The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of Klawock's Tribal Citizens' relationship to harvesting what is colloquially known as customary and traditional foods and/or native foods. The state and federal governments categorize these culturally specific goods as subsistence foods. An unearthed, 5,360-year-old basket potentially links modern day Klawock Tribal Citizens with their ancestral ties to the region. Throughout this time, families in this region of Southeast Alaska have been participating in a form of indigenous fishery. Despite access to multiple grocery stores and fish canneries, tribal citizens choose to expend their family's efforts to harvest their own sockeye out of the Klawock watershed. Oral history and ethnography and methodologies were employed to record personal relationships with the harvest of these resources while also documenting a context in which these relationships exist. Klawock Cooperative Association's staff worked alongside the student researcher and participants to analyze the data and produce findings. Engaging in customary and traditional activities rewards participants with intrinsic facets of their identity. Alongside reinforcing identities, these activities teach participants about family dynamics and working as a team, as well as the responsibilities that come with. These responsibilities are formed through the assignment of roles and provide people with purpose. The roles of individuals within their family dynamic parallel their understanding of their place within the larger society. Having a purpose and knowing their place shapes participant's accomplishments in the food system and honors them with feelings of pride. Based on these findings, KCA interprets customary and traditional activities as an epistemology in which increased access and participation provides an upwards trajectory of community health.

Through exploring nine Indigenous young adults’ perceptions of their roles in building health and wellness through traditional food sovereignty, I assessed the effectiveness of using John Paul Lederach’s (1997) framework of conflict transformation within an Indigenous context for the purpose of creating Indigenous food sovereignty. Conflict transformation does not acknowledge or address the detrimental effects colonization has had on Indigenous peoples within their daily lives. This gap in analysis stunted the effectiveness of conflict transformation in helping young Indigenous adults to challenge colonial authority and work towards developing sustainable approaches to Indigenous food sovereignty. Within the findings, roles emerged related to a generational cycle of learning and teachings traditional knowledge and cultural practices that are applied in the everyday lives of Indigenous peoples. “Learner-teacher cycles” are an Indigenous response to conflicts stemming from colonization. The cycle follows a non-linear progression of learning cultural and traditional knowledge from family and community and the transmission of that knowledge back to family and peers. Learner-teacher cycles are an everyday occurrence and are embedded within Indigenous cultures. Through the learner-teacher cycles, young adults challenge the effects of colonization within their day-to-day lives by learning and practicing cultural ways of being and traditional knowledge, and then transferring their knowledge to next generations and peers. I have concluded that conflict transformation is not an effective tool in resolving protracted conflicts within an Indigenous context, particularly with reference to Indigenous peoples from CoSalish and Dididaht territories on Turtle Island. Learner-teacher cycles, a framework based on Indigenous methods of challenging colonialism through learning, teaching and practicing cultural and traditional ways of being within everyday life, is an appropriate model for young Indigenous adults to use in creating Indigenous food sovereignty. / Graduate