Graduation date: 2006 / The purpose of this study was to explore, from current Native American and Alaskan Native undergraduate students, what their experiences were as first year college students on the Oregon State University campus. In addition, it was important to learn how these experiences contributed to their success, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and overall quality of life during that first year. To answer these questions a mixed method research approach was used that included an online survey sent only to current, undergraduate, Native students and personal interviews with current, undergraduate, Native students. The online survey and personal interviews gave students an opportunity to disclose the types of experiences and challenges, campus involvement, and overall satisfaction they have had at OSU. Native students identified time management, financial costs, class/educational work, and missing family as major challenges during their first year on campus. Additionally, students identified positive relationships with faculty and/or advisors, having financial resources from tribal governments, the ability to be involved with student groups, and having a Longhouse as reasons for their success during their first year. As a result of these findings institutions can develop and provide intentional and appropriate programming and services to assist Native American and Alaskan Native students during their first year of college.

Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht Romane indianischer Autorinnen und Autoren des 20. Jahrhunderts hinsichtlich ihrer Repräsentation von Konflikten zwischen amerikanischen Ureinwohnern und der vorherrschenden christlichen Religion des allgemeinen gesellschaftlichen Umfelds. <br> Verschiedene Schwerpunkte sind zu erkennen, die im Laufe des Jahrhunderts immer wieder dargestellt und in veränderter Perspektive betrachtet werden. Sowohl historische Konflikte der Kolonialisierung und Christianisierung als auch die immerwährende Frage indianischer Christen -- 'Wie kannst Du in eine Kirche gehen, die so viele Indianer umgebracht hat?' [Alexie, Reservation Blues] -- werden in den Romanen diskutiert und in meiner Arbeit analysiert. <br> Es wird ferner versucht, eine literaturgeschichtliche Klassifizierung der einzelnen Werke entsprechend ihrer Repräsentation dieser Probleme vorzunehmen. In Anlehnung an Charles Larsons chronologisch-thematische Darstellung indianischer Prosa, werden die Kategorien rejection, (syncretic) adaptation, and postmodern-ironic revision eingeführt, um die unterschiedlichen Darstellungsweisen zu beschreiben. <br> Anhand der fünf Hauptbeispiele ist eine Entwicklung der zeitgenössischen indianischen Literatur zu beobachten, die sich von der engen Definition der 1960er und 70er Jahre zugunsten eines breiteren und vielfältigeren Ansatzes löst und dabei mittels interkultureller und intertextueller Referenzen, postmoderner Ironie, und einem neuen indianischen Selbstbewußtsein auch neue Positionen gegenüber dem Glauben der einstigen Kolonialmacht einnimmt.<br><br> Gutachter / Betreuer: Prof. Rüdiger Kunow ; Dr. Jürgen Heiß / This MA thesis examines novels by Native American authors of the 20th century in regard to their representation of conflicts between the indigenous population of North America and the dominant Christian religion of the mainstream society.<br> Several major points can be followed throughout the century, which have been presented repeatedly and discussed in various perspectives. Historical conflicts of colonization and Christianization, as well as the perpetual question of Native American Christians -- 'How can you go to a church that killed so many Indians?' [Alexie, Reservation Blues] -- are debated in these novels and analyzed in this paper.<br> Furthermore, I have tried to position and classify the works according to their representation of these problems within literary history. Following Charles Larson's chronologic and thematic examination of American Indian Fiction, the categories rejection, (syncretic) adaptation, and postmodern-ironic revision are introduced to describe the various forms of representation.<br> On the basis of five main examples, we can observe an evolution of contemporary Native American literature, which has liberated itself from the narrow definition of the 1960s and 1970s, in favor of a broader and more varied approach. In so doing, and by means of intercultural and intertextual referencing, postmodern irony, and a new Indian self-confidence, it has also taken a new position towards the religion of the former colonizer.

