In the past, the Ministry of Social Services and Housing has placed many native children from the Seabird Island Band, a Salish band in the Sta’lo Nation, in permanent placement or adoption off the reserve. Government agencies imposed a system of child welfare that superseded Seabird Island adoption practices. The Seabird Island Band members would prefer to see these children placed within the band through ‘custom’ adoption. In apprehension and placement court cases, the band social worker has needed documented information defining ‘custom’ adoption, and data regarding the benefits of this Seabird Island process. This thesis investigates and documents the process and results of adoption on the Seabird Island Indian Reserve. This thesis begins with a brief history of Canadian adoption policy as it applies to First Nations people. The thesis is based on detailed taped interviews with Seabird Island Band members who had experienced foster care and/or adoption. This fieldwork was the result of negotiation with the Seabird Island Band to discover the type of research that they needed. The thesis documents four kinds of adoption experience of the Seabird Island members: foster care, closed legal adoption, open adoption, and ‘custom’ adoption. In my analysis of these adoption experiences, three main themes occur: (1) issues of ethnic identity, (2) power and the child welfare system, and (3) the definition and functions of ‘custom’ adoption. The thesis concludes that the imposed system of child welfare based on Euro-western ideas of appropriate child care may have destroyed or seriously damaged some Seabird Island Band members’ sense of ethnic identity. As well, it may be a factor in the break-up of the extended family. ‘Custom’ adoption, as defined by Seabird Island Band members, offers an alternate model for keeping apprehended Seabird Island children within the band. Open adoption, as defined by the pilot project documented, is an alternative for those children who cannot be returned to the band. I have made several recommendations in the conclusion for the Seabird Island Band’s consideration.

Maracle responds to the question of how she developed as a public intellectual. She describes how she has reworked English to "suit the Salish sensibility."

This thesis documents the employment history of Sne-nay-muxw women. The Sne nay-muxw, a Coast Salish peoples, live on the southeast coast ofVancouver Island close to the city ofNanaimo. Nanaimo was established by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1852 as coal mining town. Coal dominated the economy until the early 20th century when forestry related production became important. Today a service economy has eclipsed both the primary and secondary industries. Within these economies a distinct gender, race and class segregation structured Sne-nay-muxw women’s employment opportunities. This study examines the nature of this segregation, the Sne-nay-muxw domestic economy and the gender ideology that promoted both women’s inclusion and exclusion in. wage labour. A central question posed in this thesis is why Sne-nay-muxw women today perceive their traditional roles to be within the home despite their historical participation in the labour force. Feminist anthropology provides the theoretical and methodological approach used for this study. It is accepted that women’s experiences in the labour force are different not only from men but also from other women based upon relational inequalities ofrace and class. Historical data was collected from a variety of sources; published and unpublished government reports, missionary accounts, letters and journals. Nineteen women and eight men were interviewed in the community for both historic and contemporary accounts of employment experiences. History reveals that during the mining economy Sne-nay-muxw women were excluded from working in the mines and limited to employment as domestic servants. The introduction of Chinese labour, decreasing coal demands and increased technology forced many women to migrate with their families to the canneries on the Fraser river and the hop fields in Washington state. In the forestry related production economy, Sne-nay-muxw women’s opportunities were limited despite the expansion of employment for women in the service sector. State policies and inferior education were significant factors in this exclusion. At this time Sne-nay-muxw women continued to migrate with their families to the fish camps on Rivers Inlet and the berry fields in Washington state. In the last two decades the service economy has dominated in Nanaimo. Sne-nay-muxw women have found increasing job opportunities on and off reserve in administration, management and professional service delivery programs. While this employment is part of the wider trend for women in the service economy, Sne-nay-muxw women’s opportunities remain segregated by gender, race and class. Women’s participation in the labour force is shown to be linked to the organization of their domestic economy. Before 1920 this economy incorporated both subsistence production and farming with seasonal wage labour. After this time the Sne-nay-muxw became increasingly dependent upon wage labour. However, extended family and kinship networks have remained important for support and cooperation. This form ofhousehold organization did not constrain women’s participation in the labour force. Today extended families remain the central organizing principle in Sne-nay-muxw lives. Sne-nay-muxw women’s identity and opportunities for education and employment remain linked to their membership in these families. Shifts in women’s participation in the labour force is shown to be accompanied by acceptance of a domestic ideology. During the mining economy when women actively sought wage labour, they acquired domestic skills needed for wage labour but did not accept an ideology that promoted their dependency upon men. Historical evidence indicates that they retained a significant degree of autonomy in their lives. With men’s increased security of employment in the forestry economy, the idealized role ofwomen as housewives was promoted. Families that were able to realize women’s exclusion from the labour force gained status and prestige in the community. Finally, in the service economy, the Sne-nay-muxw gender ideology includes women’s participation in the labour force to occupations linked to their domestic and nurturing roles.

In 2004, a population of dwarf longnose sucker was discovered co-existing with the normal form within the Elk River Watershed of south-eastern British Columbia. This thesis evaluated morphological, genetic and life history characteristics of this dwarf longnose sucker form to determine whether the dwarf morphotype warranted designation as an evolutionary significant unit and to determine any special habitat requirements. In addition to size, distinct morphological differences were indicated between Elk River Watershed dwarf and normal adult longnose sucker, with dwarf adults appearing to retain morphological features of juveniles and sharing morphological features with Salish sucker, which is a separate dwarf longnose sucker form that is considered endangered. Slight, but significant, genetic differences were indicated between Elk River Watershed dwarf and normal longnose sucker forms, and compared to Salish sucker, suggesting some basis for separate designation of the dwarf form. Dwarf longnose sucker are widespread in the Elk River Watershed, and most abundant in small, cool lentic water bodies that contained dense vegetative cover, potential oxycline fluctuation and/or limited fish species diversity. Dwarf adult longnose sucker showed some habitat preference differences compared to normal longnose sucker, with the findings suggesting that dwarf longnose sucker have adopted a more opportunistic life-history strategy than normal longnose sucker. It is postulated that an ontogenetic niche shift has allowed dwarf longnose sucker to more successfully exploit habitats experiencing periodic disturbances (e.g., hypoxia) that, in turn, has led to the occurrence of two longnose sucker morphotypes in the Elk River Watershed.

