In recent years nursing literature has featured a proliferation of discourse pertaining to many aspects of spirituality in nursing. However, there has been a dearth of research related to nurses' personal spirituality and whether or not it helps to shape their nursing practice. This qualitative study explored how spirituality shapes the practice of community health nurses who work in First Nations communities in British Columbia (B.C.). The twelve participants, purposefully sampled, all had at least 2 years experience working in community health in First Nations communities. Using an interpretive descriptive research design, participants were interviewed to explore their lived experiences of spirituality relative to their nursing practice. The analysis of the interview data identified that nurses' spirituality is essential to their practice in terms of "providing care spiritually" versus "providing spiritual care" interventions to their patients as typically depicted in the nursing literature. Moreover, their spirituality is discussed as a pervasive nursing ethic and motivation for patient care that manifests as respect, connectedness, love, acceptance, caring, hope, endurance and compassion towards patients. Furthermore, the findings of this study suggest the integration of community health nurses' spirituality into their nursing practice may contribute to the wider aim of health and healing within First Nations communities. Four major themes are presented as research findings: (a) spirituality influences nurses' ability to remain self aware, open-minded and accepting in relation to others; (b) spirituality as a reflexive approach to grounding one's own nursing practice; (c) spiritual awareness fosters appreciation of the need for community healing, and finally (d) self-reflection and providing care spiritually as a route to reciprocal interaction. Also, it was identified that nurses' spirituality nurtures their reflexivity and helps them to: (a) foster culturally safe relationships with patients, (b) realize how colonial issues influence health status in First Nations patients, (c) recognize that cumulative work stress and burn out can be reduced and prevented through relational spiritual practices, and (d) work through their own values, beliefs and prejudices in order to practice nursing based on a model of reciprocal interaction, and culturally safe approaches.

This thesis focuses on the development of a "Keeping House" near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Although there is an extensive artifact collection in Saskatchewan, many First Nations' artifacts are spread out throughout the province, Canada, and in other countries. These artifacts are living items, with a story, history and ceremony attached to them and they are in need of repatriation through a process which ensures their safety and preservation. This project will offer environments for the safe-keeping of Saskatchewan First Nations' artifacts, as well as areas for teaching and ceremonies. It will also build on the existing historical strengths of the land on which it sits.

There is little understanding of federal policies, programs and processes (PPP) that structure and influence water infrastructure construction and water service delivery in First Nations communities in Canada. That First Nations face drinking water challenges is not new; however there is an acute cause for concern as recent federal funding initiatives have made limited gains. This thesis investigates the apparent disconnect between high-level PPP and ground-level outcomes through the perspectives of Ontario First Nations technical staff. Pioneering a unique approach to policy research, the thesis bridges elements of engineering, qualitative research and decolonizing methodologies to identify challenges and provide solutions. Specifically, participant interviews indicate incompatibilities between the PPP paradigm and the First Nations technical paradigm; a lack of accommodation for First Nations diversity; and a large separation between technical symptoms and their root causes. Three graphical tools, developed from the success factors and ideal vision findings, structure proposed PPP renewal. / A qualitative research investigation within the engineering field, involving decolonizing methodologies and an engineering problem-solving approach to tool development. / NSERC; Canadian Water Network; Engineers Canada

The use of technology has become increasingly popular in mathematics education. Instructors have implemented technology into classroom lessons, as well as various applications outside of the classroom. This thesis outlines technology developed for use in a first-year calculus classroom and investigates the relationship between the use of weekly formative online Maple T.A. quizzes and student performance on the final exam. The data analysis of the online quizzes focuses on two years of a five-year study. Linear regression techniques are employed to investigate the relationship between final exam grades and both how a student interacts with and performs on the online quizzes. A set of interactive class notes and a library of computer demonstrations designed to be used in and out of a calculus classroom are presented. The demonstrations are coded in Maple and designed to give geometric understanding to challenging calculus concepts.

First Person Shooter (FPS) games are one of the most popular game genres and have a history of over 2 decades. While there has been extensive research on such games, the focus has been limited to their analysis at an individual level. In this thesis, we present a comparative analysis of three first person shooter games - Doom, Quake3 and Cube from an architectural point of view. All of these games have come at different times in the history of first person shooter games, and thus possess different and unique features. We describe the process followed in deriving their architecture at various levels of abstraction – the file level, the subsystem level, the library/non-library level and the individual subsystem level for a given part of code. We conclude with a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences in the structure and architecture of the three gaming systems. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2014-01-13 15:26:25.387

States are the traditional focal point of democratic legitimation. In the standard model, the institution of the state is normatively privileged: it is the primary object of democratic legitimation, and the national political community is the primary subject. How, I ask, should the standard, state-centric model of democratic legitimation be transformed in light of the presence of substantive jurisdictional conflict and plural political identity? Substantive jurisdictional conflict describes a challenge to the state’s authority from non-state institutions that represent a territory which overlaps with a part of or extends beyond the state’s territory, make jurisdictional claims that are grounded independently from the state, and do not seek to form states themselves. Plural political identity describes the attachment of individuals to multiple political communities. Under these circumstances, I argue that non-state institutions can be important supplementary objects of democratic legitimation alongside states. The normative rationale for this transformation to the standard model is that adding non-state institutions as additional objects of democratic legitimation will enhance the ability of individuals and political communities to rule themselves. The basic shape of the model I develop is that the strength of competing jurisdictional claims can be assessed by comparing the primary roles of institutions. An account of an institution’s primary role describes its contribution to the production of democratic legitimation on behalf of a particular political community or political communities. The primary role of the state, for example, is to enable a project of democratic constitutionalism on behalf of the national political community. I then develop a criterion to guide state citizenries when considering how to respond to the claims of non-state institutions: they should distribute the jurisdiction necessary for non-state institutions to play their primary roles, subject to the qualification that their state’s primary role of enabling democratic constitutionalism is not negatively impacted. This approach pluralizes the meaning of democratic legitimation away from a strict association with the state towards multiple institutional locations.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Self-rated health (SRH) is a commonly used measure in surveys. The associations of SRH in Canadian First Nations populations have not previously been fully studied. Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analyses were conducted to determine how participants rated their health and what factors associated with SRH in a Manitoba First Nation. Respondents rated their health substantially worse than the general Canadian population. Men rated their health worse than women, and older adults rated their health worse than younger adults. In multivariate analyses, sex, hypertension, arthritis, the metabolic syndrome, number of chronic conditions, vision and mobility difficulties, perceived stress, perceived control over health and life, and community conditions were independently associated with SRH. These results suggest that asymptomatic conditions may be incorporated into the SRH of community members and suggest a complex interaction of health-related factors, stressors, and psychosocial factors that contribute to community members’ SRH.