Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2010-12-09 18:03:40.27 / This was a qualitative research study involving Aboriginal offenders at a Federal institution in the Ontario Region. The purpose of this study was to illuminate the Aboriginal offenders perspectives on their experiences that led to their incarceration. The major research questions guiding this study include: 1. What experiences do Aboriginal offenders feel contributed to their incarceration? 2. What do Aboriginal offenders feel could have prevented their incarceration? 3. How do Aboriginal offenders describe their experiences with the Residential School and child welfare systems? 4. What are the Aboriginal offenders' perspectives on their experiences with CSCs healing and intervention programs? One of the goals of this study was to provide information to CSC to improve the reintegration programs and help Aboriginal offenders become law abiding citizens. The data was collected from individual interviews, which was analyzed in detail to develop themes. The analyses sought for stories that captured the depth of the experiences that led to the Aboriginal offenders incarcerations. This study provided the personal perspective of the offenders as to how the Residential School and child welfare system have impacted their lives, and offers some insight into the over-representation of Aboriginal offenders in the prison system. This study also demonstrated how the socio-economic situation of these Aboriginal offenders played a role in their path towards prison. It is important to capture the voices of the Aboriginal offenders experiences towards incarceration. Their stories offer ways to help other Aboriginal people. We must have Aboriginal community members involved in the lives of Aboriginal youth to prevent them from getting into trouble, and find alternative positives outlets and activities. We must instill and provide hope and inspiration so that our youth have something to look forward to in their lives. I know this is happening to varying degrees in our Aboriginal communities; however, we need to keep working towards this goal. In addition, CSC might consider allocating more resources and financial assistance to Aboriginal communities, who are dealing with their people involved within the prison system. / Master

Through a storytelling/yarning methodology (Bessarab & Ng'andu, 2010) and experience centered narrative research (Patterson, 2008), three Indigenous followers of Jesus and original inhabitants of the lands currently known as Canada, shared their stories of healing. The storytelling/ yarning method (Bessarab & Ng'andu, 2010) is rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing and fit seamlessly with the participants diverse Indigenous backgrounds and shared oral traditions. Through the experience centered research model, each participant engaged in meaning making of their personal narratives, reconstructed and presented their stories as their human lived experience, and finally, revealed their metamorphosis (Patterson, 2008) and contributions to Indigenous knowledges. The experience centered research framework utilized for knowledge gathering worked concertedly with the storytelling/yarning methodology as the healing stories presented here evolved not as stories of defeat, but of strength (Bessarab & Ng'andu, 2010). Some key teachings and themes arising from their stories include trauma, forgiveness, resilience, family, healing, and hope. This study aims to reveal Indigenous stories of healing and cease the perpetuation of harm to Indigenous peoples who have declared Jesus as their source of healing. Furthermore, this study aims to situate the knowledges gathered through these healing stories within the academic body of Indigenous knowledges. / Graduate

This project is part of a community-based intervention research project in rural Appalachia called Mom Power. Mom Power is a trauma-informed parenting intervention developed to improve mental health and parenting among high-risk mothers with young children. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between maternal self-care beliefs, and maternal emotion regulation and coping skills. It was hypothesized that self-care beliefs would be negatively associated with emotion regulation difficulties and positively associated with coping skills. To date, 53 mothers oversampled for psychosocial stressors (e.g., low income, mental health difficulties, trauma histories) have completed self-report questionnaires on self-care, emotion regulation difficulties, and coping skills. Self-care beliefs were found to have a nonsignificant correlation with emotion regulation difficulties (r = -0.04) and a nonsignificant correlation with coping skills (r = 0.22). Though nonsignificant, the results add to our understanding of the relationship between these constructs such that there was a trend towards a positive relationship between self-care beliefs and coping, but not a relationship between self-care beliefs and emotion regulation difficulties. More research is needed on this topic to better provide for high-risk mothers.

Approximately 150,000 First Nation, Metis, and Inuit children attended Canadian residential schools from the 1840s to 1996. Most residential school children had negative experiences of physical, verbal, and sexual abuse that led to parenting repercussions once these children became parents. These repercussions of residential schools led to a rate of neglect for First Nation children 12 times higher than non-First Nation children. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological descriptive study was to explore the lived experiences of second generation parents, who were schooled in residential schools as children and their current parenting styles. The conceptual frameworks of trauma theory and family systems theory were used to understand the parenting styles of second-generation parents. Data were collected through one-on-one interviews with 20 second generation parents living within 10 Treaty 8 territory Woodland Cree reserves of Alberta, Canada. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded using NVivo10 software to determine common themes. The themes were little affection, too much alcohol and substance abuse, lack of positive reinforcement, an abundance of household chores, coparenting with extended family and friends, and spanking, revolving privileges, and yelling as forms of discipline. Social change may occur through better understanding of the parenting styles of second-generation parents. Recommendations include making levels of government aware of the need for a program to aid second-generation parents in healing from their past trauma. Another recommendation is that First Nation curricula should include the history and legacy of residential schools to allow children and their parents to acknowledge the effects of colonialism on their lives today and, hopefully, to overcome them.

