Native Indian Cultural Centres have grown out of the on-going struggle for native self-determination and are rapidly becoming a focus for native cultural revitalization. This thesis investigates the evolution of two Northwest Coast native Indian cultural centres--the 'Ksan Village and the Makah Cultural and Research Centre (MCRC)—through each stage of development, outlining the historical, cultural, economic and social context, the form and function of conceptual development and the planned and unplanned processes involved in building and operating each centre. Analysis has indicated that 'Ksan and the MCRC have evolved as a response to local cultural and economic pressures and opportunities and have been funded primarily on the basis of economic rather than cultural viability. Six factors were found to be collectively sufficient to promote the successful development of each cultural centre: local cultural knowledge, social mobilization, local project relevance, native Indian control, access to resources and common motivational ground. The relationship between native Indians and non-native specialists is changing. Native people are no longer allowing non-native specialists to define their culture and interpret their heritage and 'Ksan and the MCRC have positively re-inforced that change. The development of native Indian cultural centres has provided an important step in the on-going native struggle for self-determination by providing a focus and/or forum for native cultural identity and is likely to continue in the future. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Despite the recent proliferation of work around the subject of residential schools, few analyses have deconstructed the concept of "civilizing the Indian" which animated the schools' agendas. This thesis examines the discourse of "civilization" as it was expressed and enacted in two missions in late nineteenth-century British Columbia. Archival primary sources and published secondary sources are drawn on to provide an understanding of what "civilization" meant to Euro-Canadians, specifically missionaries, and how it was to be "taught" to the indigenous peoples they encountered. Colonial images and photographs, in particular, reveal how missionaries constructed a vivid and compelling contrast between "civilization" and "savagery." An intersectional framework is employed to highlight the ways in which ideas about "race," class, gender and sexuality were essential elements of the "civilizing" project. The goal of the thesis is to show how "civilizing the Indian" was premised not only on a specifically hierarchical construction of Whites versus Natives, but also intersecting binaries of men versus women, normal productive heterosexuality versus deviant degenerate sexuality, bourgeois domesticity versus lower class depravity, and others. Ultimately, it is argued, the discourse of "civilization" regulated both the "colonized" and the "colonizers" as it secured the hierarchical foundations of empire and nation. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation proceeds from the Algonquins of Barriere Lake’s enactments of Indigenous law as a praxis of care against colonial systems that commoditize Anishnabe children and land. It emerges from a co-designed nation and community-specific ethnographic and archival study with the Algonquins of Barriere Lake to analyze the Youth Protection system, and a co-designed ethnographic and archival project with the Ottawa-based Sixties Scoop Network on healing, displacement, and reparations for the 60s Scoop. Through using the land, Barriere Lake maintain their sacred connections to animals, ancestors and water. This dissertation thinks care in three registers: as Anishnabe ‘physical, emotional and spiritual’ relations of care on land, as daily assertions of Indigenous legal praxis, and as critiques of settler political economy. In November 2015, members of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake rallied at the offices of the CISSSO, a Quebec Youth Protection agency in Maniwaki, Quebec that has placed 147 children from their 792-person First Nation into out of home care since 1990. Barriere Lake mothers held signs asserting “Our children are not commodities.” Throughout the fall of 2015, the community held a camp to protect their lands from exploratory drilling by the junior mining company Copper One; a sign declaring ‘This land is not for sale.’ As CISSSO (2019) secures nearly $2 million annually by taking Barriere Lake children from their kin settler industries extract over $100 million in resources from Barriere Lake’s territories. Canada’s genocidal church-run, state-mandated Residential Schools system was instituted as the nascent nation began to create its wealth and home from Native lands and resources. Between 1951-1991 (the Sixties Scoop), over 22 500 Indigenous children were removed from their kin into predominantly non-native homes (Brown v Canada 2017). In 2016, Canada’s national resources sector accounted for $216 billion; while in 2018 the child welfare system generated $2.5 billion and billions more in family stipends and allowances from a system in which over 52.5% of children are Indigenous (StatsCan 2016, 2018). The gendered fiscal and libidinal economies of Canadian colonialism incentivize the apprehension of Indigenous children and criminalize Indigenous caregivers, especially mothers (2016 CHRT 2). By examining how present systems reproduce the gendered violence of child-taking and abuse systematized in Residential Schools, this dissertation argues that Canada securitizes its economy of extraction from Indigenous lands through the mass abduction of Indigenous children into the child welfare system. Algonquin Anishnabeg jurisdiction is asserted as a praxis of care which, waged daily along with Sixties Scoop survivor struggles for justice, unwinds the fabric of a system of child-taking and land-theft.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to describe and compare the post-school adjustment of Native American youth who received special education or regular education services on White Mountain Apache Indian reservation in Arizona. This study reflects what the students have been doing since they left school, whether their school experiences have prepared them for life in general, and how their personal history helps identify their values, outlooks, and current community standing. In an effort to assess the transition status of these former students, a 38 item survey instrument was developed. A total of 132 students were identified from the Alchesay high school records. Of this number, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 106 former (80%) students. Students were compared in five areas which have been identified as important to successful transition from school to adult life. Comparisons were made on the respondents opinions of their secondary school education, employment status, independent living, maladjustment, and culture/traditionality. SES stated that mathematics, resource programs, and English prepared them for the job market whereas mathematics, office skills, science, and business education were selected by the RES. All the respondents wished for computer education. Only 31% of the total sample was employed up to five years after leaving school. Seventy-four percent of the students still live with their parents. Forty-four percent of both groups had arrest records, and 68% of both groups had a history of substance abuse. Sixty-four percent of the respondents use and speak the Apache language most of the time. Parents and the extended family provide the majority of guidance and support as these young adults seek employment, community integration and social adjustment. There is a pressing need for transitional programs, better job programs, and substance abuse preventive programs for both groups of Apache post-high school students.

