Western archival institutions have both silenced and misrepresented Indigenous peoples in Canada for more than a century. These actions have in turn assisted in the colonization and subjectification of a myriad of Indigenous communities within the colonial construct of Canada. This institutional complicity in the colonization process has recently come under fire. Questions have arisen about how these institutions can be decolonized and how they can be used in partnership with Indigenous peoples to strengthen the Indigenous voices they once silenced. The institutional decolonization of archives becomes especially important when the archival institution in question has been given the responsibility to care for records that relate to gross human rights abuses perpetrated against Indigenous peoples. This is the case for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) at the University of Manitoba, which has a mandate to preserve and share the truths of Residential School Survivors. / May 2017

The history of transportation planning in New York City has created disparities between those who have sufficient access to the public transportation network, and those who face structural barriers to traveling from their home to education, employment, and healthcare opportunities. This thesis analyzes the legacy of discriminatory policy surrounding the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and city and state governments that have failed to support vital infrastructure improvement projects and service changes to provide multi-modal welfare to New York’s working poor. By exploring issues of transit equity as they pertain to the New York City subway system, this thesis raises the question: which communities lack adequate access to public transit opportunity and what are the policies and historical developments that have created these inequities? Through examination of grassroots community-based movements towards social justice and transportation equity, this thesis will review the proposals, campaigns, and demands that citizen-driven organizations have fought for in New York City. These movements, I argue, are the most effective method to achieve greater transportation justice and intergenerational equity.

Panoramic Sham is sunset and sunrise, a walk through a field of wildflowers or a day in the forest. It is that moment when a light breeze tousles your hair and chirping birds reaffirm vitality. Panoramic Sham is also a heap of outdated home goods that once transformed our living rooms into artificial habitats. I reimagine decommissioned domestic goods as a way to confront trends of mass-production, habits of consumption and to explore systems of artifice, authenticity, and the consumer haze perpetuated by contemporary American society. Comprised of synthetic materials and manufactured to impersonate nature, these 20th century cast-offs provide an abundant cycle of cultural and generational refuse.

School leaders often contemplate implementing measures that will increase community and parent involvement in schools. There is a shortage of research that concisely takes school leadership through a process that details how to integrate parent and community input in a school transformation initiative and careful analysis of student outcomes. Within this study, I provide an in-depth look at one school district’s efforts to engage its community through strategic planning and mission and vision redesign. This process includes community involvement at every phase. For the purpose of this study, community refers to both community members who do not have children in the school system and parents of current students. In this study, I outline the inception of the transformation effort, the ongoing efforts to include community input in decision-making and campus implementation, and finally a review of the overarching impact on leadership, staff, students and community. Data collection analyzed in this study include assessment data, survey data, discipline data and walk through data collected by the school district.

The study focuses on the role of government in the provision of environmental programmes, events and campaigns. South Africa is a signatory to a number of environmental treaties and protocols hence it is expected to celebrate environmental days annually, such as World Wetland Day, National Water Week, World Environmental Week, Arbor Day and many more. The study considered the community of Masibekela, a remote rural village in Mpumalanga Province under the Nkomazi Local Municipality as its study area. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied to gather the necessary data from the four sets of respondents to a questionnaire survey, namely: the Sector Manager of Tonga Environmental Centre, traditional leadership and community members, learners and educators. The study discovered that the provision of environmental programmes, events and campaigns to the study area by the government leaves much to be desired. It lays bare that the community members of Masibekela are neglected environmentally by the government as compared to schools. The study also revealed contrasting features both in the knowledge and celebration of some of the environmental days by both the schools (learners and educators) and the general community members. A high percentage of learners and educators expressed their knowledge and celebration of environmental days since they are frequently visited by government officials to promote environmental programmes, events and campaigns geared towards environmental education and awareness but the same cannot be said about the traditional leaders and community members. It is recommended, among other things, that the Tonga Environmental Centre, as a custodian of provision of environmental programmes, events and campaigns, should be capacitated both in terms of human resources and strategic planning so as to meet its expectations. It is also recommended vi that more funding for bursaries for environmental studies for the youth should be made available and also more capital should be injected into the actual promotion of environmental programmes, events and campaigns. The National Department of Education in collaboration with the Department of Environmental Affairs should consider including Environmental Education in the school curriculum as a compulsory subject in all grades / Geography / M. A. (Geography)

Medium to Long Term Impacts on Former Participants of the Shoulder to Shoulder Global Brigades to Ecuador. International service learning and voluntourism programs in global health evoke benefits for both community and the intervener. While it is clear that the Shoulder to Shoulder Global program at the University of Kentucky provides a service to an economically resource poor community in Santo Domingo, Ecuador, what is unclear is the impact these interprofessional experiences have on the participants that travel with the four times a year health brigades. This study proposes to answer the question of what are the educational, personal and professional impacts that brigade participants experience. Alumni of the Shoulder to Shoulder Global health brigades from 2007 – 2017 were sent a twenty-three question survey to better understand the impact of this program. Seventy-five responses to the quantitative and qualitative questions were received and a chi square analysis was performed of subgroups within the seventy-five respondents. The findings indicate that this program has positively impacted participants in all three areas, with strong evidence to show that the impacts are related to the initial and intermediate outcomes, with more data needed to better assess the long-term program outcomes.

