This study examines the relationship between indigenous identity, ancestral land, and socio-politics in Brazil. The author analyzes the practices by which contemporary indigenous communities in Brazil physically reclaim their land from cattle ranchers and the impact of these practices on their self-representation, ideology, and social discourse. The first section of the study provides a historical overview of cultural politics from colonization to the 1991 Constitutional Decree that guaranteed Indians' rights allowing for the demarcation of ancestral lands. The second section examines the Xukuru do Ororubá in Northeastern Brazil with a focus on their struggle with local cattle ranchers and government officials as they move from peasant-farmers who rented their ancestral land from fazendeiros (ranchers or plantation owners) to legal occupants of their demarcated territory. The third section introduces the organization made up of Xukuru and non-indigenous advocates at the helm of projects in “sustainability”, and analyzes how and why these projects promote a new subjectivity and become en emblem of indigeneity and land ownership. / text

The nineteenth century discourse of extinction – a consensus of thought primarily based upon the assumption that ‘savage’ races would be displaced by the arrival of European civilisation – provided the intellectual foundation for policies which resulted in Aboriginal dispossession, internment, and death in Tasmania. For a long time, the Aboriginal Tasmanians were thought to have been annihilated. However, this claim is now understood to be fanciful. Aboriginality is no longer defined as a racial category but rather as an identity that has its basis in community. Nevertheless, extinction discourse continues to shape the features of modern literature about Tasmania. The first chapter of this dissertation will examine how extinction discourse was imagined in the nineteenth century and will trace the parallels that contemporary fiction about contact history shares with it. The novels examined include Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World by Mudrooroo, The Savage Crows by Robert Drewe, Manganinnie by Beth Roberts, and Wanting by Richard Flanagan. The extinctionist elements in these novels include a tendency to euglogise about the ‘lost race’ and a reliance on the trope of the last man or woman. The second chapter of the dissertation will examine novels that attempt to construct a representation of Aboriginality without reference to extinction. These texts subvert and ironise extinction discourse as a way of breaking the discursive continuities with colonialism and establishing a more nuanced view of Aboriginal identity in a post-colonial context. Novels analysed here include Drift by Brian Castro, Elysium by Robert Edric, and English Passengers by Matthew Kneale. / However, in attempting to arrive at new understandings about Aboriginality, non-Aboriginal authors are hindered by the epistemological difficulties of knowing and representing the Other. In particular, they seem unable to extricate themselves from the binaries of colonialism.

This dissertation interrogates obscured Indigenous identities by way of an original dramatic script that employs story-telling as an inherent cultural device that sustains a sense of peoplehood. In an art-based inquiry, I use Gerald Vizenor's notion of "postindian" to respond to the ways in which postindian identities establish "survivance"; that is, how the presence, resistance and endurance of Indigenous lives challenge simulations. Native histories in the shadow of dominance can be reimagined through cultural acts of resilience that overcome internalized oppressions or what Augusto Boal referred to as the "cop in the head". Reproductions of the image of oppressor are too often constructed in the image of self that prevents authentic being. The script demonstrates the criticality of authoring a counter-narrative that celebrates Indigenous history remembered and survived. Through Indigenous values of relationality and responsibility, it offers an unfinished third act of the play. The final act confers agency upon a future community audience to engage in an interactive style of participation known as Theater of the Oppressed to explore various resolutions.

This thesis examines the processes of urban Indigenous identity-making at the Victoria Native Friendship Centre (VNFC), and within Greater Victoria, B.C. more broadly. The diverse experiences of VNFC staff and community members are explored in relation to colonial narratives that fix Indigenous identities to ‘traditional’ ancestral spaces (Wilson and Peters 2005). This project contributes to the newly-emerging bodies of anthropological literature that focus on urban Indigenous identity construction and place-making. I carried out 8 semi-structured interviews with 11 Indigenous women (both VNFC staff and community members over the age of 18) and conducted informal participant observation at various locations around the Centre. Representing a range of different backgrounds and life histories, the women brought to light shared experiences of resistance, relationship-building, and finding balance that permeate identity-making at the Friendship Centre and in Greater Victoria. In addition to challenging discourses that assume “Indigenous people simply cannot be Indigenous in the city” (Watson 2010, 269), discussions with these women also highlight the resilience and adaptability of Indigenous identity-making that transcend spatial boundaries. / Graduate / 2017-08-19 / 0326 / 0740 / kneale26@uvic.ca