During the 1960s and 1970s an increased interest in Native Americans can be seen in Sweden, e.g. through the establishment of organizations such as the Indian Club of Sweden. The aim of this thesis is to study the portrayal of Native Americans and its role through Albin Widén, a Swedish author, ethnologist and member of the Indian Club, and his non-fictional works on the Swedish migration to America, Swedish-America and Swedish contacts with Native Americans. The study is divided into four parts. The first part looks at the portrayal of the Native Americans in Widén’s writings, in comparison with Euro-Americans’ and Europeans’ traditional stereotypic images of a good and a bad Indian. The second part examines how Widén represents the contacts between Swedes in America and the Native Americans. The purpose of the third part of the analysis is to investigate Widén’s interest in Native Americans. Finally, the thesis focuses on the possible role of the portrayals of Indians as a counterpart in the creation and upholding of a Swedish identity.

La situation économique, sociale et politique des nations autochtones au Canada et leur relation avec les nations non-autochtones présentent des similarités avec les anciennes colonies européennes. Peut-on qualifier cette relation de « coloniale » ? Cette interrogation est primordiale, vu les aspects immoraux et illégaux que prit la colonisation. Nous parcourrons la pensée d’auteurs reliés au libéralisme, au nationalisme autochtone et à l’interculturalisme et nous choisirons ce dernier comme angle d’approche. Nous élaborerons ensuite le concept de colonisation interne et nous le confronterons au cas des autochtones. Puis, nous présenterons les motivations à la décolonisation ainsi que la composition d’un hypothétique État postcolonial canadien et de nations et communautés autochtones décolonisées. Finalement, nous analyserons la démarche judiciaire, la négociation d’ententes d’autonomie gouvernementale, la mobilisation des masses et l’approche des word warriors, l’objectif étant d’évaluer jusqu’à quel point ces moyens s’inscrivent dans un éventuel processus de décolonisation des nations autochtones. / The social, political and economic situation of the aboriginal nations in Canada and their relations with non-aboriginal Canadians exhibits parallels with the European colonies of the past. Are there enough of these to identify the contemporary Canadian case as "colonial"? The question is a fundamental one, given the illegal, not to mention immoral, features of colonialism. In order to answer it, this memoire explores the writing of liberal, nationalist aboriginal, and "intercultural" thinkers, and concludes in favour of the latter. Then, using the intercultural approach, the concept of "internal colonialisation" is developed and applied to the case of Canadian aboriginals. This is followed by arguments in favour of their decolonialisation as well as a hypothetical account of a postcolonial Canada. Finally, a number of strategies for bringing the latter about are evaluated: the legal justice route; negotiation over governmental autonomy; mass mobilisation; and the "word warriors" approach.

Cette recherche se penche sur l’impact des facteurs de contexte et des facteurs individuels sur les conditions socioéconomiques des résidants des collectivités des Premières Nations du Québec et des résidants des communautés situées à proximité. Des régressions logistiques sur les données censitaires de 2001 ont été réalisées afin de répondre aux questions d’étude. Quatre dimensions, inspirées de l’indice de bien-être (IBC), ont été étudiées : l’activité, le logement, le revenu et la scolarité. Les résultats de recherche montrent que les deux types de facteurs contribuent à l’explication des inégalités sociales. Plus spécifiquement, les inégalités scolaires apparaissent principalement déterminées par les facteurs de contexte bien que les facteurs individuels, tel que l’âge et le genre, soient aussi déterminants. Ces dernières surviennent en amont des inégalités d’emploi et de revenu et expliquent celles-ci. De plus, les inégalités relatives au logement sont expliquées par l’emplacement spatial et le type de communauté de résidence. Par ailleurs, l’ethnicité des répondants ne joue pas un rôle de premier plan dans l’explication des disparités observées, une fois les autres caractéristiques contrôlées, ce qui ne signifie pas qu’il n’existe pas d’inégalités entre Amérindien et non-Amérindien. En fait, des chances différenciées persistent lorsque les autres caractéristiques sont contrôlées. Ainsi, les résultats mettent en évidence l’utilité de déplacer le point focal de la recherche quantitative sur les conditions autochtones du principal fait d’être Amérindien ou non vers un éventail plus large de déterminants. / This research assesses the specific contribution of individual and contextual factors in explaining the socioeconomics discrepancies between members of First Nations communities and those of communities located nearby. Using logistic regression on 2001 census data, four dimensions of socioeconomic conditions, largely inspired by the Community Well-Being Index (CWB), are assessed: employment, housing, income and education. The results of the study show that social inequalities appear correlated to both types of factors. Educational inequalities are primarily due to contextual factors even if individual factors, such as age and gender, also play a role in determining the odds of living social inequalities. Educational inequalities precede employment and income inequalities and, to some extent, explain them. Moreover, housing inequalities are mainly explained by spatial location and residence in a First Nations community Furthermore, the ethnicity of respondents does not play a major role in explaining the discrepancies, once other characteristics are taken into account. This does not mean that social inequalities do not exist between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians. Actually, significant differences between these two social categories are observed even when other characteristics are controlled for. Thus, the results of this study point out to the fact that the focus of quantitative research on Aboriginal people’s conditions should be put on additional predictors of inequalities besides “aboriginality”. Also, the review of literature shows a lack of research on social inequalities within First Nations communities in Canada.

