An ethnographic method was used for data collection and analysis. Three interrelated themes from the data analyses informed study findings: (1) being cut off from family and feeling lonely, (2) what's the point? and (3) not depression, just depressed. Understanding young mothers' depression after the birth of their babies is important to inform future research and gain insights into relevant nursing interventions for this population. More knowledge of the phenomenon will lead to earlier identification and prevention of the long-term sequelae of depression and potentially promote healthier mother-baby interactions.

Several ways of understanding aboriginal rights surfaced in the wake of section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which recognizes and affirms aboriginal and treaty rights. During my Masters’ studies, I journeyed these ways, propelled by a troubling dream that came to me while I was in law school. The dream prompted me to reconsider rights and to choose my words with caution and with care. And yet when I thought of what my dream might be trying to tell me, I was afraid. I was afraid to question rights, especially aboriginal rights. There seemed to be so much of me tied up in the cause and construction of aboriginal rights. All through law school I wanted there to be an answer I could find and defend. I wanted there to be a right way to think about aboriginal rights, something that would guarantee me a protected space to be. I wanted to continue pursuing that protection. And yet, there was my dream. Among the Anishinabe, dreams are considered gifts, for they lead us toward our greatest laws and teachings. Though I was loath to question aboriginal rights, I was not willing to question my dream. So I readied myself, preparing to put aboriginal rights into question. To my thesis, I brought all the learning I had done in and outside of law school. I also brought a question to guide me. To give me courage, I carried my faith in who I am, as Anishinabe. Knowing for all that I am Dawnis Kennedy, I am also Minawaanigogiizhigok, I set out to see what I would see. The question that led me through understandings of section 35 is this: do recent understandings of aboriginal rights within Canadian law enable Canadian courts to transform adverse relations with indigenous legal orders? The answer I found is, not yet. The interpretations of aboriginal rights I encountered have effected considerable change within Canadian law. However, my journey shows more is needed before the aboriginal rights framework can support respectful engagements with indigenous law. Indeed, without fundamental reorientation, I believe aboriginal rights jurisprudence will further entrench, rather than transform, Canadian law’s adverse relations with indigenous peoples. I would ask judges, lawyers, legislators, and all who shape Canadian law, to break away from attempts to reconcile indigenous and Canadian law within Canadian legal orders and reorient themselves towards fostering respect between indigenous and Canadian legal orders. In writing my thesis, I found cause for my concern with rights. And yet, this is not all that I found. Also, I found myself able to engage the world beyond the protective limits aboriginal rights provide. I found the ability to trust in another form of law, Anishinabe inaakonigewin, to understand my relations and actions in the world. This trust helped me to find the will to move beyond critiquing systems, toward engaging people.

This thesis analyzes the relationship between the legal traditions of indigenous peoples and the Canadian State. I posit that the current relationship is aptly characterized as imperial. The imperial dynamics of this relationship perpetuate imbalances of power between the two traditions. This situation of power imbalance produces two effects that are of concern here. First, it enframes the development of indigenous legal traditions within the liberal state, domesticating indigenous norms to accord with liberal norms. Second, it disencumbers indigenous peoples ancestral territories from indigenous authority that would inhibit Canadian and global market penetration. I rely on theoretical literature in the fields of legal pluralism and postcolonialism to develop this argument. A deep conception of legal pluralism allows us, as researchers, to think of state law as developed by a single legal tradition that co-exists with indigenous legal traditions. Postcolonial theory aids us in analyzing the particular manner in which power works in situations of colonialism and imperialism to privilege certain legal orders over others. I suggest that indigenous life is not fully enclosed by imperialism, and that as indigenous peoples we should engage those non-imperial sites and practices deeply to thicken our capacity to live freely. I suggest indigenous practices of totemism represent one such site.

The mathematics education experiences of Aboriginal high school students has received little research attention. Ten urban Aboriginal high school students in Victoria, BC facilitated a narrative qualitative inquiry. Bandura’s (1986) four sources of selfefficacy and social cognitive theory were used to examine the students’ stories. Performance mastery experiences were found to dominate the formation of students’ sense of competence. Experiences were centrally impacted by students’ affective domain. The importance of relationality and an inter-connection between all four sources of self-efficacy are also noted. Implications for future research and practice are provided.

