Colonialism is ongoing in Canada and continues to affect Indigenous-state relations in a number of political and social areas, including water governance. Few other studies link colonial and decolonizing concepts to Indigenous water governance including discussions of power as well as structural and political assumptions, which speak to systemic factors and barriers to increased Indigenous water sovereignty. The purpose of this study is to undertake an in-depth decolonial analysis of the dynamics occurring in a legal water management dispute between an Indigenous community and the Canadian state. More specifically, the goal of this investigation is to identify how ongoing colonial factors affect the Halalt First Nation’s sovereignty over their waters. To this end, the research question is: Using an Indigenous resurgence (IR) analysis, what does the Halalt First Nation v British Columbia (Minister of the Environment) (Halalt v BC) caselaw reveal about the state of Indigenous water sovereignty in Canada? I employ a case study methodology where I analyse the Environmental Assessment (EA) and legal court case of Halalt v BC. I seek to provide a decolonial perspective, so in this study I use an IR theoretical framework. I collect data through interviews with ten participants including three Band Council staff members involved in the Halalt v British Columbia EA and court case study. I analyse the findings using three Indigenous resurgence themes of transfer of power from the state to an Indigenous community, increased respect and use of Indigenous worldviews, and Indigenous self-determination in light of the primary data I collected via key informant interviews and case study participants. The data reveals that there was no evidence that Indigenous resurgence is taking place in the case study as per Halalt participants’ experience of the case study nor the other participants’ opinion of the case study. In this thesis, I advocate for decolonization in the form of increased Indigenous political authority for the Halalt and all Indigenous communities in Canada. / Graduate

Brown stink bug, Euschistus servus (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae), is a recently re-emerged pest of cotton in Arizona. It has been present in southwestern desert-grown cotton since at least the early 1900’s, but dropped from primary pest status in the latter half of the twentieth century. Farmers and pest managers did not perceive it as a primary or economic pest until 2011, when elevated numbers of brown stink bugs were reported in isolated valleys of Arizona and southeastern California. Reports increased and became more widespread in the following years. In response to increased abundance of brown stink bug and corresponding cotton boll injury, research was needed to provide information to cotton farmers. First, pest managers needed information on which factors affect the susceptibility of cotton bolls to stink bug feeding (chapter 1). Young bolls are most vulnerable to stink bug injury, and injury is sustained in the first four days of feeding. In addition, research was needed to determine the effects of currently available brown stink bug chemical controls on the broader integrated pest management system in Arizona cotton (chapter 2). Current chemical control options disrupt natural enemy communities, which results in outbreaks and resurgences of other cotton pests. The negative outcomes and additional costs outweigh the benefits of brown stink bug management.

Indigenous values, epistemologies, and indicators have always been ways of teaching and learning about change, and planning for the future. Indigenous food systems are central capacities supporting social-ecological resilience and resistance. Settler-colonialism and environmental degradation are two drivers of rapid and cumulative change over the past century that are at the root of health challenges experienced by Indigenous people and impacts to Indigenous food systems. Indigenous food sovereignty is a framework many Indigenous communities have been working within to support the restoration of Indigenous food systems, knowledges, and relationships to land in this time of resurgence. Recent scholarship highlights the importance of biocultural and culturally grounded values frameworks, aligning with Indigenous epistemologies, for measuring social-ecological resilience and resistance. Indigenous scholars and communities are also calling for more respectful and meaningful research practices in alignment with Indigenous priorities and worldviews. The Neskonlith Band’s Switzmalph community near Salmon Arm, British Columbia, has been working towards restoring Secwépemc plants and food systems through land-based education projects and collaboration in multi-scalar partnerships. This study highlights two cultural concepts or values related to Secwépemc food systems restoration and land based education in Switzmalph and Secwépemc territory more broadly, and their role in guiding future pathways and multi-scalar relationships supporting Secwépemc food systems restoration. This study also highlights the role of storytelling as a method and context for teaching and learning about cultural concepts and values in land-based settings. This study discusses the importance of process-oriented approaches to research for demonstrating how Indigenous ways of knowing can guide ongoing and embodied applications of ethical frameworks. The results of this work highlight the importance of culturally-grounded values in measuring, guiding, and reflecting on change, as well as the vital importance of Indigenous ways of knowing in guiding ethical research processes, and participatory and community-led research throughout all stages of research design. / Graduate

