly after the Second World War. The heart of the thesis, Chapter Three, is a case study of the various records creators, human activities, and resultant records related to mortality. It is organized according to three phases or functional categories surrounding dying, death, and memorialization. The conclusion summarizes the usefulness of the case study, in light of the literature review in Chapter One. It also suggests areas of further research, including aspects not covered herein, of the records of dying and death on the Canadian frontier. The documentation strategy, adapted from the original methods employed by archivists Helen Samuels and Richard Cox, was found to work best when deployed as a research and descriptive tool for exploring and documenting the records of mortality, more so than its original purpose as an acquisition tool. The strategy has wide-ranging usefulness discovering and then describing a “virtual” documentation universe relating to record-generating human functions and activities.

Government human service organizations regularly attempt to recruit ethnically and culturally diverse professionals to improve services to diverse communities. The assumption here is that organizational culture and structure support this organizational practice. This study considers the unique challenge for Aboriginal professionals who work in a government child welfare system responsible for the oppression of Aboriginal children, families, and communities. As a non-Aboriginal organizational insider and researcher, I use a combined Indigenous/ethnographic approach to explore these issues with Aboriginal professionals within the British Columbia Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD). This study involves a dual focus that examines the history, identity, values, motivations, and practice approaches of Aboriginal professionals as well as how organizational structural and environment variables support or impede their representation of community needs and interests. Analysis of these two areas results in significant findings for the organization, the social work profession, and various practice and organizational diversity literatures. Aboriginal participant descriptions of values, beliefs, and practices contribute to literature exploring contemporary Indigenous practice approaches that integrate traditional knowledge with professional practice. Consistent with some representative bureaucracy studies, participant descriptions of personal history, experience, practice, and motivation to work in MCFD indicate values, beliefs, and motivations strongly shared with their representative group: to reduce the number of Aboriginal children in government care and reconnect them to community. Aboriginal participant role tensions and dual accountabilities, resulting from their unique community/Ministry insider/outsider position, provide context to studies that explore tensions and contradictions that exist for diverse professionals working in their communities through mainstream organizations. Findings also contribute to studies in representative bureaucracy and other organizational diversity approaches concerned with the ability of diverse professionals to actively represent community interests. Organizational variables, such as low Aboriginal practice support, racism, cultural incompetence, hierarchical structure and decision making, risk-averse practice norms, poorly implemented rhetorical change initiatives, and institutional physical environments, among others, impede the ability of Aboriginal participants to actively represent community interests. Mitigating factors were found where some Aboriginal participants describe significant organizational support at the worksite level through dedicated culturally competent Aboriginal management and practice teams. / Graduate / 0452 / 0617 / 0631 / janerousseau@shaw.ca