This thesis examines a fuel spill at Goldstream River, on Coast and Straights Salish People’s territory, on southern Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Goldstream is an important salmon spawning and fishing location for the WSÁNEĆ (Saanich) people. In this thesis I step beyond the confines of the common law and its associated narratives and examine the fuel spill through the lens of WSÁNEĆ culture and legal order. In doing so I seek to open nascent possibilities and understandings relating to the fuel spill, its associated harms, and the implications this has for a legal response. My approach is rooted in the field of Indigenous law. In contributing broadly to the revitalization and resurgence of Indigenous law, including its theoretical and methodological aspects, I strengthen my claim that WSÁNEĆ law offers an important legal response to the Goldstream spill. My approach, however, extends beyond the field of Indigenous law. It also draws insights from the fields of postcolonial theory and resurgence theory. Postcolonial theory aids in understanding the processes and power structures that silence and subordinate Indigenous systems of law. The effective revitalization of Indigenous law draws from these understandings. My emphasis, however, does not rest squarely on critique. I argue that colonial power structures are best mitigated and subverted by applying Indigenous narratives, including Indigenous systems of law. I draw on resurgence theory to highlight the empowering effects of strengthening Indigenous narratives and for transforming relationships between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state. In applying this theoretical framework I argue that WSÁNEĆ law provides an alternative lens through which to address the Goldstream spill. Through attention to WSÁNEĆ stories and the SENĆOŦEN language (the language of the WSÁNEĆ people) I open a narrative of WSÁNEĆ law that provides a distinct normative framework regarding our responsibilities to one another and to the Earth. The benefits of such an approach are far reaching in scope. They reconceptualise foundational assumptions relating to the nature of the harm, as well as the notion jurisdiction. My narrative moves from thinking and acting with authority over the environment, to having mutual responsibilities in relation to ecology. The scope and contributions of Indigenous law should not be overlooked. To do so is to limit the potential for Indigenous/non-Indigenous reconciliation, as well as the healthy functioning of Indigenous legal orders. / Graduate

In the summer of 1995, eighteen protesters came into armed conflict with over 400 RCMP officers and soldiers in central British Columbia. The conflict escalated into one of the costliest police operations in Canadian history. Many accounts of Aboriginal aggression provided by the RCMP are not consistent with evidence disclosed at the trial of the protesters. Moreover, the substance of the legal arguments at the heart of the Ts' Peten Defenders' resistance received little attention or serous analysis by state officials, police or the media. The RCMP constructed the Ts' Peten Defenders as terrorists and downplayed the use of state force that included military weaponry, land explosives and police snipers, who received orders to shoot to kill. Serious questions remain about the role of the RCMP, who acted as the enforement arm of state policies designed to constrain the effort to internationalize the Aboriginal title question. / iii, 225, [44] leaves : ill. ; 28 cm.

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The Indigenous past is largely absent from settler representations of the history of the city of Toronto, Canada. Nineteenth and twentieth century historical chroniclers often downplayed the historic presence of the Mississaugas and their Indigenous predecessors by drawing on doctrines of terra nullius, ignoring the significance of the Toronto Purchase, and changing the city’s foundational story from the establishment of York in 1793 to the incorporation of the City of Toronto in 1834. These chroniclers usually assumed that “real Indians” and urban life were inimical. Often their representations implied that local Indigenous peoples had no significant history and thus the region had little or no history before the arrival of Europeans. Alternatively, narratives of ethical settler indigenization positioned the Indigenous past as the uncivilized starting point in a monological European theory of historical development. In many civic discourses, the city stood in for the nation as a symbol of its future, and national history stood in for the region’s local history. The national replaced ‘the Indigenous’ in an ideological process that peaked between the 1880s and the 1930s. Concurrently, the loyalist Six Nations were often represented as the only Indigenous people with ties to Torontonians, while the specific historical identity of the Mississaugas was erased. The role of both the government and local settlers in crowding the Mississaugas out of their lands on the Credit River was rationalized as a natural process, while Indigenous land claims, historical interpretations, and mnemonic forms were rarely accorded legitimacy by non-Indigenous city residents. After World War II, with new influxes of both Indigenous peoples and multicultural immigrants into the city, colonial narratives of Toronto history were increasingly challenged and replaced by multiple stories or narrative fragments. Indigenous residents created their own representations of Toronto as an Indigenous place with an Indigenous history; emphasizing continuous occupation and spiritual connections between place and ancestors. Today, contention among Indigenous groups over the fairness of the Mississauga land claim, epistemic differences between western and Indigenous conceptions of history, and ongoing settler disavowal of the impact of colonialism have precluded any simple or consensual narrative of Toronto’s past.

