It was the purpose of this study to examine reasons why American Indian students do not typically choose Industrial Education as a major at BYU. To identify reasons American Indian students do not typically choose Industrial Education as a major, a questionnaire was developed. This questionnaire obtained data about personal information, reasons for not choosing Industrial Education as a major, reasons not included in the survey, Industrial Education background, and other general information related to the study. The questionnaire was administered on and off BYU campus to 122 identified American Indian students. Ninety- two students completed and returned the survey, which is 75 percent of the total survey population.Based on the results of this study, the following reasons were considered influential factors in determining why American Indian students do not choose Industrial Education as a major at BYU: lack of interest, lack of information, role models in different fields, lack of talent, lack of experience, limited job opportunities, and higher salaries in other majors.

Little research has addressed the needs of Native American veterans. This study aims to provide a better understanding of Native American women veterans’ experiences using data from the Veteran Administration and Indian Health Services. Fifteen interviews were conducted with special attention to quality and quantity of health and mental health care services available to veterans, the barriers and local contextual factors in accessing and utilizing services, and potential solutions to service gaps for women veterans from two Montana reservations, the Northern Cheyenne and Flathead Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. American Indians and Alaska Natives serve at a higher rate in the U.S military than any other population. Native American women veterans identified many barriers to accessing care, some of which include lack of information regarding eligibility and the type of services available. Many found the application process to be confusing and difficult. Other barriers included distance, cost of travel, and conflict with their work schedule. This research provides important data about Native American veterans who are often underrepresented in survey research and are a rapidly growing segment of the United States military and veteran population.

Indigenous populations in the U.S. have been suffering from a youth suicide epidemic for decades. The epidemic and risk factors associated with it can be connected to the mistreatment of Native Americans throughout history which has caused their communities to suffer from numerous inequalities such as poverty, inadequate housing, loss of land, and destruction of culture. Using the concepts of biopolitics, post-colonialism, and structural violence, I argue that the social and political institutions forced upon Native American communities have led to increased alcohol and drug abuse, poverty, and disempowerment, all important factors that aid in the youth suicide epidemic. I also suggests that preventative programs not only focus on suicide but other risk factors involved such as alcohol and drug abuse.

No description available.

The ongoing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis has affected thousands of families throughout the United States and Canada, resulting in probable trauma to children in the families and communities for generations. Although awareness of the crisis has been growing in recent years through avenues such as social media (#MMIW, etc.), little action has been taken to stem the crisis and its effects. The effects of the crisis on the children left behind is a compelling question that is not often addressed in the media, however. A systematic review of the scientific literature from the United States and Canada was conducted with the addition of gray literature due to limited results found in the scientific literature. The gray literature examined included relevant websites of relevant organizations and news articles. Results of the study demonstrated a dearth of data related to children and MMIW, with no research studies found. The articles analyzed were primarily focused on recommendations and did not specifically address the effects of MMIW on children. Gray literature findings included mention of some policy actions on state and national levels, including many calls to action that have not yet been addressed or implemented. The lack of data regarding the support needs of children affected by MMIW may be one of the reasons actions have been largely absent. One of the possible courses of action may be to better support Native/Indigenous scholars who have insider status. The MMIW crises is deeply personal and perhaps overwhelming to research, indicating support needs for Native/Indigenous scholars in addition to funding.

This qualitative research study explores the meanings of Eldership and eldering in a local urban Native American community in the Greater Boston Area. Studies regarding older Native Americans often use “older adult” and “elder” synonymously. By relegating aging to simply a “chronological pace,” researchers assume that Native communities view time and the transition into elderhood as an independent physiological experience, when alternative understandings may exist. Urban Native Americans may not have ties to the land they live on, are separated from the culture and traditions of their tribal members on reservations, and are consumed by the dominating modality of their colonizer. However, an urban Native community continues to exist in the Greater Boston Area in Massachusetts. This in part is due to the persistent efforts of elders within the community over time who elder-in-place: they maintain networks and pass down knowledge to younger generations within a co-constructed shared space. However, when an elder passes or moves away, there is a “gap” in the community’s network. The challenges Indigenous peoples face further inhibit transitions into Eldership or the practice of eldering. Indigenous organizations such as Native American LifeLines (NAL) and North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB) provide services, although limited, to try and help overcome such problems, including transport services, health care outreach, employment training and opportunities, and cultural workshops. By working together and with non-Native organizations, such groups can fortify the Indigenous structure in the Greater Boston area. NAICOB in particular, with its fifty-year-long history and community-driven structure, acts as a place-in-eldering: a ‘living’ Indigenous being which enacts Eldership at an organizational level. However, NAICOB is a place-in-eldering insofar as community members elder-in-place. Many issues promote a negative feedback loop which deters individuals from consistently participating at NAICOB. This lack of engagement in turn makes it difficult for the organization to show how they support the community when applying for grants. It is through an active symbiotic relationship between place and person which allows individuals to transition into Eldership in Boston. In this way, it is possible for the next generation of elders to fill the current “gap” in the community and promote engagement. From analyzing these relationships and interactions, we can see that these Eldership attempts to continue the vision of a “good life”—social and emotional wellbeing for not only themselves, but the entire community as well.

