<p> The negative statistics pertaining to American Indian women education should cause concern for everyone. The data reflect that American Indian women graduate high school behind all other demographic categories. In contrast, all participants of this study graduated high school and ascended to various levels of higher education. This paradox lends itself to further investigation despite opposing views of some scholars who believe there is nothing more to add. This research explored the existence of a correlation between culture and education for American Indian women who served in the pow wow princess role. Members of the American Indian women were called-upon for their cultural insights and tacit knowledge that is unknown to many outsiders. Interviewing pow wow princesses and exploring the role they fulfilled as a pow wow princess within the American Indian community produced information and data that was used to analyze the existence of a correlation between positive educational outcomes of American Indian women who have served in the pow wow princess role. This research helped to create a better understanding and essence of the pow wow princess role from the perspective of American Indian women who served in this role and being able to apply gained knowledge to other areas of the American Indian body of research. The design of this research employed a qualitative mixed methods approach that was used to conduct field research and gather data through administering the American Indian Enculturation Scale survey designed by Winderowd, Montgomery, Stumblingbear, Harless, and Hicks (2008) and conducting personal interviews with a questionnaire developed by the researcher that triangulated the selected instruments with theories contained within the body of research. The findings of this study suggest there is a correlation between the pow wow princess role and positive educational outcomes of American Indian women serving in this role. These findings support and add to the existing body of research.</p>

<p> This multi-modal dissertation examines the historical hegemonic making of U.S. education, and how compulsory schooling has framed acceptable notions of culture, language/literacy, and knowledge production. Through this criticism of colonization and education, theoretical and practical alternatives are explored for the opportunities outside mainstream schooling in the US. In examining the literary work on decolonizing education, these efforts can engage in unlearning of coloniality by finding examples from a time before colonization. In contemporary society, the practice of de/unschooling can hold the possibilities for decolonizing education. To demonstrate how families of color in the U.S. engage with unschooling, interview questions serve as the sharing of knowledge and experience so as to ground the research in lived reality. A brief survey of critical education and critical pedagogy broadens those already critical of schools and/or receptive to the criticism of schools and the un/deschooling alternative then places student and family/community as the center of learning and teaching.</p>

<p> In this ethnographic study I demonstrate how eight Barrow, Alaska entities communicate during meetings and how different Barrow groups perceive the stakeholder engagement process as it has taken place in the past forty years with development organizations. This research was motivated by the limited research on locals&rsquo; perspective on development meetings. Nearly all the participants were men and identified themselves as I&ntilde;upiat; most had spent significant time in Barrow and in stakeholder engagement meetings. Interviews and participant observations reveal the complex communication practices in stakeholder engagement meetings including local and external norms, the expression of common local concerns, nonverbal communication patterns, and the use of the I&ntilde;upiaq language. While many participants were tired of repeating their concerns, experienced meeting burnout, and were frustrated by outside groups &ldquo;checking the box&rdquo; (just going through the motions without real engagement), they also considered that the stakeholder engagement process has improved due to the increased benefits and diminished risk associated with development projects. Furthermore, participants&rsquo; explanations of the oil &ldquo;seasons,&rdquo; a term they use to describe fluctuating market conditions, align with the frequency distribution analysis conducted on stakeholder engagement meetings over the last decade. Recommendations derived from this research include a need for sharing of stakeholder perceptions and concerns, modifying cultural awareness sessions, consolidating all organizations&rsquo; stakeholder engagement meetings, and changing the format of public development organization meetings. </p>

<p> In recent years, an unprecedented level of interest has grown around the prospect of sending humans to Mars for the exploration and eventual settlement of that planet. With the signing of the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, this goal became the official policy of the United States and consequently, has become the long-term objective of NASA's human spaceflight activities.</p><p> A review of past Mars mission planning efforts, however, reveals that while numerous analyses have studied the challenges of transporting people to the red planet, relatively little analyses have been performed in characterizing the challenges of sustaining humans upon arrival. In light of this observation, this thesis develops HabNet &ndash; an integrated Habitation, Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS), In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), and Supportability analysis framework &ndash; and applies it to three different Mars mission scenarios to analyze the impacts of different system architectures on the costs of deploying and sustaining a continuous human presence on the surface of Mars.</p><p> Through these case studies, a number of new insights on the mass-optimality of Mars surface system architectures are derived. The most significant of these is the finding that ECLS architecture mass-optimality is strongly dependent on the cost of ISRU &ndash; where open-loop ECLS architectures become mass-optimal when the cost of ISRU is low, and ECLS architectures with higher levels of resource recycling become mass-optimal when the cost of ISRU is high. For the Martian surface, the relative abundance of resources equates to a low cost of ISRU, which results in an open-loop ECLS system supplemented with ISRU becoming an attractive, if not dominant surface system architecture, over a range of mission scenarios and ISRU performance levels.</p><p> This result, along with the others made in this thesis, demonstrates the large potential of integrated system analyses in uncovering previously unseen trends within the Mars mission architecture tradespace. By integrating multiple traditionally disparate spaceflight disciplines into a unified analysis framework, this thesis attempts to make the first steps towards codifying the human spaceflight mission architecting process, with the ultimate goal of enabling the efficient evaluation of the architectural decisions that will shape humanity's expansion into the cosmos. (Copies available exclusively from MIT Libraries, libraries.mit.edu/docs - docs@mit.edu)</p>