This thesis examines the current problematic relationship between the Canadian criminal justice system and the Snuneymuxw (Coast Salish) community. An historical analysis of the Canadian justice system, attempts to indigenize it and alternative indigenous justice processes were examined to determine their cultural relevance for the Snuneymuxw. The research also consisted of a qualitative analysis of twenty-one interviews with Snuneymuxw community members and Canadian criminal justice system officials along with my perspective as a police officer responsible for policing this community. In effect, this has added a deeper analysis of this issue with the goal of making substantive recommendations on how the Snuneymuxw peoples can establish a community-based and culturally relevant justice process, in accordance with their S’nuw’uy’ulh cultural teachings. Furthermore, this analysis will also recommend the relationship and connection of this process with the criminal justice system. This thesis is intended to guide the researcher, the Snuneymuxw community and potentially other indigenous communities with a process of developing and implementing a culturally relevant and appropriate model of justice for their community.

The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to our understanding of how stress is assigned in SENCOTEN (a dialect of North Straits Salish). The stress system of the Salish languages has been traditionally thought of as being highly morpho-lexical. Montler (1986: 23) states that in SENCOTEN, roots and affixes are lexically specified for their stress properties. He claims that these roots and affixes are in a hierarchical relationship and compete with each other for stress assignment. However, in this thesis, I show that there is much less morpho-lexical stress in SENCOTEN than previously thought. The stress pattern of a high number of polymorphemic words, namely those that contain lexical suffixes, can be accounted for without resorting to a morphological hierarchy of stress. Instead, using an Optimality Theory analysis inspired by the work of Dyck (2004) and Kiyota (2003), I show that it is the weight distinction between full vowels and schwa that determines where stress will be assigned. In addition, I am able to show that metrical feet are grouped into trochees and that these trochaic feet are aligned to the right edge of the word.

The resultive and actual (imperfective) aspects in SENCOTEN, a dialect of North Straits Salish, have been previously considered to contain two separate actual and resultive morphemes (Montler 1986). In contrast, it is argued here that the SENOTEN resultive construction is a complex construction, built on an actual base by prefixation of stative [s-]. Both morphophonological evidence and morphosyntactic evidence for this claim are considered: resultives and actuals exhibit the same non-concatenative allomorphy, and they appear to be in complementary distribution with respect to argument structure. This thesis also considers the semantic aspectual properties of resultives, and suggests that the morphologically complex resultive is semantically compositional: it contains a [durative] feature contributed by the actual morpheme and a [static] feature contributed by the stative prefix.

Recent literature in cultural geography has turned its attention to the enactment of landscape through performance. Drawing upon the insights of new cultural geography and non-representational theory, this thesis examines the performative enactments of “place” through the production of landscape representations on the Islands of the Salish Sea. In particular, I adopt a narrative approach to consider how the embodied and discursive performances of becoming-artist and the enactment of landscape are co-constituted. Through a comparative case study of four Islands in the Salish Sea – San Juan, Lopez, Salt Spring, and Pender Islands – the current study provides an embodied account of the practices of landscape representation based upon fieldwork, participant observation, and 13 semi-structured interviews with landscape artists on the Islands. This is followed by a thematic analysis of recurring imagery in landscape paintings with a focus on representations of the rural scene, property relations, nationalism, and “unpeopled” landscapes. I conclude that landscape representations are both discursive and experiential in their performative enactments of place. / Graduate / 0366 / jolenejackson12@gmail.com

This thesis describes the aboriginal and contemporary social organization of the Coast Salish people of southwestern British Columbia and northwestern Washington State, with a focus on the Squamish Nation whose Reserves are situated in North Vancouver and the Howe Sound area. It is based on field research undertaken over a 30-year period and on published and unpublished sources. The thesis explores the construction of kinship and social groups among the Coast Salish, and the transformation of these relationships over time and in various historical circumstances, from the mid-19th century to the present day. Drawing upon the theoretical approaches of William Davenport (1959), Raymond Firth (1963) and Anthony Cohen (1985), among others, the thesis discusses key components of Coast Salish social organization and identity, including a group's contrasting identity and relation to the groups within its ambit of comparison, the association of specific social units with territory, and the expression of status in both traditional and contemporary society. Specific findings document a shift to nuclear family households, the adoption of English kinship terms, the development of hereditary and elected leadership, and the emergence of the Tribe and the First Nation as primary symbols of identity in the 20th century. Some current issues resulting from the impact of change are examined in the context of naming ceremonies and disputes over inherited property, including ancestral names. The thesis argues that the diversity and complexity of neither the traditional nor transformed expressions of Coast Salish social organization find congruence with models of aboriginal society being deployed by contemporary Courts and Treaty negotiators. Issues of territorial "overlap" presently impeding treaty negotiation among BC's Coast Salish peoples were nevertheless predictable, for like some of the world's other cognatic societies, the Coast Salish could hold discrete notions of identity simultaneously. In conclusion, the thesis examines briefly the application to the Coast Salish of Lévi-Strauss' "House-society" as a specific form of social organization.

Thesis--Columbia University. / Published also without thesis statement. Vita. Bibliography: p. [124]-129.