Les populations autochtones canadiennes ont un passé difficile qui influence leur vécu actuel. Les recherches canadiennes et ailleurs dans le monde s’entendent sur la surreprésentation des enfants autochtones en protection de l’enfance. Au Canada, la surreprésentation s’explique présentement par la présence de conditions de vie dégradées plutôt qu’en raison d’un traitement différentiel des services de protection à l’égard des enfants autochtones. La présente étude ajoute aux connaissances sur les mauvais traitements et la réponse des services de protection de la jeunesse aux enfants autochtones québécois en s’intéressant à trois questions : leur surreprésentation, leurs différences par rapport aux autres enfants et les prédicteurs du placement. D’abord, à partir des données administratives de la protection de la jeunesse, la surreprésentation des enfants autochtones est évaluée à trois étapes des services : les signalements retenus, les situations fondées et les placements. Les enfants autochtones et les autres enfants sont comparés sur un ensemble de caractéristiques personnelles, familiales, parentales des signalements et des services rendus. Les prédicteurs du placement des enfants desservis par la protection de la jeunesse sont enfin vérifiés, en portant une attention particulière à l’importance du statut autochtone dans cette prédiction. Les résultats révèlent une augmentation de la surreprésentation des enfants autochtones d’une étape à l’autre des services de protection considérés. Ces enfants ont plus souvent des conditions de vie difficiles et sont confrontés à davantage de facteurs de risque que les autres enfants. Le statut autochtone est important dans la prédiction du placement, même après l’ajout d’un ensemble de caractéristiques pouvant contribuer à la prédiction. La complexité d’accès aux services de première ligne dans les communautés autochtones ou l’influence d’une variable non considérée, telle la pauvreté matérielle et économique, constituent de possibles explications. Les implications pour la recherche et la pratique sont discutées. / Canadian Aboriginal populations have for a while experienced difficulties that influence their actual lives. Research in Canada and elsewhere in the world acknowledges the overrepresentation of aboriginal children in child welfare services. In Canada, the overrepresentation of aboriginal children in child welfare services is mostly explained by the existence of risky life conditions rather than by the hypothesis of differential treatment of aboriginal children by child welfare. The actual study adds knowledge concerning child maltreatment in the aboriginal children population and the way Québec child welfare responds to aboriginal children by an examination of their overrepresentation, their differences with other children and the predictors of out-of-home placement. Using administrative data of Québec child welfare services, the overrepresentation of aboriginal children is first verified at three steps of the child welfare trajectory: the retained reports, the substantiated cases and the out-of-home placements. Aboriginal children are compared with other children on personal, family, parental and services characteristics. Predictors of out-of-home placement for children receiving child welfare services are finally investigated, with a specific attention to the aboriginal status in that prediction. Results reveal an increase in the overrepresentation of aboriginal children as they progress in the different steps of child protective services trajectory. These children live more often with hard life conditions and have to face more risk factors than other children. The importance of aboriginal status in out-of-home placement decisions remains substantial, even when many other characteristics increasing out-of-home placement risks are added. The complexities to access primary care in aboriginal communities or the influence of an unmeasured variable, such as material or economic poverty are possible explanations. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

