Animated movies have had a big impact in the film business all over the world. A lot of these films are mainly produced for a younger audience, which leads to a greater responsibility to show a legitimate worldview. Children do not have the same ability of critical thinking as an adult, and that is why it is vital in such movies. In this study, we have examined the movies Kung Fu Panda and Mulan to see how the Chinese culture is represented, having in mind that the relation between East and West have been, and in some ways still are strained. We have examined whether there have been any postcolonial elements such as cultural myths, orientalism, ethnocentrism and stereotypes, originated from the field of cultural studies. Based on a three dimensional analysis, we have looked at the films’ structure, the context and the socio-historical context. The study concluded that the Chinese culture is often represented in a somewhat stereotypical way and with symbols associated with Asia and its culture but the movies also includes certain Western elements.

This paper assesses the continued community participation mechanisms, especially the Restoration Advisory Board, and the role of these mechanisms in the environmental cleanup of post U.S. military training operations in the current colonial situation of the Puerto Rican island municipality of Vieques. Today the community has many informal and formal mechanisms of organization meant to address the social, economic, health and environmental problems resulting from the Navy's presence on the island. These mechanisms are the cornerstone of the community's search for social and environmental justice. This paper provides a brief history of the Navy's presence on Vieques, the evolution of community participation mechanisms and an analysis of how these mechanisms allow the community to interact with public, private and government institutions involved in the cleanup. The research is centered around interviews with community members to discern whether they feel these mechanisms are effective in properly addressing community concerns. The case study of Vieques could also have international implications for the future of foreign military bases and toxic waste disposal around the world. Analysis of the effectiveness of community participation mechanisms could help marginalized communities deal with developed countries on issues that may concern human health and environmental risks as a result of the developed countries' activities. The analysis of community participation mechanisms can be used as a guide for Vieques and other communities around the world trying to achieve social, economic and environmental justice.

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Approximately one in two parents across the province of Ontario, regardless of personal religious beliefs, now choose to enrol their children in a public Roman Catholic secondary school over the public secular school counterpart. The Ontario Roman Catholic school system has historically struggled for recognition and independence as an equally legitimate system in the province. Students in modern schools regard religion and spirituality as critical aspects to their individual identities, yet this study investigates the language and knowledge delivered within the systemic marginalization and colonial framework of a Euro-centric school system and the level of inclusivity and acceptance it affords its youth. Using a critical ethnographic methodology within a single revelatory case study, this study presents the voices of youth as the most critical voice to be heard on identity and identity in faith in Ontario Roman Catholic schools. Surveys with students and student families are complemented with in-depth student interviews, triangulated with informal educational staff interviews and the limited literature incorporating youth identity in modern Ontario Roman Catholic schools. Through the approach of an anti-colonial discursive framework, incorporating a theology of liberation that emphasizes freedom from oppression, the voice of Roman Catholic secondary school youth are brought forth as revealing their struggle for identity in a system that intentionally hides identity outside of being Roman Catholic. Broader questions discussed include: (a) What is the link between identity, schooling and knowledge production?; (b) How do the different voices of students of multi-faiths, educators, administrators, and so forth, contradict, converge and diverge from each other?; (c) How are we to understand the role and importance of spirituality in schooling, knowledge production, and claims of Indigenity and resistance to colonizing education?; (d) What does it mean to claim spirituality as a valid way of knowing?; (e) In what way does this study help understand claims that spirituality avoids splitting of the self?; (f) How do we address the fact that our cultures today are threatened by the absence of community?; and (g) What are the pedagogic and instructional relevancies of this work for the classroom teacher?

Shakespeare criticism has been a rapidly evolving field of literary studies. Scholars such as Francis Barker and Peter Hulme, Meredith Anne Skura, Stanley Wells, Harold Bloom and Sidney Shanker have continuously developed new theories and dismissed previous theories. In this essay, I discuss the negative results of such attitudes and the problems of “over-reading”, in the critiques which are based on the following theories: the post-colonial, psychoanalytical, biographical and ideological. I elaborate on the relevant arguments and issues within literary critique mentioned by Michael Taylor in his book Shakespeare Criticism in the Twentieth Century. To create a common ground for the theories, I have used critical texts concerning William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I find that while all forms of literary critique have flaws, the theories also contribute valuable insights for further readings. I maintain that combining several forms of literary critique when analysing a text will create a more complex and in-depth reading, impossible to achieve through a singular critical theory.

Outside Looking In (OLI) is a youth development through recreation program for Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Through the analysis of semi-structured interviews, fieldnotes, and archival documents, in this thesis I examine OLI staff and Board members’ description of OLI’s creation and implementation processes. This thesis is written in the stand alone format and is comprised of two papers. The first paper shows that OLI staff and Board members describe OLI’s creation and implementation as relatively predetermined. At the same time, however, OLI incorporates collaborative approaches to various aspects of program design. While OLI facilitates collaborative processes that can contribute to Aboriginal self-determination, Eurocentric influences and broader colonial forces make efforts to achieve Aboriginal self-determination challenging. The second paper illustrates that OLI’s approach to Aboriginal youth development through recreation creates a hybrid third space that challenges colonial discourses. Together, this thesis not only describes the creation and implementation processes of a youth development through recreation program for Aboriginal peoples, but also how the tensions associated with Aboriginal self-determination and colonial relations of power can permeate such programs.