Behaving in novel ways is essential to the development of the types of complex performances described by the term creativity, problem solving, and perseverance. Some research suggests that response variability is an operant and a critical component of novel behavior. However, other account of novel behavior may be more parsimonious. Topographical variability has rarely been examined, nor has operant variability with organisms with baselines featuring stereotypic responding. This study examined the effects of a variability-specifying contingency on the cumulative novel responses of undergraduate students. Using the PORTL apparatus, participants interacted with a ball with a single hand. When the variability-specifying contingency was in effect, novel topographies were reinforced. When a reinforce every response condition was implemented, the participants did not emit any novel responses. When variability-specifying contingencies were in effect, novel responses were rarely followed by subsequent novel responses. They were mostly followed by repeated emission of the same topography, or by other previously emitted topographies. Novel responding did not persist long, although the variability-specifying contingency remained in effect and the potential for novel responding was great. The variability-specifying contingency often resulted in stereotypic response chains. Each of these findings call into the question the assertion that variability is an operant and suggests other possible explanations for the observed novelty.

This research is inspired by Albert Memmi’s paradox of the colonizer who refuses, yet remains the colonizer, complicit in colonial structures. It is explorative, qualitative, speculative and possibility orientated. It utilizes a Critical Disability Theory (CDT) lens to seek out confluences with Indigenous Resurgence, decolonial actions and reconciliation praxis. It explores the concept of Everyday Acts as being applicable for resurgence projects and non-indigenous solidarity and reconciliation practices that center Indigenous self-determination and land and water based lifeways as paramount to ecological justice. The research design is phenomenological, embodied and transformative. It endeavours to explore some of the more nuanced pockets of possibility for emergent ally-ship, and solidarity within the context of the settler who refuses through engaging with Access Intimacy, symbiosis/solidarity, gifting economy, failure as praxis, and relationship building. It does this through a thematic literature review, an interview and the idea of email essays as Life Writing. Interview and Email essays are offered as phenomenological life writings from four Collaborators, that share personal insights and stories conveying everyday experiences of accountability, responsibility, community care, community engagement, intergenerationality, embodiment, disability, collaboration, friendship and everyday acts. In concentrating on the smaller felt spaces of engagement, this modest research project hopes to bring insight and awareness to how small conscientious intergenerational everyday acts of solidarity can catalyze meaningful change and the possibility of transformation. To conclude, the research offers a discussion and some recommendations for future research. / Graduate / 2023-04-14

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is threaded together with sken:nen, the radical practice of peacemaking. As a Kanien’keha:ka woman, I am responsible for finding ways of bringing our peace-full teachings, gifts and intellect into the future. This thesis braids together a resurgent ethic of sken:nen with Haudenosaunee knowledges, Indigenous feminisms and decolonial futurities by taking up the question: Oh nisa’taro:ten? (What is the contour of your clay?), posed in Kanien’keha to situate me in relation to the lands I come from. I am taking this ancestral question seriously by exploring the relationships that make up the ‘clay’ of my contemporary Haudenosaunee Indigeneity as it is shaped by life in an active settler colonial state. Tracing the rhythmic gestures of my grandmothers’ hands, I have created a patchworking star quilt methodology to gather fragments of my decolonial curiosities, weaving them into layered story-maps that capture constellations of my movements through settler occupied places. Through the assimilative policies of the Indian Act, quilting simultaneously became an act of survivance and resistance for my grandmothers; by picking up an intergenerational practice of patchworking as methodology, I am jumping into the ruptures of my contemporary Haundenosaunee identity, roles and responsibilities. Patchworking story-maps involves tracing genealogies of intergenerational trauma, rupturing geographies of lateral violence, overflowing either/or binary cuts of identity (non)belonging, and navigating the urbanized displacements of Indigenous peoples from lands, communities and relationships. In an effort to mobilize the knowledges and practices of sken:nen, and to ensure that my work is accessible to a wider audience, my story-maps have been shared in a digital format using Instagram to stitch moments of Indigenous presence, memory and language (back) into the fabric of cityscapes that are riddled with the logics of settler colonialism. This thesis aims to create generative spaces to explore, transform and (re)imagine futurities of peacemaking that move towards more accountable and inclusive webs of relationality rooted in fluid traditions and (star)world building. / Graduate