Aerial Empire combines environmental and political history to argue that air shaped the United States’ colonization of the intermountain west. By focusing on environmental management and federal-Indian policy, it shows how claiming and regulating air as a natural resource both supported and subverted the nation’s control over the region in the twentieth century. A combination of white encroachment, warfare, diplomacy, and violence had transferred the region from Native to non-Native populations by the late nineteenth century. This process involved claiming western air, but appropriating the lower atmosphere required technology and policies devised during the twentieth century. Efforts to access and regulate air shaped twentieth-century U.S. expansion in New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, and Arizona, and turned a boundless atmosphere into a finite resource. Climate cures began the process of defining air as a natural resource, accelerated by aviation which compelled courts to legally distinguish navigable airspace from air rights in the 1920s. Nuclear science expanded atmospheric knowledge and smog undermined an approach to pollution based on dilution by 1950. As air pollution control shifted from a local to national issue, commercial and military jets increasingly crowded the skies. Environmental policy extended federal authority over air as a natural resource with the 1970 Clean Air Act, which tribes used to press federal recognition of their environmental sovereignty. Fluid and elusive, atmospheric motion subverted efforts to fix the sky in place and undermined territorial jurisdiction. Although modern legislation made air a material resource, the atmosphere remained interconnected with land in ways that complicated its regulation. Claiming air required seeing it as a material rather than an immaterial resource, and as a finite rather than infinite one. Tribes influenced and deployed environmental law to bolster Indigenous power and challenge the settler state’s authority over air, land, and Native peoples. Yet Indigenous and rural communities suffered disproportionate impacts of atmospheric transformations, such as nuclear testing, extractive industry, and military airspace. Efforts to claim, measure, map, and manage the atmosphere contributed to crucial changes in modern American society, including the transfer of Indigenous land, resources, and labor to settlers; the degradation and pollution of air with dangerous compounds and waste; the expansion of military control over new spaces; and the extension of federal authority through modern environmental policy. / 2028-10-31T00:00:00Z

In this thesis, I traced the history of the Major Crimes Act of 1885, focusing on United States Supreme Court cases regarding the Act's enforcement and its constitutionality. In particular, analysis focused on how the USSC's decisions affected Native Americans within the field of criminal law, both as defendants and victims, and how these decisions prove to be contradictory or unjustly detrimental in nature. There is also focus on the ongoing issues in the state of Oklahoma resulting from the Major Crimes Act's enforcement that have begun to spread from a state-level crisis into a nationwide problem. The thesis concludes with proposed ideas for how these ongoing issues may be resolved, as well as how the Major Crimes Act may need to be amended or repealed and replaced in order to do so.

Answering the call to decenter whiteness and coloniality within communication studies (#RhetoricSoWhite), this project attempts to reclaim space for indigenous knowledge and to serve decolonial struggles. Written as a project of love for my fellow indigenous scholars and peoples, I expand upon Tiara Na'puti's conceptualization of "Indigeneity as Analytic" and chart how indigenous Pacific Island decolonial resistance operates through a paradigm of decolonial futurity. By recognizing Guåhan (Guam), as well as Chamoru, bodies as (de)colonial borderlands, I demonstrate the radical potential of indigeneity through three different case studies. First, I name indigenous feminine style as a strategic mode of public address adopted by Governor Lou Leon Guerero to resist the spread of COVID-19 by US military personnel on the island of Guåhan. Second, I showcase how the process and practice of indigenous Pacific Island tattooing delinks away from coloniality. Finally, I demonstrate how the celebration of a Chamoru saint, Santa Marian Kamalen, provides a spatial-temporal intervention that articulates an indigenous religion and enacts a decolonial futurity.

In this study a comparative approach between both the Sámi of northern Sweden and the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota in relation to the constructions of the Letsi Reservoir and Garrison Dams will be given. The comparison will help create an understanding of what kinds of impacts they had to a number of factors. These factors include financial, environmental and cultural impact to the aforementioned groups, with the Imperial mindsets of the State in question.