This dissertation will demonstrate that, by considering Treaty One (1871) from the perspective of the Anishinabe, especially Anishinabe laws or Anishinabe inaakonigwein and normative expectations, one can obtain a better understanding of why there is a discrepancy in interpretations of the treaty. The research draws on practices of treaty making prior to Treaty One and shows that the parties relied extensively on Anishinabe protocols and procedural laws in the context of the Treaty One negotiations. In addition, kinship relationships, the obligations derived from them, and a sense of the sacred obligations involved in treaty-making, informed the agreement that was made between the parties. In particular, the kinship between a mother and child was invoked by the parties; the Crown negotiators relying on it primarily to secure good terms with the Anishinabe and the Anishinabe advocating for a commitment to ensuring a good life while respecting and preserving their autonomy. The exploration of the historical records of the negotiations and the oral history surrounding the treaty help draw out the differing and sometimes competing understandings of the treaty, many of which continue to this day, and in particular in relation to the effect of the treaty agreement on legal relationships to land. They help illuminate questions regarding the interpretation of the Treaty, including what would be necessary in order to implement it in accordance with its signatories’ understandings. / Graduate / 0398, 0740

Anishinabeg are not strangers to photography. Like many Indigenous communities in North America and elsewhere, Anishinabeg have a history of being pictured by governments, artists, and researchers working within the confines of colonial thought and practice. Not surprisingly, much of this colonial artwork has drawn considerable scholarly critique, calling attention to issues including misuse of power, cultural appropriation, assimilation, and misrepresentation. While this work continues to be significant in contributing understanding of how colonialism played out visually and materially, it may also unintentionally generate the misconception that Indigenous Peoples were only the subjects of the camera or had little or no authority over the photographic experience. Indeed, photography has its own history and place within the creative practices and traditions of many Indigenous Peoples. This research project explores the role of Anishinabe photography in the reclamation and continuance of Anishinabe stories, memories, and knowledge among Anishinabe families with ancestral and present day ties to Anishinabe lands in the northwest region of Ontario. As a result of imposed colonial legislation, Anishinabeg in this region have been displaced from their traditional lands, which has had direct consequences on their ability to retain their language, culture, and life skills. Today, Anishinabeg live in the aftermath of colonial violence perpetuated against their ancestors. The severing of land and kin connections has left many Anishinabeg struggling with issues including loss of identity and sense of belonging. Despite of these ongoing challenges, Anishinabeg have struggled to recover and maintain their knowledge, language, sovereignty, and spirituality through various personal and shared activities and initiatives. This research incorporates a research framework that integrates visual, narrative, and material strategies to directly confront the aforementioned colonial legacies of erasure and disappearance of Anishinabeg. It seeks to explore and privilege Anishinabe experiences and stories by weaving together various theoretical and methodological threads of decolonization, photography, place, visuality, materiality and memory. Through processual and creative ways of bringing together and experiencing photographs, it contributes to understandings of the significance of photography to Indigenous-led efforts directed towards decolonization, including cultural revival and continuity, sense of belongingness, identity, and caring for relationships among person, place and land. This research intervenes in Anishinabe lands, stories, and experiences that fall outside the jurisdiction of the Indian Act or “official” dominant versions of history and therefore provides a powerful counter narrative that seeks to both destabilize widely accepted colonial myths and contribute to Anishinabe sovereignty. Major findings of this research position Anishinabe photographs as highly relational and social things that may help configure and congeal a host of relationships between people, the land, and their ancestral past. It introduces new ways of working with and through historical family photographs—ways that are grounded in existing Anishinabe material and embodied practices. Through these practices it contributes knowledges about the past that can be acquired through these practices. As such, it offers new sets of relationships that strengthen individual ties to the ancestral past in ways that both honour our responsibilities to our ancestors and their teachings as well as our commitments to generations ahead of us. / Graduate

