Chatham Islands are part of a small archipelago, Tl’chés, off the City of Victoria, southeastern Vancouver Island (British Columbia, Canada), in the Salish Sea, territory of the Songhees First Nation. Chatham and adjacent islands comprise nationally endangered Garry oak ecosystems, supporting a wide diversity of habitats for plant and wildlife communities. Chatham Islands are childhood home of Songhees elder Joan Morris [Sellemah], raised by grandparents and great-grandparents. Tl’chés has been uninhabited and untended for over 50 years now, entering in a process of rapid environmental change and degradation after Songhees residents left to live in the main Songhees Reserve in late 1950s. Sellemah longs to see the traditional gardens and orchards she remembers at Tl’chés restored, as well as her people’s relationship with their environment, for healthier and more sustainable ways of life. This thesis honours Sellemah’s vision by exploring best approaches for intervention in heavily degraded cultural landscapes in order to promote ecological and cultural integrity and long-term sustainability for people and ecosystems in Tl’chés, combining conventional ecological approaches with traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom (TEKW), cultural and participatory investigations, in the context of ethnoecological restoration. Ultimately, this research aims to provide assistance in the restoration of ecological and cultural features in Chatham Islands and within the Songhees First Nation, revitalizing traditional ecological knowledge on the landscape and reversing trends of biodiversity and cultural losses. / Graduate

While researchers have documented elite Indigenous hockey players' experiences when they leave home to play sports in the mainstream context, to date they have not examined how these experiences may vary based on sex and gender. By using Tribal Critical Race Theory, Indigenous feminisms, and reflexive thematic analysis, in this thesis, I examined the challenges and benefits that First Nations elite hockey players experienced when they left home to play in the mainstream context and how these challenges varied based on sex and gender. The 20 participants (10 female, 10 male) all had challenges with language and their new environments. Interestingly, while all the male participants reported experiencing racism, only two of the female participants reported such experiences, and they were of a less overt nature. The benefits that were experienced by both male and female athletes included athletic and personal growth, new experiences, and support from home. While both male and female athletes reported accruing benefits from leaving home, I found that the female athletes had to leave home to pursue hockey due to a lack of opportunities available to them, opportunities that were often available closer to home for male participants. I also found that both males and females reported receiving a great deal of support; this is particularly interesting given male hockey's higher profile. Taken together, these findings add nuance to the existing literature on Indigenous hockey players' experiences in the mainstream context.

Approximately 150,000 First Nation, Metis, and Inuit children attended Canadian residential schools from the 1840s to 1996. Most residential school children had negative experiences of physical, verbal, and sexual abuse that led to parenting repercussions once these children became parents. These repercussions of residential schools led to a rate of neglect for First Nation children 12 times higher than non-First Nation children. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological descriptive study was to explore the lived experiences of second generation parents, who were schooled in residential schools as children and their current parenting styles. The conceptual frameworks of trauma theory and family systems theory were used to understand the parenting styles of second-generation parents. Data were collected through one-on-one interviews with 20 second generation parents living within 10 Treaty 8 territory Woodland Cree reserves of Alberta, Canada. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded using NVivo10 software to determine common themes. The themes were little affection, too much alcohol and substance abuse, lack of positive reinforcement, an abundance of household chores, coparenting with extended family and friends, and spanking, revolving privileges, and yelling as forms of discipline. Social change may occur through better understanding of the parenting styles of second-generation parents. Recommendations include making levels of government aware of the need for a program to aid second-generation parents in healing from their past trauma. Another recommendation is that First Nation curricula should include the history and legacy of residential schools to allow children and their parents to acknowledge the effects of colonialism on their lives today and, hopefully, to overcome them.

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A small yet growing body of literature recognizes the importance of a cultural perspective to mental health services for Canadian Indigenous clients. Although the role of culture has not been studied extensively in counselling psychology, a few investigators have attempted a systemic examination of the area. Using a narrative methodology, five Indigenous counsellors described their perceptions, beliefs and experiences regarding mental health and healing from an Indigenous perspective. A narrative analysis of the data employed story maps to yield within and across participant themes. Overall results included the metathemes of community, cultural identity, holistic approach, and interdependence as integral to mental health and healing for Native clients, with an illustration for counselling that contains specific elements for incorporating this conception into practice. The results are used to inform literature on an Indigenous paradigm of mental health, counsellor training programmes aimed at meeting Indigenous health needs, government policy, and to generate further direction for health research into the Indigenous paradigm in Canada and beyond.