This dissertation is a study of diverse linguistic resources and contentious identity politics among indigenous Amazonian Kichwas in the city of Tena, Ecuador. Tena is a rapidly developing Amazonian provincial capital city with a long history of interethnic and interlinguistic contact. In recent decades, the course of indigenous Kichwa identity formation has been dramatically altered by increasing urban relocation, a burgeoning international eco-tourism industry, a generational language shift toward Spanish monolingualism, and the introduction of bilingual and intercultural education into native communities.The current era of nationalistic Ecuadorian "interculturality" and cultural tourism have heightened the public visibility of threatened indigenous practices. Paralleling these national social currents has been a growing indigenous activist movement in Ecuador that has very recently introduced a controversial new Kichwa language-planning project in Napo province. The national standard, Unified Kichwa, is currently being taught to a young population of indigenous students in the Tena region in an effort to create cultural and political solidarity among geographically separate communities. The move has been met with considerable backlash from Tena Kichwas who believe local Amazonian language identity and "natural" socialization practices are under threat of displacement.As part of this fracturing of ideologies surrounding language production and socialization, Tena Kichwas are creating innovative strategies for objectifying marked linguistic forms in order to use them for specific political purposes. The city of Tena has been reconceptualized as an indigenous space for publicly exhibiting opposing identity construction strategies, particularly through the use of new semiotic media, including folkloric performance and mass-communications technology. Language choice, variation and change are becoming very apparently politicized in this unique socio-cultural milieu, where new and old varieties are being symbolically elevated and denigrated through high-profile semiotic work. Language has become a critical site for the intellectualization of cultural change and a key vehicle for asserting rights to self-representation and self-determination.This dissertation combines theoretical and methodological approaches in linguistic anthropology, ethnographic sociolinguistics and discourse analysis to examine language variation, change and ideologization in progress. It attempts to illuminate aspects of the process by which language forms emerge and transform as products of social experience.

This thesis explores how urban Indigenous women experience reconnections to cultural identity when they take up the practice of traditional beadwork. A beading methodology was used to explore the experiences of five urban Indigenous women in Winnipeg. Within this methodology, stories and conversations about beadwork are used as a way to gather and share knowledge in research. Participants were asked to share their experience of identity reconnections through beadwork stories. The major elements of this beading methodology and its underlying theoretical, epistemological and ontological roots are told through the story of the beaded medicine bags that were created for and gifted to each participant for the knowledge they contributed to this research. The author’s own beaded medicine bag is also used as a framework for a thematic analysis and discussion of the research findings. The themes identified through this analysis suggest beading as a multi-faceted and action-oriented approach that facilitates processes of journeying, remembering, relationships, asserting the self and healing that urban Indigenous women experience through their engagement with this practice. This thesis concludes by highlighting some of the important implications of beading as an Indigenous way of knowing, being and doing in social work practice and research to promote decolonization, resiliency, wellness and healing in our work with Indigenous communities. / Graduate

Latin American literature can be characterized by its narrative styles and literary techniques to expose political instability, subversive movements and human rights violations. In South America, specifically in Peru, contemporary narrative and film depicts the guerra interna between the subversive movement, Sendero Luminoso, and the Peruvian government and its impact on the developing country. This study focuses on three texts --Mario Vargas Llosa\'s Lituma en los Andes (1993), Iván Thays\' Un lugar llamado Oreja de Perro (2008), and Santiago Roncagliolo\'s Abril rojo (2006)-- and two contemporary films --Claudia Llosa\'s Madeinusa (2006) and La teta asustada (2009). These works stay within the broader trajectory of Peruvian narrative and film\'s portrayal of the guerra interna. However, these works deviate from the norm by focusing on the indigenous populations\' involvement and subsequent consequences. This study examines how language, spirituality and violence dehumanizes the Peruvian indigenous during Peru\'s efforts at modernization. / Master of Arts