This dissertation privileges Chican@ rhetorics in order to challenge a single History of Rhetoric, as well as to challenge Chican@s to formulate our rhetorical practices through our own epistemologies. Chapter One works in three ways: (1) it points to how a single History of Rhetoric is implemented, (2) it begins to answer Victor Villanueva's call to "Break precedent!" from a singly History, and (3) it lays groundwork for the three-prong heuristic of "embodied storying," which acts as a lens for Chican@ rhetorics. Chapter Two uses embodied storying to look at how Chican@s are produced through History and how Chican@s produce histories. By analyzing how Spanish colonizers, contemporary scholars/publishers, and Chican@s often disembody indigenous codices, this chapter calls for rethinking how we practice codices. In order to do so, this chapter retells various stories about Malinche to show how Chican@s already privilege bodies in Chican@ stories in and beyond codices. Chapter Three looks at cartographic practices in the construction, un-construction, and deconstruction of bodies, places, and spaces in the Americas. Because indigenous peoples practice mapping by privileging bodies who inhabit/practice spaces, this chapter shows how colonial maps rely on place-based conceptions of land in order to create imperial borders and rely on space-based conceptions in order to ignore and remove indigenous peoples from their lands. Chapter Four looks at foodways as a practice of rhetoric, identity, community, and space. Using personal, familial, and community knowledge to discuss Mexican American food practices, this chapter argues that foodways are rhetorical in that they affect and are affected by Chican@ identities. In this way, food practices can challenge the conception of rhetoric as being solely attached to text and privilege the body. Finally, Chapter Five looks at how Chican@ rhetorics and embodied storying can affect the field(s) of rhetoric and writing. I ask three specific questions: (1) How can we use embodied storying in histories of rhetoric? (2) How can we use embodied storying in Chican@ rhetorics? (3) How can we use embodied storying in our pedagogy?