<p> On March 10, 1957, the United States Army Corps of Engineers completed The Dalles Dam and inundated Celilo Falls, the oldest continuously inhabited site in North America and a cultural and economic hub for Indigenous people. In the negotiation of treaties between the United States, nearly one hundred years earlier, Indigenous leaders reserved access to Columbia River fishing sites as they ceded territory and retained smaller reservations. In the years before the dam&rsquo;s completion, leaders, many of who were the descendants of earlier treaty signatories, attempted to stop the dam and protect both fishing sites from the encroachment of state and federal regulations and archaeological sites from destruction. This study traces the work of Wilson Charley, a Native fisherman, a member of the Yakama Nation&rsquo;s Tribal Council, and great-grandson of one of the 1855 treaty signatories. More broadly, this study places Indigenous actors on a twentieth-century Columbia River while demonstrating that they played active roles in the protest and management of areas affected by The Dalles Dam. </p><p> Using previously untapped archival sources&mdash;a substantial cache of letters&mdash;my analysis illustrates that Charley articulated multiple strategies to fight The Dalles Dam and regulations to curtail Native&rsquo;s treaty fishing rights. Aiming to protect the 1855 treaty and stop The Dalles Dam, Charley created Native-centered regulatory agencies. He worked directly with politicians and supported political candidates, like Richard Neuberger, that favored Native concerns. He attempted to build partnerships with archaeologists and landscape preservationists concerned about losing the area&rsquo;s rich cultural sites. Even after the dam&rsquo;s completion, he conceptualized multiple tribal economic development plans that would allow for Natives&rsquo; cultural and economic survival. </p><p> Given the national rise of technological optimism and the willingness for the federal government to terminate its relationship with federally recognized tribes, Charley realized that taking the 1855 treaty to court was too risky for the political climate of the 1950s. Instead, he framed his strategies in the language of twentieth-century conservation, specifically to garner support from a national audience of non-natives interested in protecting landscapes from industrial development. While many of these non-native partners ultimately failed him, his strategies are noteworthy for three reasons. First, he cast the fight to uphold Native treaty rights in terms that were relevant to non-natives, demonstrating his complex understanding of the times in which he lived. Second, his strategies continued an ongoing struggle for Natives to fish at their treaty-protected sites, thereby documenting an overlooked period between the fishing rights cases of the turn of the twentieth century and the 1960s and 1970s. Charley left a lasting legacy that scholars have not recognized because many of his visionary ideas came to fruition decades later. Finally, my analysis of Charley&rsquo;s letters also documents personal details that afford readers the unique perspective of one Indigenous person navigated through a tumultuous period in the Pacific Northwest and Native American history.</p>

<p> The purpose of this arts-based, and Indigenous research study was to explore how Native Americans understand &lsquo;place-based imagery&rsquo; through an Indigenous art making and storytelling experience in order to illuminate perspectives and experiences of a &lsquo;sense of place&rsquo;. Storywork, an Indigenous research method directed the culturally grounded research project. The Native American moccasin was the symbolic cultural catalyst used to create a multimedia art piece to express and reflect traditional cultural knowledge rooted within this symbol. Native Americans representing five federally recognized tribes participated in the study. As a result of a pilot study, a definition of place-based imagery was developed. Place-based imagery is making or creating meaning of symbols, shapes, colors and designs, related to P-People, L-Land, A-Ancestry, C-Culture, E-Experiences that may foster, awaken and/or deepen one&rsquo;s connection and understanding of self and a sense of place. </p><p> The research findings were examined and derived using an Indigenous paradigm. A culturally based understanding of a &lsquo;sense of place&rsquo; was developed from the stories and imagery. Perspectives relating to unwavering support, interconnection of culture and land, intergenerational knowledge transfer, deepened cultural knowledge, balance, and an understanding of a felt sense of place, emerged as a result of the moccasin making and storytelling experience. Secondly, an approach was developed using &lsquo;response art&rsquo; as a technique that may be used to mitigate secondary trauma. The study showed that Expressive Arts is an effective intervention used with Native Americans to inspire strength based cultural stories and images that encouraged self-understanding. </p><p>