Native American women and children suffer from domestic violence at an alarming rate on and off Indian reservations in the United States. Often these families that are impacted by domestic violence are involved in the state/county child welfare system. This study was to gain knowledge about Native American tribal child social workers experiences and challenges with co-occurrences of domestic violence and child maltreatment cases. This study used an exploratory, qualitative design with a phenomenological approach by collecting data through face-to-face and over the phone interviews with four Native American tribal child social workers from four different tribes across the nation. This design allowed participants the opportunity to provide a more in-depth explanation from their own personal experiences regarding their experiences and challenges working with domestic violence and child maltreatment cases. The study found that there is a need for state/county social workers to have a better understanding of the historic and current experiences of Native people from a cultural, spiritual, and socioeconomic perspective through effective and consistent training on the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The study also found, that there is a need for state/county administration and social workers to build relationships with tribal child social workers in order to provide culturally competent and effective policies and services to serve Native American communities.

In 1990 many in Colquitt, Georgia considered themselves to be a dying town due to the loss of jobs and outmigration that occurred when labor intensive farming transitioned to the machine. In response citizens brought in a theater director from Chicago who helped them launch a performance series of inclusive stories that were acted by local volunteers. The resulting series called Swamp Gravy has run from 1992 to present (2012), and has led to purported claims of community revitalization. The purpose of this study was to discover what this ongoing narrative community engagement meant to the people of Colquitt in regards to: community experiences that produced new relationships (including those between Blacks and Whites); personal empowerment; the coproduction of an emerging and diverse community identity; and institutional and economic development. Methods for this case study included narrative interviews of participants, attendees and local citizens, as well as observation of the town and the performances, and document analysis. Many participant volunteers and attendees became Swamp Gravy enthusiasts, and describe their experiences as coming out into a meaningful experience of community, which included forming relationships with diverse others (including those of a different race). The enthusiasts speak of growing into larger community responsibilities with others for the common good, and feel that ongoing and inclusive storytelling is very important to coproducing a diverse heritage that informs the future of their city. Other attendees (predominantly the business community) describe the benefits of Swamp Gravy as instrumental to having given the town recognition (identity) as an entertaining tourist attraction that exposed individual talent, boosted individual confidence, and enhanced social connectivity. Others in Colquitt were indifferent or resistive to the coming out that the performances invite. Most everyone recognizes that Swamp Gravy has attracted outside tourists which has boosted economic development, occasioned the renovation of downtown Colquitt square and the formation of institutions to continue to attract and accommodate visitors from afar. This case is theorized in terms of the emerging communicative turn in planning that juxtaposes the planner as mediator or facilitator, and stakeholders as co-producers. The findings in this case study support that the Swamp Gravy form of narrative process has some potential for guiding stakeholders to a just diversity in cities, neighborhoods and towns, and as such should be studied further. Urban planning in situations of urban renewal may be one place where utilizing this form of meaningful engagement could lead to discovery of new identities, which may both inform and motivate a just plan to be coproduced.

While environmental and economic sustainability have been driving factors in the movement towards a more resilient built environment, social sustainability is a factor that has received significantly less attention over the years. Federal support for low-income housing has fallen drastically, and the deficit of available, adequate, affordable homes continues to grow. In this thesis, I explore one way that architects can design affordable housing that is intrinsically sustainable. In the past, subsidized low-income housing has been built as if to provide a short-term solution—as if poverty and lack of affordable housing is a short-term problem. However, I argue that adaptable architecture is essential for the design of affordable housing that is environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. Further, architects must balance affordability, durability, and adaptability to design sustainable solutions that are resistant to obsolescence. I conclude by applying principles and processes of adaptability in the design of Apto Ontario, an adaptable affordable housing development in the low-income historic downtown of Ontario, California (Greater Los Angeles). Along a new Bus Rapid Transit corridor, Apto Ontario would create a diverse, resilient, socially sustainable community in an area threatened by the rise of housing costs.

TreePeople is a Los Angeles based non-profit organization that uses environmental education, initiatives, and programs to engage with the greater community to work towards the goal of a sustainable future for Los Angeles. The Fruit Tree Program is one of TreePeople’s longest running programs of 29 years, which distributes free bare-root fruit trees to economically disadvantaged communities as a source of fresh fruit and the other environmental benefits that trees offer. This paper is a comprehensive report detailing the history of the program and the impacts it has had on communities across Los Angeles County. Looking at three communities in Los Angeles and interviewing key community members from these communities, I identified the impacts that the program has had on addressing important urban environmental concerns and facilitating community development.