ABSTRACT In North West British Columbia, First Nations women are playing an essential role in a cultural shift that is positively affecting community health and the education of Aboriginal youth. Historically, the First Peoples of the North West coast were profoundly transformed by European contact. Policies, oppressions and disease disrupted lives and communities that had existed in stasis since time immemorial. The results, described by Thomas Berger as “third world” conditions, are predictable --young and old afflicted with addictions and dysfunctions. Recently, the dominant politics have begun to acknowledge the First Nations as having a legitimate voice in the social and political processes that concern them. This research is one part of the national multi-disciplinary study, Coasts Under Stress: The Impact of Social and Environmental Restructuring on Environmental and Human Health in Canada. In this phase of the larger project, the importance of the educational and community leadership of First Nations women is recognized as they struggle to break cycles of dysfunction that afflict their communities. Increasing enrollment of coastal youth and adults in secondary school and college programs, and in educational programs on reserve over the past decade is one sign of positive change. The main purpose of my study is to explore the role of First Nations women in supporting social and educational opportunities in their villages and in society-at-large. The central research question asks what supports and barriers First Nations women encounter as they assume leadership roles within their villages and without. A purposive sample of seven women joined the research conversation, involved because of the formal leadership roles they have assumed, and because of their perceived influence on the general health of their communities and the region. Their responsibilities represent a wide spectrum of educational and community leadership, and counter a prevailing stereotype of First Nations people generally and women particularly. Carefully chosen qualitative research methods were employed to ensure consistency with Kwakwakawakw practices and protocols. Sustained dialogue was used as a way of drawing on the historical and cultural tapestry framing the research question. Given the hermeneutic nature of the study, the individual narratives became the heart of the study and a voice-centred relational data analysis followed. Analysis based on a theory that characterizes human beings as interdependent, historically and culturally contextual and embedded in a complex web of intimate and larger social relations resonates with First Nations ontology and epistemology. The narratives reveal detailed historical and cultural data, providing for enhanced cultural understanding and knowledge-based theory building. In addition to the contextual material, the narratives provide direction for Aboriginal and cross-cultural research protocols as well as an opportunity for the interested reader to “listen and learn” as Joseph Couture propounds. The stereotypes that continue to confine and condemn Aboriginal women are rightfully eroded by the life histories themselves and their illustration of the process of reclamation of Aboriginal identity. Finally, further evidence is offered for Sylvia Maracle’s assertion that Aboriginal women have been leading community development initiatives for the past thirty-five years. Education and health are the primary beneficiaries of their efforts.

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First Nations in Canada face numerous challenges when it comes to water. First Nations experiences with water range from individual and family challenges, including limited or no access to safe drinking water, to broader collective concerns such as exercising aboriginal or treaty rights to hunt, fish or gather. Many changes are in play, centered on the element of water: the implementation of a new federal act regarding drinking water on First Nations reserves; numerous amendments to various federal and provincial environmental laws and regulations; and a recent set of ground-breaking court decisions on First Nations identity, aboriginal title, historic treaties and water. A sense of urgency comes from these developments. Over the last number of decades, First Nations have been negotiating complex and unwieldy relationships (or the absence of relationship) with federal, provincial/territorial and municipal governments regarding water — for spiritual/ceremonial use, domestic use, waste disposal, and economic development; and as a function of treaty and aboriginal rights and title. Over this time, the laws and standards used to frame such relationship(s) have been “mainstream” or Canadian. This thesis proposes that in combination with powerful Indigenous legal traditions, the new constitutional and legislative paradigm signifies a transformative and re-formative shift with regard to First Nations and water. / Graduate

Small and medium-sized businesses are a major contributor to many economies, but it is lesser known that some of these are also classified as family businesses. These family businesses are created due to the entrepreneurial mind set and ability of one or more of its founders, who identify an opportunity and seek to exploit such an opportunity. To be able to survive, sustain and grow the business they need to maintain at least their entrepreneurial orientation through other generations. Although these businesses face similar challenges, the literature showed that family businesses are very different to other non-family businesses due to their uniqueness and the overlapping of the family relationships. Family businesses represent a large proportion of the businesses registered world-wide, and they make an important contribution to economic growth and wealth creation in the world. South Africa is no exception and it is estimated by scholars that for the last 300 years family businesses have contributed to the South African economy. However, very few of these businesses will continue to exist after the first generation because of succession failure. This results in a great loss in skills and wealth transfer, and a change in the contribution to economic growth. Family business leaders need to learn how to manage the factors that affect the succession process. Researchers in family business literature acknowledge that leadership is vital to the success and survival of the firm. Leadership can be seen as a process of influencing the activities of an organised group in its efforts towards goal setting and goal achievement. Interestingly, family business researchers typically refer to succession and not leadership succession, and additionally, there is little crossover between the two fields of study and scholars rarely reference one another. Bridging this gap will greatly benefit the family business literature and will enhance the understanding of both fields of study. Therefore, the high failure rate for family businesses in the second and later generations has led to the problem that the succeeding generations might not have developed sufficient leadership practices to sustain the business performance of the family business. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a relationship between leadership practices and business performance. The results of this quantitative correlational study indicate that positive significant correlations exist between the occurrence of leadership practices and measures of business performance for first generation leaders of the selected family businesses. In addition, a disparity was found where effectively only two correlations existed between the variables for the second generation leaders. These results illuminate the potential differences in the ways that first and second generation leaders‘ lead family businesses. By empirically investigating the leadership practices of leaders in family businesses, this study has added to the limited quantity of leadership-related topics in family business literature. By way of the conceptual model developed in this study, a significant contribution has been made towards understanding the possible impact leadership practices have on business performance in these selected family businesses. As a result, this study presents propositions to assist founders to train future and existing family business leaders in leadership practices. / PhD (Business Management), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