This thesis presents the results of a qualitative research study that examined the resilience development with six Anishinabe (Ojibway) women. This study examined from the women’s perspectives, “What meaning(s) do First Nation graduates of secondary or post-secondary education make about risk and/or protective factors that may have affected their success in completing their degree/diploma requirements?” In this research, I closely examined the historical accounts and progressive educational changes of six successful Anishinabe women who attended either the residential, provincial or band operated schools. The narrative/storywork voiced by the women was gathered by one in-depth interview and were analyzed in two parts. First, the Western idea of resilience (Benard, 2004) was examined. Second, the development of resilience utilizing Indigenous narrative/storywork (Archibald, 2008; Thomas, 2008; Wilson, 2008) and the cultural framework of the Medicine Wheel teachings (Bopp, Bopp, Brown, & Lane, 1988; Medicine Wheel Evaluation Framework, 2012) was explored. The findings from this thesis revealed that through protective factors and/or supports of their community, environment, school, and family and restored Indigenous philosophy, maintained culture, language, spirituality and traditional worldviews, a process of resilience emerged and/or was developed and overpowered risk factors, challenges and/or adversities. The amalgamation of findings supports what research suggests that Aboriginal people exist in two worlds, their world and mainstream world (Fitznor, 2005). Co-existance, acceptance, and a balance of both worlds are supports and fundamental keys to resiliency and educational success.

This thesis presents the results of a qualitative research study that examined the resilience development with six Anishinabe (Ojibway) women. This study examined from the women’s perspectives, “What meaning(s) do First Nation graduates of secondary or post-secondary education make about risk and/or protective factors that may have affected their success in completing their degree/diploma requirements?” In this research, I closely examined the historical accounts and progressive educational changes of six successful Anishinabe women who attended either the residential, provincial or band operated schools. The narrative/storywork voiced by the women was gathered by one in-depth interview and were analyzed in two parts. First, the Western idea of resilience (Benard, 2004) was examined. Second, the development of resilience utilizing Indigenous narrative/storywork (Archibald, 2008; Thomas, 2008; Wilson, 2008) and the cultural framework of the Medicine Wheel teachings (Bopp, Bopp, Brown, & Lane, 1988; Medicine Wheel Evaluation Framework, 2012) was explored. The findings from this thesis revealed that through protective factors and/or supports of their community, environment, school, and family and restored Indigenous philosophy, maintained culture, language, spirituality and traditional worldviews, a process of resilience emerged and/or was developed and overpowered risk factors, challenges and/or adversities. The amalgamation of findings supports what research suggests that Aboriginal people exist in two worlds, their world and mainstream world (Fitznor, 2005). Co-existance, acceptance, and a balance of both worlds are supports and fundamental keys to resiliency and educational success.

This thesis examine the cultural interaction between Anishinabe people, who lived in what is now southern Ontario, and the Loyalists, Euroamerican settlers who moved north from the United States during and after the American Revolution. Starting with an analysis of Anishinabe cultural history before the settlement era the thesis argues that Anishinabe spirituality was not traditionalist. Rather it inclined its practitioners to search for new knowledge. Further, Anishinabe ethics in this period were determined corporately based on the immediate needs and expectations of individual communities. As such, Anishinabe ethics were quite separate from Anishinabe spiritual teachings. Between 1760 and 1815, the Anishinabe living north of the Great Lakes participated in pan-Native resistance movements to the south. The spiritual leaders of these movements, sometimes called nativists, taught that tradition was an important religious virtue and that cultural integration was dangerous and often immoral. These nativist teachings entered the northern Anishinabe cultural matrix and lived alongside earlier hierarchies of virtue that identified integration and change as virtues. When Loyalist Methodists presented their teachings to the Anishinabeg in the early nineteenth century their words filtered through both sets of teachings and found purchase in the minds of many influential leaders. Such leaders quickly convinced members of their communities to take up the Methodist practices and move to agricultural villages. For a few brief years in the 1830s these villages achieved financial success and the Anishinabe Methodist leaders achieved real social status in both Anishinabe and Euroamerican colonial society. By examining the first generation of Anishinabe Methodists who practiced between 1823 and 1840, I argue that many Anishinabe people adopted Christianity as new wisdom suitable for refitting their existing cultural traditions to a changed cultural environment. Chiefs such as Peter Jones (Kahkewahquonaby), and their followers, found that Methodist teachings cohered with major tenets of their own traditions, and also promoted bimadziwin, or health and long life, for their communities. Finally, many Anishinabe people believed that the basic moral injunctions of their own tradition compelled them to adopt Methodism because of its potential to promote bimadziwin. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2008-07-17 13:59:23.833

