Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Political recognition of the multicultural nature of Mexico has advanced the understanding of how people live together, as well as how they value and respect each other’s differences. The migration of indigenous populations from rural areas of the country to urban settings has transformed the cities, and also schools, into places of remarkable cultural diversity. This study examines the processes of identity formation of indigenous children in two urban schools in Jalisco, Mexico. By studying the processes of identity formation, I focus on understanding how indigenous children represent themselves within the wider social discourses and dynamics of power, which might be either reinforcing or limiting their opportunities to strengthen their ethnicity. By using an ethnographic approach, from a critical theory perspective, this study focus on listening to indigenous children’s voices, rather than the other voices and experiences within the school setting. The study was conducted in two schools in the municipality of Zapopan, in the State of Jalisco, Mexico. Over a period of 14 months, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 indigenous children, balanced by gender and age, from 4 different ethnic groups: Mazahua, Nahua, Purepecha, and Totonaco. I also interviewed 22 mestizo children, 10 teachers, 3 principals, and 7 parents. The schooling experiences of indigenous children are discussed in the study. Elements such as language use, territory (geographic and symbolic), family networks, and their attachment to their communities of origin were identified as the crucial factors for indigenous children to represent, or sometimes deny, themselves as being indigenous. The analysis also highlights the silences, racism, and ethnic blindness that indigenous children face in urban schools. Meritocratic educational approaches within neoliberal discourses of competition, individual effort, and autonomy were embedded in the children’s schooling experiences, thereby shaping their learner identities. This study seeks to contribute to the pursuit of providing indigenous children with educational services that recognise and reinforce their ethnic identity. It is also my objective that children’s voices open up a dialogue with those responsible for the educational and social policies, in order to create a common front that might challenge the racism veiled as indifference and/or a desire for ‘equality’ in Mexican urban schools.

In this dissertation, I focused on education equity for Indigenous communities in Ecuador and Peru and the policy implications of intercultural bilingual education in the countries’ primary schools. The goals of the study were to (a) measure the extent to which intercultural bilingual education led to increased education outcomes for Indigenous students in Ecuador and Peru and (b) analyze how intercultural bilingual education was implemented in Ecuador by interest groups and how this affected its interpretation and success. Using a sequential mixed methods design, the study began with a longitudinal analysis of education outcomes among Indigenous and non-Indigenous students from 2006-2013 using standardized tests from the Second and Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Studies. Indigenous students increased their test scores in Spanish language over time; however, these findings were not solely attributed to intercultural bilingual education schools. Improvements among Indigenous students did not necessarily reflect increased equity, as low-income children and those from rural areas continued to underperform. In Ecuador, intercultural bilingual education reform from 2006-2016 resulted in divergent perspectives on the purposes and outcomes of this type of education between the government and Indigenous groups. Opposing interpretations of this education reform as a realization of Indigenous rights and equity as outlined in the 2008 constitution, and its subsequent implementation in Indigenous communities, led to differences in how to measure the success of the reform. Government adherence to a state-level system of evaluation and testing for all students and teachers in 2012 predisposed intercultural bilingual education schools to standardized testing that undermined the theoretical underpinnings of intercultural education.

Project (M.P.P.) - Simon Fraser University, 2006. / Theses (Master of Public Policy Program) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Anthropometcic measurements and 24h-recall interviews were conducted on Dene/Metis and Yukon children, and food choice questionnaire interviews were conducted on the mothers of the children. On average, 32% of the children were above the 85th percentile of BMI-for-age in the 2000 CDC Growth Charts. The dietary nutrient intakes were compared to the DRI values. Vitamin A, calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D, vitamin E, dietary fiber, omega-6 fatty acids, omega-3 fatty acids, and magnesium intakes were low. Excessive nutrient intake was not observed. Imbalance of energy intake from carbohydrate and fat and excessive energy intake from total sugar and saturated fat were observed. Market foods were a major part of the diet. Traditional food contributed 4.6% of total energy intake. Frequently mentioned factors as having an influence on food selection were cost, health, children's preference and acceptability, traditional food and market food availability, and women's preference.