Small and medium-sized businesses are a major contributor to many economies, but it is lesser known that some of these are also classified as family businesses. These family businesses are created due to the entrepreneurial mind set and ability of one or more of its founders, who identify an opportunity and seek to exploit such an opportunity. To be able to survive, sustain and grow the business they need to maintain at least their entrepreneurial orientation through other generations. Although these businesses face similar challenges, the literature showed that family businesses are very different to other non-family businesses due to their uniqueness and the overlapping of the family relationships. Family businesses represent a large proportion of the businesses registered world-wide, and they make an important contribution to economic growth and wealth creation in the world. South Africa is no exception and it is estimated by scholars that for the last 300 years family businesses have contributed to the South African economy. However, very few of these businesses will continue to exist after the first generation because of succession failure. This results in a great loss in skills and wealth transfer, and a change in the contribution to economic growth. Family business leaders need to learn how to manage the factors that affect the succession process. Researchers in family business literature acknowledge that leadership is vital to the success and survival of the firm. Leadership can be seen as a process of influencing the activities of an organised group in its efforts towards goal setting and goal achievement. Interestingly, family business researchers typically refer to succession and not leadership succession, and additionally, there is little crossover between the two fields of study and scholars rarely reference one another. Bridging this gap will greatly benefit the family business literature and will enhance the understanding of both fields of study. Therefore, the high failure rate for family businesses in the second and later generations has led to the problem that the succeeding generations might not have developed sufficient leadership practices to sustain the business performance of the family business. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a relationship between leadership practices and business performance. The results of this quantitative correlational study indicate that positive significant correlations exist between the occurrence of leadership practices and measures of business performance for first generation leaders of the selected family businesses. In addition, a disparity was found where effectively only two correlations existed between the variables for the second generation leaders. These results illuminate the potential differences in the ways that first and second generation leaders‘ lead family businesses. By empirically investigating the leadership practices of leaders in family businesses, this study has added to the limited quantity of leadership-related topics in family business literature. By way of the conceptual model developed in this study, a significant contribution has been made towards understanding the possible impact leadership practices have on business performance in these selected family businesses. As a result, this study presents propositions to assist founders to train future and existing family business leaders in leadership practices. / PhD (Business Management), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

The debate surrounding one’s right to know what is in one’s food has increased in popularity since 2012 when California became the first state to vote on Proposition 37 which would have mandated the labeling of genetically modified organisms. Proposition 37 was defeated due to the public relations campaign mounted by Monsanto and other corporate sponsors of genetically engineered seeds. Utilizing both a visual and written content analysis, this study identified the ethically problematic public relations strategies within the campaign to defeat Proposition 37, while also examining the content to determine whether the strategic communication must be classified as commercial or political speech pursuant to the First Amendment. Even though the campaign was found to be ethically problematic when applying the five elements of the TARES Test, it was beneficial to expand those components for future evaluations regarding all issues when a corporate speaker is involved in advocacy.

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This study develops a theoretical paradigm of narrative relations. The study posits the first-person narrator as a figure of authority within the text, a problematic figuration which implicates the text in issues of social relations and ideology with reference to questions of the narrator's empowerment. The study analyzes the first-person narrator's progressive engagement in the narrative relations of time and language as a means to assess the relative empowerment of the narrator by his narrating activity. The study argues for a Puritan legacy by which language retains its ability to empower and to enact a progression which, over time, has become a paradoxical diminishment of spiritual fulfillment. The first-person narrator thus stands as inheritor of the Puritan ministers whose status as the first American narrators confers on them an authority of origination to be acknowledged and supplanted by their successors. The form of this study seeks to unfold a progressive engagement of narrative relations, and models a movement toward a narrator fully engaged in progression, in mimicry of the Puritan doctrine of progression toward spiritual fulfillment. Using textual examples from among first-person narratives credited as the canon of American literature, the study associates characteristic narrative relations and empowerment with narrators it characterizes as impotent, including Ernest Hemingway's narrator, Jake Barnes, in The Sun Also Rises, and the unnamed narrators of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," Henry James's The Sacred Fount and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Characteristics of bachelor narrators are exemplified by Herman Melville's narrator, Ishmael, in Moby-Dick, and by Nathaniel Hawthorne's narrator, Miles Coverdale, in The Blithedale Romance. Affiliated narrators are discussed in terms of their textual enactment by F. Scott Fitzgerald's narrator of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Tennessee Williams's narrator of the reading edition of his play The Glass Menagerie, Tom Wingfield, and Walt Whitman's narrator of his poem, "Starting from Paumanock."