Discussion around the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) re-intensified in the 1990s as a response to the increasing power of large corporations, the regulatory vacuum left by neoliberal market deregulation and the changing nature of the state in the context of globalization. This dissertation analyzes the constitution of CSR, grounded in political economy and situated in the context of globalization, and identifies CSR as a constitutive element of global governance. Claims made about the potential business contribution to social and economic development in developing regions are largely unsubstantiated and little is known about the impact of CSR on the people it is supposed to benefit. Mainstream literature strips CSR from its context and assumes that practice can be standardized and the results quantified. The qualitative case study analyzes the contextual practice and impact of CSR activities by EnCana Corporation, Canada’s largest independent oil and gas company, on Indigenous peoples and settler communities in Ecuador, and on the Dene Tha’ First Nation in Canada. Analysis of EnCana’s definition and implementation of CSR reveals a conflicting narrative, attempting to reconcile competitive capitalism with broad moralistic principles and ethics. Corporate culture prioritized the business case and the assumption that triple bottom line goals are compatible and mutually reinforcing. Findings from the case study demonstrate that corporate ideology remained constant across the company’s operations in the two countries, allowing adaptation of its CSR practices only within a certain range of possibilities. The case study provides evidence that EnCana Corporation had to adapt its CSR practice in response to specific articulations of local social-economic and political contexts. Specifically, CSR practices responded first, to national development goals and state capacity; and second, to Indigenous and communal resources and strategies. The findings further suggest that CSR practice creates fragile dependencies, subjecting social, ecological and social justice objectives to economic imperatives. Two important processes contribute to the creation of fragile dependencies. First, at the business-society interface, citizens are conceptualized as stakeholders; second, participation in decision-making becomes institutionalized as a limited form of consultation, often delegated to project proponents, without sufficient involvement of the state.

Indigenous* college students in both Canada and the United States have the lowest rates of obtaining postsecondary degrees, and their postsecondary dropout rates are higher than for any other minority (Freeman & Fox, 2005; Mendelson, 2004; Reddy, 1993). There has been very little research done to uncover possible reasons for such low academic achievement and high dropout rates for Indigenous students. Some of the research that has been done indicates that one challenge for Indigenous students is the difficulty in navigating the cultural differences between higher education and their Indigenous cultures. Biculturalism is the ability of an individual to navigate two different cultures (Bell, 1990; Das & Kemp, 1997). Several scholars have suggested that biculturalism is an important construct in understanding academic persistence among Indigenous students (Jackson, Smith & Hill, 2003; Schiller, 1987). This study explored biculturalism among Indigenous college students and how it impacts their higher education experience. Indigenous college students (n=26) from the southwestern United States and central Canada participated in qualitative interviews for the study. The interviews were transcribed and interpreted using a synthesis of qualitative methods. Several themes related to the participants' experience of biculturalism emerged from the qualitative analysis: institutional support for transition to college, racism, types of relationships to native culture, career issues, and family issues. The findings suggested that more needs to be done in terms of providing Indigenous students centers at universities, implementing mentor programs for incoming students, and educating future Indigenous college students, families, and communities about biculturalism and the culture of higher education. *Author's note: The term Indigenous will be used to describe Native American/American Indian, First Nation and Métis student participants. Interviews were collected both in the United States and Canada. The terminology used to describe these populations differs across cultures; therefore, Indigenous will be used as a more general term, to describe the participants. The terminology used by cited authors was retained.