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Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-21T14:43:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Luiz Fernando Taques Fonseca Buzato.pdf: 1461557 bytes, checksum: a1a1146e4f5b0949f6b059871567512c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-03-25 / For the Brazilian society in general indigenous issues is seen as complex as it seeks to integrate the various indigenous ethnic groups with non-Indian, a nationalist ideological discourse, while preserving their culture starting with abstract conceptions and general on the subject. Symptomatic of this are the various ways of referring to indigenous peoples throughout history, observed both in literature and in the formulation and enforcement of rights. Given this reality, this research aims to study social protection aimed at indigenous children who usually stay overnight in the city of Ponta Grossa in the company of their families in the sale of handicrafts, in order to understand, through the different speeches of representatives of agents government, how they interpret and apply the rights and guarantees to indigenous children. Looking up through these speeches, which grasp concepts and representations that these agents have on indigenous children in the city and how this impacts on social protection, through their practices. To this end, the research uses the literature review as its theoretical support, both to introduce the reader to the field of representation, and to present the image of the Indian construction and their children in Brazil, and to briefly discuss the main conflicts and tensions between Indians and non-Indians in the country's history, the collection of data from the Home Support Indian to know the profile of indigenous families and children who remain there, and field research through informal conversations held with public officials responsible for indigenous issues in the county and collection of their personal testimony through semi-structured questionnaire. Thus, the research will consist of three chapters, in order not only to situate the reader briefly about indigenous issues in Ponta Grossa, but to allow reflection on the possibilities and limits of social protection of indigenous children in the county, through field representations. / Para a sociedade brasileira de um modo geral a questão indígena é vista como complexa, pois busca-se integrar as diferentes etnias indígenas com o não índio, num discurso ideológico nacionalista, e ao mesmo tempo preservar a sua cultura partindo-se de concepções abstratas e genéricas sobre o tema. Sintomático disto são as diversas formas de se referir aos povos autóctones ao longo da história, observadas tanto na literatura quanto na formulação e aplicação de direitos. Diante desta realidade, essa pesquisa tem como objeto de estudo a proteção social destinada a crianças indígenas que costumeiramente pernoitam na cidade de Ponta Grossa em companhia de suas famílias na venda de artesanatos, com o objetivo de compreender, através dos diferentes discursos dos agentes representantes do poder público, como estes interpretam e aplicam os direitos e garantias a crianças indígenas. Busca-se, através destes discursos, apreender quais as concepções e representações que estes agentes têm acerca das crianças indígenas no município e como isto influencia na proteção social, através de suas práticas. Neste intuito, a pesquisa se utilizará da revisão bibliográfica como seu suporte teórico, tanto para introduzir o leitor no campo da representação, quanto para apresentar a construção da imagem do índio e das suas crianças no Brasil, e para discorrer brevemente sobre os principais conflitos e tensões existentes entre índios e não índios na história do país; da coleta de dados junto a Casa de Apoio ao Índio para conhecer o perfil das famílias e crianças indígenas que permanecem ali; e da pesquisa de campo através de conversas informais mantidas com os agentes públicos responsáveis pela questão indígena no município e da coleta de depoimento pessoal deles através de questionário semi-estruturado. Desta forma, a pesquisa será composta por três capítulos, a fim não apenas de situar brevemente o leitor quanto a questão indígena em Ponta Grossa, mas de permitir a reflexão sobre as possibilidades e limites da proteção social das crianças indígenas no município, através do campo das representações.

This dissertation explores historical processes and daily practices of indigenization within the context of British Columbia's model for delegating Aboriginal agencies for child and family services. This research draws from historical data, examining the ways in which contemporary indigenization within Aboriginal child welfare is shaped by Canada's colonial past- most notably, the historical relationship between the Indian Residential School System and Aboriginal child welfare in Canada. Grounded in indigenous methodologies, research practice, and critical theory, this dissertation queries indigenization within the Pacific Aboriginal Child Welfare Association (PACWA). This dissertation explores the complexity of the urban setting in which PACWA operates, providing case studies of daily practices of indigenization within the association, considering the roles of Aboriginal Elders and Knowledge Keepers throughout this process, and arguing for the need to reframe urban Aboriginal child welfare in Canada. This dissertation asserts that Indigenization at PACWA is making significant differences in the lives of children and families involved in Aboriginal child welfare and that Aboriginal families continue to have their children removed at alarming rates most often because they are living in the aftermath of colonization, amidst contemporary conditions that continue to marginalize Aboriginal peoples. Indigenization is a process that can and is being achieved within the context of child welfare in British Columbia today. It is a process connected to Aboriginal sovereignty, self-government, identity and mainstream-Aboriginal relations. It is also a process that is making significant impacts in the lives of those connected to Aboriginal child welfare (Aboriginal and otherwise), while simultaneously being challenged by the structural inequalities and political eddies that continue to marginalize urban Aboriginal peoples. This research demonstrates that successful indigenization practice, at the level of large organizations such as PACWA, requires that various levels of Canadian government view them as true partners in a project of decolonization and indigenization. This requires a recognition and honouring of history and diversity of Aboriginal peoples in Canada, validated by means of mutual respect and sharing power.