Indigenous youth are overrepresented within homelessness and form approximately 20 percent of the total youth homeless population in Canada that uses emergency shelters. While extensive studies have been conducted and new practices have been put in place in an effort to reduce the number of individuals experiencing homelessness, the number of Indigenous youth journeying into homelessness continues to increase. This suggests that the solutions implemented to date have inadequately addressed the needs of Indigenous youth and the situations integral to their worlds. The purpose of this research was to explore Indigenous youths’ experiences of homelessness that promote positive identity development. It used a community-based Indigenous methodology. Building on research by Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics with the stories of Indigenous homeless youth, this research was centered at the intersection of Indigenous youth homelessness and their engagement in behaviours affected by past and present events that impact their processes of identity development. With its strengths-based lens, it deepens understandings of how Indigenous homeless youth create prosocial outcomes that bolster their self-esteem and encourage positive identity development that will support them in young adulthood and stages beyond. Indigenous youth prosocial outcomes must include holistic health outcomes that encompass spiritual, physical, mental and emotional well-being. Ultimately, this research challenges existing conversations held in society regarding Indigenous youths’ behaviours exhibited in homelessness and contributes to Indigenous resurgence, equitable colonial-Indigenous relationships, and reconciliation consistent with the goals put forth in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s recommendations. / Graduate / 2023-08-30

The idea of women's economic empowerment in the developing world has been growing in momentum throughout the past decades. Today, it is a force that is dramatically redefining the concept of economic development and transforming the economic and political landscape of the Middle East. Women in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are finding innovative ways to participate in the labor market. As a result, they are becoming agents of change in their political, economic, and social environments. However, despite the tremendous amount of growth that has realized throughout the years, women in MENA face significant hurdles to realize their potential. This study will highlight the social, political, and economic developments that have taken place within the last decade, and describe how they have improved, or worsened economic conditions for women in the region. It will also describe the issues associated with previous developments, and their missing dimensions. The analysis will provide case studies to compare levels of women's empowerment in Jordan and Palestine. The concept of women's economic empowerment will be analyzed through a multidisciplinary lens in which factors such as religion, ideology, culture, politics, and economics are merged to understand the foundation of the problems facing women in MENA. The study will emphasize the importance of a sociocultural base in the analysis of women's labor force participation rates. These factors will also be analyzed from various levels of analysis: individual, state, and global.

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

Dans le sillage de l'héritage des pensionnats, les théoriciens critiques autochtones rejettent le modèle de réconciliation proposé par la commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada parce qu'elle perpétue le programme colonial. L’alternative proposée par ces théoriciens est la résurgence, ou l'utilisation des paradigmes autochtones dans le développement de politique. La résurgence jaillit d’une célébration des cultures et des traditions autochtones. Cette thèse établit la présence de résurgence dans la poésie de trois poètes autochtones québécoises de trois générations: Joséphine Bacon, Virginia Pasamapéo Bordeleau et Natasha Kanapé Fontaine. Le premier chapitre est composé d'une analyse documentaire qui focalise sur deux éléments: 1) mon droit en tant que critique « non autochtone » à analyser la littérature autochtone, et 2) le rejet de la réconciliation et la promotion de la résurgence par les principaux théoriciens critiques autochtones au Canada. Le deuxième chapitre établit l'oralité comme un aspect clé de la résurgence, et sa présence dans la poésie des trois auteurs. Le troisième chapitre établit la présence de la terre et des histoires dans la poésie, comme preuve supplémentaire de la présence de résurgence. Employant l'analyse de la remédiation, de la décolonisation de langue, et de divers autres facteurs explorés tout au long de cette thèse, il est confirmé que Bacon, Bordeleau et Fontaine intègrent la résurgence dans leurs travaux, ce qui inspire les lecteurs de toutes cultures à prendre des mesures sur les questions environnementales et autochtones. / In the wake of the devastating residential school legacy, Indigenous critical theorists are rejecting the model of reconciliation proposed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission because it perpetuates colonial agendas. Their alternative to reconciliation is resurgence, or the use of Indigenous schools of thought in policy development. Resurgence springs from a celebration of Indigenous cultures and traditions. This thesis establishes the presence of resurgence in the poetry of three Indigenous female québecois poets of three generations: Joséphine Bacon, Virginia Pasamapéo Bordeleau, and Natasha Kanapé Fontaine. The first chapter is comprised of a literature review focusing on two subjects: 1) my right as a non-Native critic to analyze Indigenous literature, and 2) the rejection of reconciliation in favour of resurgence by leading Indigenous critical theorists in Canada. The second chapter identifies orality as a key aspect of resurgence, and its presence in the poetry of the three authors. The third chapter maps the poets’ work in connection to land-based knowledge and stories, as further proof of the presence of resurgence. Through the analysis of remediation, decolonizing language and various other factors explored throughout this thesis, it is confirmed that Bacon, Bordeleau and Fontaine all incorporate resurgence into their work, thus inspiring readers of all cultures to take action on environmental and Indigenous issues.