In Canada, almost everybody is familiar with stereotypes about ‘Native social dysfunction’. Canada’s present-day “Imaginary Indian” (Francis) is indeed associated with substance and welfare dependence as well as family violence and neglect. However, the mainstream tends not to wonder about the actual social suffering behind the image and about the causes of these supposed patterns. In Daughters Are Forever, the Sto:lo / Squamish writer and activist Lee Maracle deconstructs these racist clichés by emphasizing the impact of the colonial process on real-life Native populations. Through a Sto:lo social worker’s attempts to understand how colonial policies have affected Aboriginal motherhood, Maracle demonstrates the roots of Indigenous social ills in collective traumas inflicted over several centuries and transmitted intergenerationally. The conclusion of the protagonist, Marilyn, that “[c]olonization is such a personal process” (216) summarizes the ways in which collective trauma and cultural genocide largely condition individual traumas and grief. Her parallel journeys to help an Anishnaabe woman patient, prevent the abductions of Native Canadian children by mainstream welfare services, and mend her own toxic relationship with her daughters further demonstrate the interrelatedness of Indian policy, patriarchal institutions, and personal and familial spiritual illnesses. They also enable Maracle to show the dangerous ethnocentrism of mainstream psychology and the need to create cross-cultural methodologies and therapies appropriate to the diverse Native North American cultures. By depicting the “unresolved human dilemmas” (Preface 11) of Aboriginal characters, she strives to create social change by drawing her readers into her stories to shock them into awareness.

In Canada, almost everybody is familiar with stereotypes about ‘Native social dysfunction’. Canada’s present-day “Imaginary Indian” (Francis) is indeed associated with substance and welfare dependence as well as family violence and neglect. However, the mainstream tends not to wonder about the actual social suffering behind the image and about the causes of these supposed patterns. In Daughters Are Forever, the Sto:lo / Squamish writer and activist Lee Maracle deconstructs these racist clichés by emphasizing the impact of the colonial process on real-life Native populations. Through a Sto:lo social worker’s attempts to understand how colonial policies have affected Aboriginal motherhood, Maracle demonstrates the roots of Indigenous social ills in collective traumas inflicted over several centuries and transmitted intergenerationally. The conclusion of the protagonist, Marilyn, that “[c]olonization is such a personal process” (216) summarizes the ways in which collective trauma and cultural genocide largely condition individual traumas and grief. Her parallel journeys to help an Anishnaabe woman patient, prevent the abductions of Native Canadian children by mainstream welfare services, and mend her own toxic relationship with her daughters further demonstrate the interrelatedness of Indian policy, patriarchal institutions, and personal and familial spiritual illnesses. They also enable Maracle to show the dangerous ethnocentrism of mainstream psychology and the need to create cross-cultural methodologies and therapies appropriate to the diverse Native North American cultures. By depicting the “unresolved human dilemmas” (Preface 11) of Aboriginal characters, she strives to create social change by drawing her readers into her stories to shock them into awareness.

In Canada, almost everybody is familiar with stereotypes about ‘Native social dysfunction’. Canada’s present-day “Imaginary Indian” (Francis) is indeed associated with substance and welfare dependence as well as family violence and neglect. However, the mainstream tends not to wonder about the actual social suffering behind the image and about the causes of these supposed patterns. In Daughters Are Forever, the Sto:lo / Squamish writer and activist Lee Maracle deconstructs these racist clichés by emphasizing the impact of the colonial process on real-life Native populations. Through a Sto:lo social worker’s attempts to understand how colonial policies have affected Aboriginal motherhood, Maracle demonstrates the roots of Indigenous social ills in collective traumas inflicted over several centuries and transmitted intergenerationally. The conclusion of the protagonist, Marilyn, that “[c]olonization is such a personal process” (216) summarizes the ways in which collective trauma and cultural genocide largely condition individual traumas and grief. Her parallel journeys to help an Anishnaabe woman patient, prevent the abductions of Native Canadian children by mainstream welfare services, and mend her own toxic relationship with her daughters further demonstrate the interrelatedness of Indian policy, patriarchal institutions, and personal and familial spiritual illnesses. They also enable Maracle to show the dangerous ethnocentrism of mainstream psychology and the need to create cross-cultural methodologies and therapies appropriate to the diverse Native North American cultures. By depicting the “unresolved human dilemmas” (Preface 11) of Aboriginal characters, she strives to create social change by drawing her readers into her stories to shock them into awareness. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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