The Green New Deal has gained international significance as the only prominent climate legislation in the United States. The Green New Deal has also become emblematic of a larger movement for climate justice; however, further analysis of the Green New Deal and its assumptions indicates that it falls short of enacting meaningful justice for those most effected by climate change, but least responsible for causing it. This shortcoming is due to the absence of calls to decolonize. Because of the large role U.S. militarism and imperialism play in contributing to the climate crisis, decolonization must be central to climate justice projects. Marx's concept of the metabolic rift and the phenomenon of humans' separation from nature through colonial acts of dispossession and enclosure of land plays an important role in thinking through the ways the Green New Deal recognizes this same phenomenon but fails to go deeper and recognize broader implications of the metabolic rift for continued U.S. imperialism. Additionally, the rocky legacy of the environmental justice movement raises questions as to whether working with the settler state can lead to meaningful justice. Though the Green New Deal is an operation of state recognition of the climate crisis as connected to other social inequalities, it does not overcome the settler state's reliance on racial capitalism and continued exploitation of people and the environment. A climate justice program that is in fact centered on decolonization and indigenous sovereignty is available and must be supported. / Master of Arts / The Green New Deal has gained international significance as the only prominent climate legislation in the United States. The Green New Deal has also become emblematic of a larger movement for climate justice; however, further analysis of the Green New Deal and its assumptions indicates that it falls short of enacting meaningful justice for those most effected by climate change, but least responsible for causing it. The project of the Green New Deal recognizes the phenomenon of humans' separation from nature and importantly seeks to connect environmental issues to social issues and assert environmental justice through state-led action. Because the Green New Deal fails to question the larger role of the U.S. military's involvement around the world and its pollution and wastefulness, it becomes complicit in the very forces that drive the climate crisis. A project of decolonization, which would involve ending U.S. military involvement at home and abroad and asserting indigenous nations' sovereignty, addresses many of the shortcomings of the Green New Deal.

In light of the recognition of continuing Indigenous sovereignty by the Supreme Court of Canada and the requirement that that sovereignty and de facto Crown sovereignty be reconciled within a shared constitutional order, Canada needs a new approach to negotiating the exercise of Indigenous sovereignty. Any new approach must be built around a coherent understanding of the Constitution as a whole, most importantly the constitutional principle of reconciliation and the other unwritten principles articulated by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Reference re. Secession of Quebec. The four unwritten principles which the Supreme Court of Canada identified in the Quebec Secession Reference do not represent a barrier to the exercise of Indigenous sovereignty, if interpreted in light of the reconciliation principle. Indeed, the principles of federalism and the protection of minorities support the protection of distinct Indigenous political and legal institutions. Because they are exercising a continuing sovereignty, rather than an aboriginal right as that term is currently understood under section 35, Indigenous peoples also need not return to traditional forms of governance in their entirety in a modern self-government regime; they may also adopt more or less of the Euro-Canadian forms with which they have become familiar as citizens of Canada, such that modern Indigenous institutions could be quite consistent with mainstream understandings of the four unwritten principles of the Constitutions. As with other institutions of governance, Indigenous peoples have long traditions of dispute resolution that they could draw upon in the context of the modern exercise of their sovereignty. Nor do Indigenous peoples need to return to these traditional methods in their entirety, either; again, they could adopt elements of Euro-Canadian legal traditions. There are numerous precedents around the world for Indigenous legal institutions that combine elements of Indigenous customs of dispute resolution and common-law judicial structures. What is important is that Indigenous peoples have the right to design their own institutions for the interpretation, as well as the creation, of law and the resolution of disputes if they are to exercise their sovereignty within the Canadian constitutional and political system as a third order of government. / Thesis (Master, Law) -- Queen's University, 2009-09-24 08:41:11.447

Canadian processes such as the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and Comprehensive Land Claims as well as flashpoint events (Simpson & Ladner, 2010) such as the Kanien’kehaka resistance at Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke (the “Oka Crisis”) and more recently, the Idle No More movement, signal to Canadians that something is amiss. What may be less visible to Canadians are the 400 years of colonial oppression experienced and the 400 years of resistance enacted by Indigenous peoples on their lands, which are currently occupied by the state of Canada. It is in the context of historical and ongoing Canadian colonialism: land theft, dispossession, marginalization, and genocide, and in the context of the overwhelming denial of these realities by white settler Canadians that this study occurs. In order to break through settler Canadian denial, and to inspire greater numbers of white settler Canadians to initiate and/or deepen their anti-colonial and/or decolonial understandings and work, this study presents extended life narratives of white settler Canadians who have engaged deeply in anti-colonial and/or decolonial work as a major life focus. In this study, such work is framed as living in Indigenous sovereignty, or living in an awareness that we are on Indigenous lands containing their own protocols, stories, obligations, and opportunities which have been understood and practiced by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Inspired by Indigenous and anti-oppressive methodologies, I articulate and utilize an anti-colonial research methodology. I use participatory and narrative methods, which are informed and politicized through words gifted by Indigenous scholars, activists, and Knowledge Keepers. The result is research as a transformative, relational, and decolonizing process. In addition to the extended life narratives, this research yields information regarding connections between social work education, social work practice, and the anti-colonial/decolonial learnings and work of five research subjects who have, or are completing, social work degrees. The dissertation closes with an exploration of what can be learned through the narrative stories, with recommendations for white settler peoples and for social work, and with recommendations for future research. / February 2017