It is evident from the past forty years of research, debate and literature that the New World was far more populated in 1492 than was previously thought. However, despite the expanding field of study most works omit the effects that epidemics had on the tribes of the Great Plains, particularly those located in present-day Canada, and the works that have been published deal mainly with demographics and fail to delve into how disease affected intertribal relations. As well, almost all studies of disease and the Great Plains tribes end by 1850 or start in 1880. Therefore, the decades from 1860 through to the 1870s are largely ignored and become even more of a mystery when considering the fact that the eventual subjugation of the Plains Natives soon came when the Numbered Treaties commenced in 1871.<p>The omission of research on epidemics from 1860 to 1880 has left historians to concentrate on other reasons for the collapse of the Plains lifestyle, primarily the disappearance of the buffalo, which was crucial to Native existence in the parkland/grassland regions. Although this was obviously a very important factor in weakening warrior societies on the Plains, it was by no means the sole factor. In fact, the smallpox epidemic of 1870-71 and its after effects played an important role in debilitating Native nations, especially great tribes like the Plains Cree in present-day Saskatchewan. Food supplies could not be maintained and starvation became prevalent throughout the Great Plains in the winter of 1870-71. Malnutrition certainly would also have led to further secondary complications such as fertility problems and pulmonary illnesses, such as pneumonia, which would have contributed to the impact of the epidemic through a continued loss of population and disruption of intertribal functioning. Through analysis of the consequences of this epidemic on the Plains Cree it becomes increasingly apparent that disease played a much greater role in leading Natives towards treaty negotiations and settlement than has been formerly thought. This is not to say that epidemics in themselves were the main reason for the collapse of the Plains Cree culture, but rather they deserve to be included along with the traditional causes such as the disappearance of the buffalo.

The Indigenous past is largely absent from settler representations of the history of the city of Toronto, Canada. Nineteenth and twentieth century historical chroniclers often downplayed the historic presence of the Mississaugas and their Indigenous predecessors by drawing on doctrines of terra nullius, ignoring the significance of the Toronto Purchase, and changing the city’s foundational story from the establishment of York in 1793 to the incorporation of the City of Toronto in 1834. These chroniclers usually assumed that “real Indians” and urban life were inimical. Often their representations implied that local Indigenous peoples had no significant history and thus the region had little or no history before the arrival of Europeans. Alternatively, narratives of ethical settler indigenization positioned the Indigenous past as the uncivilized starting point in a monological European theory of historical development. In many civic discourses, the city stood in for the nation as a symbol of its future, and national history stood in for the region’s local history. The national replaced ‘the Indigenous’ in an ideological process that peaked between the 1880s and the 1930s. Concurrently, the loyalist Six Nations were often represented as the only Indigenous people with ties to Torontonians, while the specific historical identity of the Mississaugas was erased. The role of both the government and local settlers in crowding the Mississaugas out of their lands on the Credit River was rationalized as a natural process, while Indigenous land claims, historical interpretations, and mnemonic forms were rarely accorded legitimacy by non-Indigenous city residents. After World War II, with new influxes of both Indigenous peoples and multicultural immigrants into the city, colonial narratives of Toronto history were increasingly challenged and replaced by multiple stories or narrative fragments. Indigenous residents created their own representations of Toronto as an Indigenous place with an Indigenous history; emphasizing continuous occupation and spiritual connections between place and ancestors. Today, contention among Indigenous groups over the fairness of the Mississauga land claim, epistemic differences between western and Indigenous conceptions of history, and ongoing settler disavowal of the impact of colonialism have precluded any simple or consensual narrative of Toronto’s past.