Canadian processes such as the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and Comprehensive Land Claims as well as flashpoint events (Simpson & Ladner, 2010) such as the Kanien’kehaka resistance at Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke (the “Oka Crisis”) and more recently, the Idle No More movement, signal to Canadians that something is amiss. What may be less visible to Canadians are the 400 years of colonial oppression experienced and the 400 years of resistance enacted by Indigenous peoples on their lands, which are currently occupied by the state of Canada. It is in the context of historical and ongoing Canadian colonialism: land theft, dispossession, marginalization, and genocide, and in the context of the overwhelming denial of these realities by white settler Canadians that this study occurs. In order to break through settler Canadian denial, and to inspire greater numbers of white settler Canadians to initiate and/or deepen their anti-colonial and/or decolonial understandings and work, this study presents extended life narratives of white settler Canadians who have engaged deeply in anti-colonial and/or decolonial work as a major life focus. In this study, such work is framed as living in Indigenous sovereignty, or living in an awareness that we are on Indigenous lands containing their own protocols, stories, obligations, and opportunities which have been understood and practiced by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Inspired by Indigenous and anti-oppressive methodologies, I articulate and utilize an anti-colonial research methodology. I use participatory and narrative methods, which are informed and politicized through words gifted by Indigenous scholars, activists, and Knowledge Keepers. The result is research as a transformative, relational, and decolonizing process. In addition to the extended life narratives, this research yields information regarding connections between social work education, social work practice, and the anti-colonial/decolonial learnings and work of five research subjects who have, or are completing, social work degrees. The dissertation closes with an exploration of what can be learned through the narrative stories, with recommendations for white settler peoples and for social work, and with recommendations for future research. / February 2017

While there have been many studies of Henry James's ghost stories, there has been surprisingly little scholarship written on postcolonial tensions in these works. In American literature, the figure of the Native American ghost is a common expression of Western settler guilt over native erasure and land seizure. In both his American and British ghost stories, though, James focuses more on the horror within the colonizer than the terrifying, ghostly other from the edge of the empire. As such, these ghost stories serve as a more significant critique of colonialism and imperialism than Gothic texts that merely demonstrate the colonizer’s fear of the racial and ethnic other at the edges of the empire. James’s earliest ghost stories address to the legacy of American colonialism, staging narratives of indigenous erasure and land seizure by centering hauntings around property disputes. The later ghost stories—written after James had emigrated to Britain— engage in a critique of the imperial British military and colonial power structures that systematically oppress indigenous groups in the name of the empire. These ghost stories all focus on the figure of the Western settler-colonizer and his guilt in creating hauntings; James’s living characters often realize they have been complicit in the wrongdoings that result in revenge-seeking ghosts, and this realization is more terrifying than the ghosts themselves. In this way, James's ghost stories present a means of questioning the validityof colonizer identity, and thus a means of deconstructing the binary of the Western “self” and the indigenous “other.”

The starting point for a consideration of law in former colonies is often a law/custom binary whereby law is the formal legal system imposed during the colonial occupation and retained at independence, and custom the local law disrupted by colonialism. In most South Pacific small island countries, this dichotomy of law and custom has been formalized by the protection of custom by constitutional or statutory provisions. The protection of custom was carried out as a celebration of local culture at Independence, but the effect has been to stymie the development of local custom and to reinforce custom’s post-colonial subsidiary position relative to the formalized legal system. The Kingdom of Tonga avoided the indirect rule of late colonialism and as a result Tonga’s legal system was never dichotomized into law and custom. There was no constitutional protection of custom because custom was never characterized as something other than law. Although it is undeniable that the direction of the development of law in Tonga was impacted by the presence of the Imperial project in the region, the legal change that occurred was led by Tongans. The starting point for legal change in Tonga was, and continues to be Tongan legal traditions even though local custom has not been formally protected. This project considers the two human concepts of apology and the protection of reputation. In Tonga’s hierarchical society both concepts already represented important legal traditions when the formal British-style legal system was adopted. However, these legal traditions were not relegated to something ‘other’ than law. The former continued as an informal legal tradition that addressed legal harms not recognized by adopted legal traditions, while the latter was incorporated into the adopted formal legal system with provisions that continued to reflect the distinctive Tongan society. Both legal traditions have faced challenges recently. Apology was no longer recognized as an efficacious remedy for women in the case of domestic abuse. The protection of the inviolable reputations of the monarch and nobility was limited by the exercise of the constitutional right of the freedom of the press. In both cases Tongans chose to exercise adopted constitutional rights in order to limit what was perceived to be an abuse of the exercise of power in the hierarchical society. Because local legal traditions had not been preserved as something apart from Tongan law, this development did not signal the end of Tongan legal traditions. Rather, it demonstrated the continuing development of Tongan law. / Graduate

The aim of this essay is to explore motherhood in two postcolonial literary works by African American author Toni Morrison and British author Caryl Phillips, who was born in the Caribbean. The essay is based on Morrison’s award winning novel Beloved, which was published in 1987 and was inspired by the escaping African American slave Margareth Garner. It is set just after the American Civil War and the novels deals with the trauma of slavery from the perspective of Sethe, a slave who kills her own daughter to save her from slavery. The second novel on which this essay is based is Caryl Phillips’ novel Crossing the River, which was published 1993 and focused on the African diaspora from different perspectives. Crossing the River is a non-chronological narrative covering four different characters (three African American people and one white slave trader during the eighteenth century). This essay, however, only deals with the last of the four narratives depicting white British Joyce who mothers a child with African American soldier Travis. The hypothesis on which the essay is based is that the institution of American slavery has denied the female protagonists in the two novels, Sethe and Joyce, their maternal selves. The analysis revealed that both women suffer from racial domination, and race, or simply skin color, is what leads to the maternal loss of the two protagonists. Both authors depict the world of the colonizer and the colonized and they address the common pain and guilt shared by black as well as white people.