In this thesis, I argue for anti-colonial constructions of the non-Aboriginal self. I take as my starting point that members of the invader/settler society in Australia must place them/ourselves in “an embodied awareness of ‘being in Indigenous sovereignty’” (Nicholl, 2004: 17) and name them/ourselves accordingly. An anti-colonial construction of non-Aboriginality formed within the locus of Aboriginal Sovereignty undermines the potency of ‘post-colonial’ processes of identity formation, which privilege the colonialist centre, and the concomitant marginalised position of Indigenous people. Thus, an anti-colonial construction of non-Aboriginality constitutes a radical recentring for processes of identity construction within invader/settler societies. This work responds to critical whiteness studies and post-colonial discourses of ‘belonging’. I acknowledge both whiteness studies and work on invader/settler belongings have gained traction in recent years as a means to problematise the whiteness of the settler/invader group and the legitimacy of their/our belongings. However, I argue they continue to operate within colonialist paradigms and perpetuate (neo)colonial power relations. In this thesis, I argue anti-colonial constructions of non-Aboriginality are constructed in dialogue with Aboriginal people. I conceive non-Aboriginality as a political identity that rejects ‘race’ and ‘colour’ as markers for identity. ‘Non-Aboriginality’ enables members of invader/settler societies to articulate support for Aboriginal Sovereignty and Aboriginal claims for social justice and human rights.

BACKGROUND: Indigenous populations in the United States (US) experience worse health outcomes and higher disease prevalence compared to the US all race population. The World Health Organization (WHO), Canadian research on Indigenous-specific determinants, the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, and the Native Nation's Institute have all identified governance as a determinant that impacts community health and development. This dissertation explored the active and potential role of Indigenous nations' governance, since the Native nation building era commenced in the 1970s, in protecting and promoting family and community health. OBJECTIVES: The dissertation aims were to: (1) describe the state of population data for US Indigenous nations and benefits of engaging with data, data sovereignty, and data governance for US Indigenous nations, (2) outline the history and current state of tribal public health relative to other US public health systems, and (3) elucidate the assumptions and applicability of the social determinants of health framework to Indigenous health contexts. METHODS: This mixed-methods study integrated retrospective quantitative and primary quantitative and qualitative data from case studies with six reservation-based American Indian tribes with qualitative data collected in a focus group and two consensus panels of public health practitioners and scholars. RESULTS: The results by aim were: (1) self-determination with regard to health and other population data offers Indigenous nations opportunities to create and access relevant and reliable data to inform policy and resource allocations, (2) the federal government and others have not invested in tribal public health authority infrastructures in ways similar to investments made in federal, state, and local public health authorities, resulting in tribal public health systems falling below other public health authorities in function and capacity, and (3) underlying Euro-Centric assumptions imbedded in the social determinants of health framework reduce its applicability in Indigenous health contexts. CONCLUSIONS: This study contributes to understanding the roles of Indigenous nation self-determination and sovereignty in defining health to align with Indigenous philosophies of wellness. Guided by Indigenous-specific determinants of health, tribes can set community-based, culture-informed methods and metrics for establishing, monitoring, and assessing public health policies and programs to support healthy communities and families. RECOMMENDATIONS: Indigenous nations, in partnership with researchers and other governments as appropriate, should develop framework(s) for tribal health that include broad, shared, and nation-specific definitions of health, healthy families and communities, and health determinants. Federal, state, and local governments should partner with Indigenous nations to improve tribal public health infrastructures and to support tribal data sovereignty and data governance through building tribal data capacity, aligning data with tribal self-conceptions, and forming data sharing agreements.

This thesis explores a conception of dual sovereignty, consisting of Indigenous and state sovereignties existing and operating within the same territorial space. A dual sovereignty construct, standing in distinct contrast with the common settler-held presumption of Canadian state sovereignty and hegemony, provides a superior frame for articulating just relations between Indigenous peoples, the Canadian state, and that state’s citizens. The thesis examines the role of agreement-making in defining relations between sovereign Indigenous peoples and the state, both in treaty and non-treaty form. Focused on non-treaty agreements that pertain to land and resources in the province of British Columbia, a case study approach reveals a congruence of several such agreements with elements of a dual sovereignty construct. Some of the agreements exhibit substantial compatibility with a dual sovereignty concept, with dialogical forms of recognition and a well-articulated Indigenous land-use vision and worldview built into the agreement-making process. Those agreements centered on land-use planning seem particularly well equipped to embrace a more dialogical process that creates space for an Indigenous vision, and allows Indigenous Nations to expand their institutional and structural power meaningfully in relation to the state. Agreements designed primarily to help manage the state-driven consultation processes that are required under Canadian state law seem inherently monological by contrast, providing only a restricted space for increased institutional or structural power of Indigenous peoples. / Graduate