In this thesis I have developed a theoretical framework using Michel Foucault’s metaphor of the panopticon and applied the resulting discursive methodology to prominent risk assessment texts in Tasmanian Government child protection services. From the analysis I have developed an innovation poststructural practice of discursive empathy for use in child protection social work. Previous research has examined discourses such as madness, mothering, the family and masculinity using Foucault’s ideas and argued that each is a performance of social government. However my interest is in ‘the best interests of the child’ as governmentality; risk as the apparatus through which it is conducted and child abuse its social effect. In applying a discursive analysis, practices of risk assessment are therefore understood to actually produce intellectual and material conditions favourable to child abuse, rather than protect children from maltreatment. The theoretical framework produces in this thesis incorporates three distinct components of Foucault’s interpretive analytics of power: archaeology, genealogy and ethics. These components provide a structure for discourse analysis that is also a coherent methodical practice of Foucault’s notion of ‘parrhesia’. The practice of parrhesia involves social workers recognised that social power is subjectively dispersed yet also hierarchical. Using this notion I have analysed ‘the best interest of the child’ as a panopticon and argued that child abuse is a consequence. This thesis therefore demonstrates how child protection social workers can expose the political purpose involved in the discourse ‘the best interests of the child’, and in doing so challenge the hostile intellectual and material conditions that exist for children in our community. In concluding, I identify how discursive empathy is a readily accessible skill that social workers can use to practice parrhesia in a creative way.

Children everywhere learn to tell stories. One important aspect of story telling is the way characters are introduced and then moved through the story. Telling a story to a naïve listener places varied demands on a speaker. As the story plot develops, the speaker must set and re-set these parameters for referring to characters, as well as the temporal and spatial parameters of the story. To these cognitive and linguistic tasks is the added social and pragmatic task of monitoring the knowledge and attention states of their listener. The speaker must ensure that the listener can identify the characters, and so must anticipate their listener’s knowledge and on-going mental image of the story. How speakers do this depends on cultural conventions and on the resources of the language(s) they speak. For the child speaker the development narrative competence involves an integration, on-line, of a number of skills, some of which are not fully established until the later childhood years. / The study in this thesis investigates the development of reference tracking in a complex and dynamic language setting. It investigates the language and language development of Warumungu children. The Warumungu central are Indigenous Australians, whose traditional country is in northern Central Australia. Most Warumungu live today in the township of Tennant Creek. Younger people no longer develop full active proficiency in their heritage language, Warumungu, but speak a contact language, Wumpurrarni English as a first language. This contact variety is characterised by substantial variability. In addition to Warumungu and Wumpurrarni English, children learn Standard Australian English, as this is the sole language of instruction in school. / The study describes properties of Wumpurrarni English, in particular nominal expressions, used for tracking reference. These are contrasted with descriptions of the most documented and neighbouring creole variety, Roper River Kriol, and with Standard Australian English. It is demonstrated that in Wumpurrarni English, the marking of new versus given referents on the noun phrase is not obligatory. However a number of structures, such as left dislocation and emphatic subject chaining are used to mark discourse prominence. Repetition of topics, clauses and elements of clauses are stylistic features of a ‘good story’ in Wumpurrarni English. / The study investigates the ways that Warumungu children of different ages introduce, maintain and switch reference, and how, across stretches of their narrations, strategies for managing reference are used. These investigations reveal developmental differences across the age groups in the study, which resonate with studies of children’s narrative competence in other languages, illustrating general cognitive and linguistic development. In addition, some children chose to narrate in a speech style more English-like than they normally use. This set of narrations reveals interesting findings about differences between Wumpurrarni English and Standard English, children’s perceptions of these differences, and insights into the additional cognitive load that speaking in ‘English’ represents.