Cette thèse par article présente une étude de cas sur le pensionnat autochtone de Saint-Marc-de-Figuery au Québec, ouvert de 1953 à 1973 pour les jeunes autochtones de l’Abitibi (Algonquins) et du Lac-Saint-Jean (Attikameks). Elle porte principalement sur trois curriculums présents au pensionnat, soit le curriculum officiel, le curriculum enseigné et le curriculum caché. Cette thèse s’inspire du paradigme de la critique transformative pour expliquer les relations de la politique colonisatrice et dominatrice au sein du système des pensionnats autochtones. Il s’agit d’une recherche qualitative fondée sur la méthode historique à partir d’une analyse de sources écrites et orales. Pour ce faire, j’ai consulté et analysé des documents (sources primaires et secondaires) disponibles et accessibles. Les résultats se divisent en trois grands points. Le premier étant ce qui a été fait pour le pensionnat en tant que curriculum officiel par le gouvernement fédéral et les Pères oblats. Le second point touche la vie au pensionnat. C’est le point le plus long, car les trois curriculums y sont abordés. Du curriculum officiel et enseigné du gouvernement québécois découlent les programmes d’études, l’horaire et les matières enseignées. Pour cette étude, seule l’histoire a été retenue avec son programme et ses manuels scolaires. Le curriculum caché décrit les aspects dissimulés et indirects comme la perte d’identité, la honte d’être un autochtone et la langue obligatoire de la majorité de la province où se trouve le pensionnat. Le troisième point traite des conséquences ainsi que des effets négatifs et positifs en dehors du pensionnat. Le curriculum caché n’a pas seulement été vécu par les pensionnaires, mais aussi par leurs familles et leur entourage. Néanmoins, il ressort des aspects positifs une implication des pensionnaires dans la communauté et pour certains la poursuite d’études postsecondaires. À la lumière des résultats, nous pouvons soutenir que le pensionnat de Saint-Marc-de-Figuery, comme institution scolaire des autorités canadiennes, fut à la fois assimilateur, acculturateur et formateur en voulant régler la problématique autochtone au pays.

Cette thèse par article présente une étude de cas sur le pensionnat autochtone de Saint-Marc-de-Figuery au Québec, ouvert de 1953 à 1973 pour les jeunes autochtones de l’Abitibi (Algonquins) et du Lac-Saint-Jean (Attikameks). Elle porte principalement sur trois curriculums présents au pensionnat, soit le curriculum officiel, le curriculum enseigné et le curriculum caché. Cette thèse s’inspire du paradigme de la critique transformative pour expliquer les relations de la politique colonisatrice et dominatrice au sein du système des pensionnats autochtones. Il s’agit d’une recherche qualitative fondée sur la méthode historique à partir d’une analyse de sources écrites et orales. Pour ce faire, j’ai consulté et analysé des documents (sources primaires et secondaires) disponibles et accessibles. Les résultats se divisent en trois grands points. Le premier étant ce qui a été fait pour le pensionnat en tant que curriculum officiel par le gouvernement fédéral et les Pères oblats. Le second point touche la vie au pensionnat. C’est le point le plus long, car les trois curriculums y sont abordés. Du curriculum officiel et enseigné du gouvernement québécois découlent les programmes d’études, l’horaire et les matières enseignées. Pour cette étude, seule l’histoire a été retenue avec son programme et ses manuels scolaires. Le curriculum caché décrit les aspects dissimulés et indirects comme la perte d’identité, la honte d’être un autochtone et la langue obligatoire de la majorité de la province où se trouve le pensionnat. Le troisième point traite des conséquences ainsi que des effets négatifs et positifs en dehors du pensionnat. Le curriculum caché n’a pas seulement été vécu par les pensionnaires, mais aussi par leurs familles et leur entourage. Néanmoins, il ressort des aspects positifs une implication des pensionnaires dans la communauté et pour certains la poursuite d’études postsecondaires. À la lumière des résultats, nous pouvons soutenir que le pensionnat de Saint-Marc-de-Figuery, comme institution scolaire des autorités canadiennes, fut à la fois assimilateur, acculturateur et formateur en voulant régler la problématique autochtone au pays.