Colonization within Indigenous territories has impacted Indigenous governance structures and women in leadership in different ways. In order to best understand the violence, displacement and oppression that Coast Salish women face today we need to focus on the ways that the state has attacked the powerful role that si´em slheni´ (honoured and respected woman) held within her socio-political societies prior to contact. I use an historical institutional analysis to draw out the ways that history has impacted Coast Salish people. I also utilize Diane Million’s Felt Theory (2008) by weaving Coast Salish women’s stories, experiences, and understandings of colonization within their own ancestral territories. The research question at hand is: How have Coast Salish si´em slhunlhéni´ (honoured and respected women) been impacted due to colonization historically and how are these impacts still affecting our slhunlhéni´ and our communities today? In asking this question, I hope to urge the reader to engage a territorially-based approach in dealing with the violence and displacement that Indigenous women in Canada face today. I aim to do so by illustrating what an approach based in Coast Salish history and governance would look like. I argue that if we do not choose to take up a territorial based approach, we are only furthering the erasure and silencing of Indigenous womanhood denying its resurgence. I highlight how settler statecraft has played out in Coast Salish territory and explore the myriad of ways that racist ideologies and colonial violence have taken shape within Coast Salish territories. To do so, I examine the different ways that the state has attempted to control and pathologize coastal people and illustrate the shift that has occurred in moving from Coast Salish economies to capitalism. Ultimately, I demonstrate the multi-faceted approach taken by legislative discrimination that was fueled by ideological racism that the settler colonial project depends upon in order to maintain control over Indigenous lands, waters, and people. By examining these issues, I highlight how the settler project was able to weaken slhunlhéni´ role and therefore firmly establish itself within Coast Salish territories Finally, I turn to present day reality in Coast Salish territory and argue that while there are ways the state, settlers and Indigenous people living within Coast Salish territories are attempting to address the wrongs of colonization, Coast Salish women’s voices and roles are being left out of decolonial discourse and actions. In order to liberate Coast Salish women, we need to turn back to our ancestral ways and for those who are not a descendant to these territories one must work to understand what your responsibility is to the local people and women of these lands. In this way, centering a territorially based approach to governance in all acts of resurgence and decolonial action allows for Coast Salish women to maintain authority, therefore empowering these women. Centering local laws and governance will center Indigenous women, lifting them from the displaced positions they find themselves in today. / Graduate

abstract: Scholars have diversified notions of sovereignty with indigenous frameworks ranging from native sovereignty to cultural sovereignty. Within this range, there exists only a small body of research investigating technology in relation to indigenous sovereignty, excepting the colonial implications of guns, germs, film, and literacy. Furthermore, there is a lack of inquiry on how indigenous peoples operationalize their sovereignty through designs and uses of technology that combine emerging digital media technologies, old electronic media, and traditional indigenous media. This “indigenous convolution media” leads to what is referred to in this research as Indigenous Technological Sovereignty or “Tecno-Sovereignty.” This dissertation begins to address knowledge gaps regarding the dynamic relationship between technology and indigenous sovereignty, and it posits that Tecno-Sovereignty is operationalized when indigenous groups exercise their own self-determined designs and uses of mediums and media to address their particular needs and desires. Therefore, Tecno-Sovereignty is comprised of the social, cultural, political, and economic effects of indigenous technology. This dissertation, a compendium of essays, presents an indigenous theory of media and sovereignty: defining a vision of Tecno-Sovereignty; arguing the purpose and importance of Tecno-Sovereignty; demonstrating how Tecno-Sovereignty is operationalized; and revealing capacity-building recommendations for the further development of indigenous technological sovereignty. Additionally, this research, through an exhibition of indigenous convolution media, calls attention to indigenous praxes of art, technology, and learning that are both grounded by and support the theories proposed in this research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2015

Canada 150, or the sesquicentennial anniversary of Confederation, celebrates a nation-state that can be described as “settler colonial” in relation to Indigenous peoples. This thesis brings a Critical Religion and Critical Discourse Analysis methodology into conversation with Settler Colonial and Indigenous Studies to ask: how is Canadian settler colonial sovereignty enacted, and how do Indigenous peoples perform challenges to that sovereignty? The parliamentary mace and the eagle feather are conceptualized as emblematic and condensed metaphors, or metonyms, that assert and represent Canadian and Indigenous sovereignties. As a settler colonial sovereignty, established and naturalized partially through discourses on religion, Canadian sovereignty requires the displacement of Indigenous sovereignty. In events from 1990 to 2017, Indigenous people wielding eagle feathers disrupt Canadian governance and challenge the legitimacy of Canadian sovereignty. Indigenous sovereignty is (re)asserted as identity-based, oppositional, and spiritualized. Discourses on Indigenous sovereignty and spirituality provide categories and concepts through which Indigenous resistance occurs within Canada.