O objetivo desta dissertação é o de investigar as disputas pelo poder subjacentes no texto literário do autor cherokee/canadense Thomas King, mais especificamente em seu romance publicado em 1993 intitulado Green Grass, Running Water. Serão destacadas as estratégias performáticas empregadas na desconstrução de representações opressivas de nativo-americanos por discursos ocidentais que compõem um complexo campo de batalha onde vozes em conflito disputam por direitos discursivos nas relações de poder. Se por um lado temos a tradição epistemológica positivista/cartesiana que trabalha há cinco séculos no sentido de exercer controle sobre as representações simbólicas dos nativo-americanos, a fim de que poder executivo e discursivo possa ser exercido sobre eles, por outro lado temos que Thomas King proporciona ao leitor o acesso a uma estrutura cíclica, não hierarquizada da narrativa e do epistêmio nativo-americanos. Esta investigação irá apontar os momentos de conflito entre essas vozes e analisará uma potencial interpretação democrática, de terceira via para esses encontros aparentemente binários. Espera-se ser possível indicar que Green Grass, Running Water propicia um privilegiado campo simbólico para que conflitos culturais e epistemológicos possam ocorrer e ser resolvidos com alguma espécie de resolução positiva em relação ao aspecto frequentemente belicoso dos engajamentos nativos e ocidentais. Para tanto, investigaremos a tradição bíblica e judaico-cristã de hierarquização e como o processo de nomeação de indivíduos e categorias permite que ocorra uma relação de dominação. Discutiremos a estrutura organizacional das comunidades, baseando-nos nas proposições de Zygmunt Bauman, com o intuito de averiguar de que forma o texto literário lida com questões como o pertencimento a grupos que possuem critérios subjetivos de aceitação, permitindo-nos responder se tais critérios permitem uma opção de filiação ou se representam uma demanda coletiva opressiva sobre o indivíduo. Uma análise dos discursos científicos de verdade também será feita, contrastando-os com a construção mítica coletiva das narrativas nativo-americanas como construções alternativas de verdade. Finalmente, teremos um capítulo sobre o poder narrativo da fotografia (mídia presente no romance em diversos momentos), no qual os usos da câmera serão descritos e analisados em seus potenciais de malícia e de narração distorcida. / The aim of this paper is to investigate the power struggles underlying the literary text of Canadian/Cherokee author Thomas King in the novel Green Grass, Running Water, published in 1993. We will highlight the performative strategies employed in the deconstruction of oppressive representations of the Native American by Western discursive and mediatic voices. The novel offers an interweaved narrative of Native and Western cultural materials that, together, will compose a complex battlefield of contentious voices that, ultimately, weigh on the balance of power relations to claim discursive rights. On the one hand, we have the epistemological tradition of a Positivist/Cartesian logic that has been working for five centuries to hold sway over the symbolic representations of the Native Americans in order to exert executive and discursive power over them; on the other hand, Thomas King provides the reader a glimpse of the cyclical, non-hierarchized structure of Native narrative and episteme. This investigation will point out the moments of conflict between these two voices and attempt to elaborate on the potential democratic/third-way interpretation of these seemingly binary encounters. We hope to be able to indicate that Green Grass, Running Water provides a privileged symbolic battleground for cultural and epistemological clashes to occur and be settled with some sort of positive resolution to the long-lasting contentious nature of Native and Western engagements. In order to accomplish that, we will delve into the biblical and Judeo-Christian tradition of hierachization and how the process of naming of individuals and categories allows for domination to occur. We will elaborate on the structural organization of communities, based on the propositions of Zygmunt Bauman, in order to assess how the literary text handles issues such as belonging to groups that have subjective criteria for acceptance, aiming at answering whether these criteria allow for an option of membership or if they pose as oppressive collective demands over the individual. An analysis of the scientific discourses of truth will also be provided, contrasting them with the collective mythmaking of Native American narratives as alternative constructors of truths. Finally, we will have a chapter on the narrative power of photography (a medium present in the novel at various moments), in which the uses of the camera are described and analyzed in their guileful and (mis)narrating potentials.

xvii, 382 p. : ill. (some col.), maps. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / The debate concerning the role of natural versus anthropogenic burning in shaping the prehistoric vegetation patterns of the Willamette Valley of Oregon and Washington remains highly contentious. To address this, pollen and high-resolution charcoal records obtained from lake sediments were analyzed to reconstruct the Holocene fire and vegetation history, in order to assess the relative influence of climate variability and anthropogenic activity on those histories. Two sites provided information on the last 11,000 years. At one site at the northern margin of the Willamette Valley, shifts in fire activity and vegetation compared closely with millennial- and centennial-time scale variations in climate, and there was no evidence that anthropogenic burning affected the natural fire-climate linkages prior to Euro-American arrival. In contrast, the fire and vegetation history at a site in the central Willamette Valley showed relatively little vegetation change in response to both millennial- and centennial-scale climate variability, but fire activity varied widely in both frequency and severity. A comparison of this paleoecological reconstruction with archaeological evidence suggests that anthropogenic burning near the site may have influenced middle- to late-Holocene fire regimes. The fire history of the last 1200 years was compared at five sites along a north-south transect through the Willamette Valley. Forested upland sites showed stronger fire-climate linkages and little human influence, whereas lowland sites located in former prairie and savanna showed temporal patterns in fire activity that suggest a significant human impact. A decline in fire activity at several sites in the last 600 years was attributed to the effects of a cooling climate as well as the decline of Native American populations. The impacts of Euro-American settlement on the records include dramatic shifts in vegetation assemblages and large fire events associated with land clearance. The results of this research contribute to our understanding of long-term vegetation dynamics and the role of fire, both natural- and human-ignited, in shaping ecosystems, as well as provide an historical context for evaluating recent shifts in plant communities in the Willamette Valley. / Advisers: Cathy Whitlock, Patrick J. Bartlein

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