Research has noted the persistence of hostile campus environments for underrepresented college students. However, Native and Indigenous students continue to be one of the most understudied populations within higher education, particularly as it relates to their campus experience and ways in which they navigate institutional climates. In addition to illuminating the campus climates Native students face at predominantly White institutions, this dissertation examines the impact that Indigenous cultural centers have on their overall campus experience and persistence. As the primary method, it draws on 12 semi-structured interviews with Indigenous students at a predominately White institution within the Southeast United States. Findings from this study demonstrate the systemic colonization which exists in higher education through the analysis of microaggressions students regularly face. Unique to Native students, these were most often laden with narratives of erasure. However, in the face of less-than-ideal climates, participants in the study also derived a sense of community, affirmation, and support from the existence of a Native student center. Though participants derived many benefits from having such a space, they also indicated that the Native center was not always immune to the climate issues faced within the larger campus. These accounts contrast existing research on cultural centers. Findings from this study suggests that the narrow understanding of Indigenous identity as an exclusively racialized one, functions as a powerful tool in advancing erasure narratives within the space itself. / Doctor of Philosophy / Research has noted the persistence of hostile campus environments for underrepresented college students. However, Native and Indigenous students continue to be one of the most understudied populations within higher education, particularly as it relates to their campus experience and ways in which they navigate institutional climates. In addition to illuminating the campus climates Native students face at predominantly White institutions, this dissertation examines the impact that Indigenous cultural centers have on their overall campus experience and persistence. As the primary method, it draws on 12 semi-structured interviews with Indigenous students at a predominately White institution within the Southeast United States. Findings from this study demonstrate the ways in which colonization manifests in the higher education setting through the analysis of participant encounters in and out of the classroom. For Native students, these were most often laden with narratives of erasure or the idea that Native peoples have all but ceased to exist. However, in the face of less-than-ideal climates, participants in the study also derived a sense of community, affirmation, and support from the existence of a Native student center. Though participants derived many benefits from having such a space, they also indicated that the Native center was not always immune to the climate issues faced within the larger campus. These accounts contrast existing research on cultural centers. Findings from this study suggests that the narrow understanding of Indigenous identity as an exclusively racialized one, functions as a powerful tool in advancing erasure narratives within the space itself.

This study used life experience methods to gather the narratives of seven adult Indigenous transracial adoptees who have reclaimed their Indigenous identities after experiencing closed adoption during the late 1950s through to the early 1980s. Participants had been members of Aboriginal (First Nations, Metis, Inuit) communities at birth but were then raised outside their Indigenous nations in non-Indigenous families. Through analysis of their stories, I identified four themes that marked their trajectories to reclamation: Imposed fracture (prior to reclamation); Little anchors (beginning healing); Coming home (on being whole); Our sacred bundle (reconciling imposed fracture). Their stories of reconnecting to their Indigeneity, decolonizing and healing illustrate their shifts from hegemonic discourse spaces that characterized their lived experiences as “other” to spirit-based discourses that center Indigenous knowledge systems as valid, life affirming, and life changing. This dissertation contributes to the debate on state sanctioned removal of children and the impacts of loss of Indigenous identity in Canadian society. My findings indicate that cultural and spiritual teachings and practices, as well as, the knowledge of colonization and its impacts on Indigenous families, communities, and nations, all contributed to adoptees’ healing and ability to move forward in their lives. Key recommendations include: further exploration of the concept of cultural genocide in relation to settler-colonial relations in Canada; further examination of the intersection of counter-narratives, resistance discourse, and colonial violence; increased investigation of the connections between Indigenous knowledge systems, living spirit-based teachings and educative aspects of community wellness; and more research examining education beyond formal schooling, including the formative effects upon Indigenous youth of social values, public policy, and legal frameworks. / Graduate

Since they first emerged into the public consciousness in 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) has gathered considerable attention and support on the world stage for its struggle with the Mexican federal government over the issue of indigenous rights. The Zapatistas are now popularly viewed as indigenous rebels standing up for indigenous rights against the neoliberal economics. Yet comparatively less attention has been given to its struggles with the federal government over an area of protected land within the Lacandón jungle known as the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. The conflict is centered on a large settler population within the Reserve and whether it is a threat to the jungles viability. The environmental group, Conservation International (CI) believes that they are, yet the settlers enjoy the support of the EZLN, who opposes any attempt to move them. Despite this dispute, the two organizations claim seemingly similar goals. CI has declared that it is dedicated to local control over conservation projects. Meanwhile, EZLN has been fighting for greater local political power in regards to indigenous government. More striking still, is that this matter has placed the EZLN in direct opposition to the Lacandón Maya, even though it has portrayed itself as the defender of all of Mexicos indigenous people.<p>It is these apparent contradictions between the EZLNs political positions and the actual sides of the conflict that make the struggle over Montes Azules worth examining. Beyond the simplified statements of public platforms, the objections of the EZLN to the reserve and its supporters to the Lacandones position are rooted in historical conflicts over decision making on landholding. The EZLN feels that the government has constantly excluded indigenous farmers from decision making over this matter to their detriment and thus it feels that local control over land is a fundamental part of indigenous life. As such its position on Montes Azules must be understood in terms of how its ideas of being indigenous come into conflict with the Lacandón Mayas territory in the reserve and CIs position on the settler population. In this way indigenous identity is seen not merely as a matter of cultural significance, but a foundation for a concrete political agenda, which is articulated in the EZLNs stance over Montes Azules.