This narrative ethnography is based on seven years of research collaboration with the Walpole Island First Nation (WIFN). The study focuses on local perceptions of risk as they relate to ecosystem integrity, human health and well-being. Discourse analysis of generic and nuanced community narratives reveals diverse yet complementary situated knowledge that are firmly rooted in Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) cultural teachings, values and practices. Gerald Ryle and Clifford Geertz's conceptualization of thin and thick description is used to parse out the various components of what I've identified as a community genre of toxic talk. Within this model, thin description refers to observations of the surface metamorphoses of the physical environment through pollution and other anthropogenic changes. Thick description emerging from the analysis of elegies and echoes of loss and discourses of resistance illuminates the discursive tactics employed by community members to resist Western frameworks of risk analysis and re-situate the topic of environmental health within the wider interpretive matrix of structural violence. A proposed Shell refinery expansion project is used as an example of how WIFN actively mobilizes discourses via oral tradition in the struggle for environmental justice. Through the strategic use of toxic talk, the community draws attention to environmental issues while simultaneously laying bare to a wider, non-Native audience the historical scaffolding of Native issues that are part and parcel of contemporary environmental crises and their effective mediation and resolution. The 'discursive movement' from elegies and echoes of loss to discourses of resistance reframes Walpole Island residents from those who are defined by survivorship to those who embody and evoke a spirit of survivance. The dissertation concludes with a semiotic critique of the Western medical terms chemophobia and risk perception. This leads to the advancement of toxic talk as an alternative framework for acquiring a more politicized, historicized and humanized understanding of environmental concerns at Wal pole Island. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Since the signing of their Final Agreement and Self-Government Agreement in 2003, Kluane Fist Nation (KFN), located primarily in the southwestern Yukon, has been navigating their post-settlement realities as an autonomous self-governing First Nation. According to the Canadian state, these Agreements intended to achieve certainty for all Parties, including certainty over jurisdiction, and KFN's ability to govern their own land and peoples. Two decades into the implementation of their Agreements, I ask, what has been achieved in actuality? In partnership with Kluane First Nation, this research sought to produce results KFN desired and found valuable. As such, it explores KFN's chosen topic of Traditional Leases, alongside essential entwined elements such as KFN's enactment of value, their navigation of uncertain and precarious land claim legislation as techniques of jurisdiction and territoriality, and taking control of research within their Traditional Territory. This exploration stems from our research partnership, my ethical commitments to KFN, and research's methods and methodologies. I argue that in their work with researchers, and their policies and practices on the land, KFN is enacting their vision for a meaningful and good life, within ongoing settler-colonial attempts to maintain control. KFN is engaging in and enacting what they find valuable in their use of their land despite ever-increasing obstacles, and often in ways which remain invisible to the settler-state.

Long-term human habitation introduces morphological and chemical changes to soil as a result of cultural, economic, and stewardship practices. These cultural soils, or Anthrosols, are recognized globally. On the Northwest Coast of North America, Indigenous marine and terrestrial land stewardship practices are recognized on present-day landscapes. Increased awareness of these stewardship practices is informed by Indigenous knowledge, ecological legacies, ethnographic studies, and archaeological evidence. This research was undertaken to better understand how lək̓ʷəŋən (Straits Salish) stewardship of a cultural landscape affected the development of soil across a village-garden gradient. On Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Indigenous cultivation of culturally important root foods was interrupted by colonization and its pervasive effects, so an additional research aim was to investigate how cultural soils remain after being disconnected from traditional stewardship. There is a growing global understanding that Indigenous management of ecosystems plays a key role in ecological health. At the regional scale, Songhees First Nation are interested in learning about their soils to inform future restoration efforts and connect youth with their land and culture. The lək̓ʷəŋən Ethnoecology and Archaeology Project (LEAP) is a collaborative research project with the Songhees First Nation to learn more about the physical remains of lək̓ʷəŋən stewardship: soils are a key part of the project. Community knowledge, ethnographic sources, and ecological legacies informed the archaeological excavation and soil sampling in this research. Archaeological excavation was utilized to understand the pedologic and archaeological setting of the site. Soil samples were analyzed for physical and chemical properties to see if a statistical difference between on and off-site samples could be detected. Data from the archaeological excavation were recorded and interpreted. A gradient of influence does exist across the village-garden; the village has a strong physical and chemical signature that can be seen through archaeological excavation, macroscopic remains in the soil, and elevated levels of phosphorous, calcium, and soil pH. Results from the garden are less clear, previous ecological studies and archaeological surveys show evidence of lək̓ʷəŋən stewardship—culturally important plant species and burial cairns are present. However, within the soil, the macroscopic remains and soil chemistry signatures are not as strong as the village which indicates that the health of lək̓ʷəŋən gardens facilitates their continued ecological functioning which ultimately may obscure earlier soil signatures of stewardship. Archaeological investigation alone does not always show the full scope of Indigenous terrestrial management practices. Incorporating present-day community knowledge, ecological legacies of plant cultivation, and utilizing soil chemical data are important to understanding the interconnections between people and their environments across cultural landscapes. Current work on the ecological legacies of plant cultivation can be assisted by investigating the soil as a site that also undergoes co-development with Indigenous stewardship. / Graduate