<p> Health disparities and substance misuse are increasingly prevalent, costly, and deadly in Indian Country. Although women historically held positions of influence in pre-colonial Tribal societies and shared in optimum health, their current health is relegated to some of the worst outcomes across all racial groups in the United States. Women of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (CNO) have some of the highest prevalence estimates in physical inactivity and excessive drinking in the United States. Building on the Indigenous Stress Coping model of indigenous health, &ldquo;Our Vision of Health for Future Generations&rdquo; explores the intersection of a historical event, the Trail of Tears, and its lasting impact on the contemporary health outcomes in tribal members. This inquiry is positioned within the Yappall&iacute; Choctaw Road to Health project that explores these broader issues. This culturally-centered study explores proximal and settings-based/intermediary motivations of twenty-three women who completed the Yappall&iacute; project, walked the Trail of Tears, and developed a <i>holitobit ibbak fohki</i> &ldquo;sacred giving&rdquo; community health event. Analysis was conducted using the Listening Guide method, that highlighted the contrapuntal voices of embodiment, motivation, challenges, and transformation. Participants shared stories in relation to both their individual health concerns (proximal), and deep love and commitment for the health of their family, community and for future generations (intermediary). This study provides another framework for the development of indigenized research, by using in-depth interviews, <i>haklo</i> &ldquo;listen deeply&rdquo; as a form of indigenous storywork that is centering of the experiences of marginalized people, and reflexivity as <i>anukfilli</i> &ldquo;Deep Reflection&rdquo;.</p><p>

<p> This research replicated Dunlap, dePerczel, Clarke, Wilson, Wright, and White&rsquo;s (1994) single-subject ABAB reversal design using choice/no choice conditions with a 3 year-old Native American boy exposed to trauma. The IV consisted of the child being able to select books to be read during story time vs. no choice. The dependent variables consisted of 2 target behaviors impeding his learning in his Head Start classroom: disruptive and aggressive behaviors. Rate of Behavior 1 during Baseline 2 was 10% higher than during Intervention 1, and considerably higher than Baseline 1. During Intervention 2, rate of Behavior 1 was 10% lower than during Baseline 2, but 24% higher than Baseline 1. Therefore, Behavior 1 responded as expected to the 3 final experimental phases, but was unexpectedly low during Baseline 1 due to uncontrollable, extraneous environmental variables. Rate of Behavior 2 during Intervention 1 was 57% lower than during Baseline 1. During Baseline 2, rate of Behavior 2 was 50% higher than Intervention 1. During Intervention 2, rate of Behavior 2 was 43% below Baseline 1 but 40% higher than Baseline 2. Because occurrence rates for Behavior 2 were low, often 0-3 per session, minor changes in occurrences inflated change percentages. In essence, Behavior 2 improved substantially between Baseline 1 and Intervention 1, then remained stable at low rates across the remaining study phases. During Intervention 2, half the sessions had 0 occurrence rates for Behavior 2, spiking in the final 2 sessions due to an uncontrollable extraneous variable. Overall results appear promising. Future research, with greater observation times and control of extraneous variables, is needed to fully demonstrate intervention effectiveness with young Native American children exposed to trauma. </p><p>

<p> Since the mid-1970s, the indigenous ritual dance known as Danza has had a profound impact on the self-identification and concept of space in Xicana communities, but how is this practice received in the powwow space? My project broadly explores how studentorganized powwows at UC Davis, UC Riverside, and UC San Diego (UCSD), are decolonizing spaces for teaching and learning about Native American identities. Drawing on Beverly Diamond&rsquo;s alliance studies approach (2007), which illuminates the importance of social relationships across space and time, as well as my engagement in these powwows, I trace real and imagined connections between Danza and powwow cultures. Today, powwows are intertribal social events organized by committees and coordinated with their local native communities. Powwows not only have restorative abilities to create community for those who perform, attend, and coordinate them, but they are only a small glimpse of the broader socio-political networks that take place throughout the powwow circuit. By inviting and opening the powwow space to indigeneity across borders, the University of California not only accurately reflects its own native student body who put on the event, but speak to the growing understanding of "Native American" both north and south of the United States border. Ultimately, I argue an alliance studies approach to historical ethnography and community-based methodologies in music research are crucial, especially in the case of indigenous communities, who are committed to the survival and production of cultural knowledge embedded in music and dance practices.</p><p>

<p>How do the weak win political victories? The dissertation answers the question of how, why and when very weak groups are able to win concessions from the strong. Specifically, the research offers an understanding of how indigenous peoples have been able to gain recognition and extension of their land rights. Through comparative case study analysis, the first section explores why the governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States have begun to recognize and return rights to land for the same indigenous populations whose rights have been denied or ignored for centuries. The second section further tests the proposed explanations in relation to specific claims outcomes and land transfers in 17 American Indian land claims cases in the United States. </p><p>The research concludes normative changes following World War II led to new attention to the rights of minority groups. Indigenous peoples were redefined as deserving of limited rights and protections from the state. At the same time, the growth of cohesion among indigenous peoples on a national and international scale and the success of other minority groups encouraged them to bring their claims against the state. Economic, demographic, and political trends established that indigenous peoples were no longer a threat to the security of the dominance of the strong. This made it possible for elites to recalculate the costs and benefits of concessions to indigenous peoples, which were now seen as more affordable. Similar forces are at play in the outcomes of individual claims to for the return of land in the United States. The calculations of elites include the normative pressures to act (in this case, often legal pressure), the tangible and economic costs for transfers, whether or not the dominant population sees the recipient group as deserving, and whether or not the claim itself challenges the legitimacy or moral authority of the state.</p> / Dissertation