Taste--an appreciation for some things, a disdain for others--is usually understood by sociologists as playing a key role in struggles for position within closed, hierarchical status systems. Yet taste that reaches across cultural and social boundaries is a common phenomenon in a world of mobility and falling barriers to travel and access. This study argues that this expression of taste also has a political dimension, through an examination of the sponsorship of traditional Pueblo Indian pottery by Anglo newcomers to northern New Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s. The organization that these newcomers founded, the Indian Arts Fund, played an important role in building a differentiated market for Pueblo pottery, supported by an increasingly complex body of knowledge and evaluation. This intervention into the market for pottery, and into the definition of Pueblo culture, served to insert the Indian Arts Fund's members into regional society, against the resistance of older, more established elites. A visible association with Pueblo pottery linked newcomers to the transformation of the regional economy by tourism, which had shifted the source of value in northern New Mexico from natural resources to the marketing of particularity and difference. An examination of the role of pottery production, and income from pottery, in Pueblo communities reveals that the relationship between pottery and Pueblo culture was more complex, and more tangential, than the image that was being constructed in the context of the market.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the relationship between educational attitudes and certain background features of Native Americans, in particular, where they were raised and what type of school they attended. The sample used consisted of 120 completed mail out-mail back surveys that were used primarily as a Needs Assessment for the Portland Indian Health clinic. The sample was randomly selected from the Portland Indian Health Clinic client/patient mailing list. The findings of this thesis indicate that the attitudes of Native Americans toward education in general are positive. The findings also indicate that older Native Americans who experienced being sent to a B.I.A. boarding school off the reservation have the least positive attitudes towards Indian Education programs. Implications and recommendation for further research are discussed.

Thesis (M.A in anthropology)--Washington State University, December 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-105)

In this thesis, stature reconstruction of three prehistoric/protohistoric Native American populations (from Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and South Dakota) was performed using the Fully Anatomical method in order to formulate regression equations and analyze the ability of regression equations of other researchers to accurately estimate the statures within my study populations. The calculation of regression equations demonstrated that even though there was a significant difference in the statures of the three populations, they were similar enough in body proportions such that regression equations from the pooled sample could be used to accurately estimate statures from all three groups as well as 12 randomly chosen individuals from outside the study sample. Results of statures calculated using the regression formulae of other researchers on my sample populations forced me to conclude that there is too much variation between populations to allow for much inter-populational applicability except in those cases where the populations are similar enough in proportion. For my study groups, the best equations for estimating statures (besides the ones formulated specifically for them) were those of Sciulli et al. for Ohio native Americans, followed closely by Trotter and Gleser's 1952 and 1958 equations. The femur/stature ratio of Feldesman et al (1990) performed relatively poorly, and the formulae of Genoves' for Mesoamericans (1967) were the least accurate. While individual statures may be more highly influenced by genes, the mean statures of populations or homogeneous geographical groups is more controlled by common levels of nutrition, stress, and environment of the individuals within that group. The Arikara were the tallest population: the female mean of that group were as tall as the male means from both the Alaskan and Aleutian populations. The populations in this study differed in their degree of sexual dimorphism, with the Arikara individuals showing the greatest stature difference and dimorphism between males and females. The distal limb bones of the arms and the legs of the individuals from both Alaska and the Aleutian Islands show significant shortening when compared to those of the Arikara, supporting "biogeographical" rules of human adaptations to chronically cold environments. The results of this study illustrate how important it is for researchers to keep studying (and publishing regression equations for) statures of prehistoric and historic populations. Until someone develops a formulae that can truly be applied to populations everywhere-as the femur/stature ratio and the line of organic correlation attempted to-there is too much variation between groups to allow researchers to continue to apply equations not applicable to their population. / Graduation date: 2002

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Montana, 2006. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed Mar. 29, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-125).