The present study investigated the cognitive styles of Indian, Metis, Inuit and non-native adults and adolescents of northern Canada and Alaska. The study identified three relational and two analytical cognitive styles. The styles differed significantly from each other in relation to cultural background, language facility, level of post-secondary education, sex and age of the respondents. Cultural background was found to be the most significant discriminator of those under investigation.<p> Procedure of the study involved the collection of verbalized responses to five open-ended questions concerning education from one hundred northern residents. A total of 528 minutes 32 seconds of taperecorded responses was available from twenty treaty and status Indians, twenty Metis, twenty Inuit and forty non-natives. Subjects included parents, university students, high school students, teacher trainees, teachers, education administrators, native politicians and general community members. The data were submitted to content analysis procedures with items coded according to the Data Analysis of Cognitive Style (DACS) Scale which had been adapted for use in the present study from the work of E. S. Schneidman (1966). Scale item frequencies for each respondent were tabulated and submitted for statistical analyses to the SPSS program discriminant analysis. This analysis identified significantly different functions which translated into patterns of thinking or cognitive styles. In addition this analysis identified the relative importance of functions as discriminators among groups and computed predictability scores which showed the percentage of respondents who were correctly classified according to cognitive styles. and demographic variables.<p>Findings of this study must be considered in relation to the following limitations: the size and nature of the stratified random sample; the reliability of the coders; the use of the unvalidated DACS scale; the ability of the analytical procedures to correctly discriminate among the study groups.<p> The study found that the groups which tended to think in relational styles were: Natives (Indian, Metis, Inuit), people with no university education or with less than one year at university; bilinguals (English and a native language); males; people under twenty years and over forty years of age. The terms Conflict-relational, Moral-relational and Inexactrelational were used to more precisely identify differing cognitive behaviors within the overall relational category. The groups which were found to exhibit analytical cognitive style behaviors included: the nonnative group; those respondents with two to four years of university education; and respondents between thirty and forty years of age. Subcategories within analytical styles were Conflict-analytical and Inexactanalytical.<p>When the Indian, Metis and Inuit respondents were combined into a "native" cultural group they strongly identified with the Moral-relational cognitive style (people-oriented, subjective, holistic, concerned with morals and ethics). The non-native group showed a strong negative relationship to this style. However, when each cultural group was analyzed separately, it was found that the Indian and Inuit subjects were somewhat more analytical (objective, linear, field-independent) than the Metis but less so than the non-natives. On the analysis of four groups, the nonnatives were found to relate to both relational and analytical styles of thinking, indicating a wide range of differences within the group.<p>It was concluded that significant differences existed in the cognitive styles preferred by respondents of different cultural, language, education, sex and age groups in this study. Cultural background was found to be the strongest discriminator in relation to cognitive style differences. It was further concluded that according to extrapolation of findings to the theoretical model it may be possible and desirable to modify curricula content and teaching techniques to achieve a closer match between teaching styles and cognitive and learning styles of. students of indigenous cultural backgrounds.

The purpose of this thesis is to document and analyse the development of the 1985 Clyde River - Broughton Island Memorandum of Understanding on Polar Bears. Based on a population estimate of 400 to 600 polar bears on Northeast Baffin Island, the quotas for Clyde River were reduced from 45 to 15, and the quotas for Broughton Island were reduced from 22 to 10. The case study approach to the analysis is organised according to various scales of analysis (from the individual to the global level) for the political, ecological, and cultural variables in the analysis. Three chapters are dedicated to a presentation of the three variables of analysis identified in the case study. The ecological variable is concerned with evaluating the biological data that were used to calculate a reduction in quotas. The political variable evaluates the structure and proceedings of the negotiation meetings, and the cultural variable evaluates the role that cultural meaning may have played in the creation of the agreement. The major finding is that a comanagement approach to wildlife management does not guarantee that decision-making power is equally distributed amongst user groups and territorial agencies.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Bibliography: leaves 149-156.

Thesis (M.M.S.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Bibliography: leaves 83-90.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Bibliography: leaves 228-242.

No description available.

George River, Quebec, is a small Eskimo community of 151 people located on the southeast side of Ungava Bay 16 miles up the George River from the coast itself. This population includes one qadloona (white) transient family which represents the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources (DNANR) of the Government of Canada, which is responsible for the administration of Eskimo affairs in Northern Quebec. Beginning in 1959, the people of George River went through an intensive period of social change, the results of which the present author studied in the summer of 1946, which will be taken as the ethnographic present. The impetus for change came from the Government of Canada's program of social and economic development and had two main objectives; first, to gather the scattered Eskimo people together in settlements for administrative efficiency and to implement social services already existing in the rest of Canada, and second, to improve and organize the economy based upon the formation of Eskimo cooperatives. [...]

Missing pg. 81. / This study concerns the two Eskimo communities of Coppermine (67° 49'N, 115°05'W) and Holman (70°44'N, 117° 45'W), and their hinterlands. Coppermine is situated on the Arctic Coast of the Mackenzie District of the Northwest Territories; almost 1000 miles north of Edmonton, Alberta. [...]

Wide health gaps exist between Canada’s Inuit population and their non-Indigenous counterparts in nearly all categories. Two basic public health protection principles in any community worldwide are access to safe drinking water and sanitary wastewater management. The purpose of this research was to explore the relationships between public health and municipal water and wastewater systems in Coral Harbour, Nunavut. Using a qualitative case study approach, I conducted 37 interviews with residents and key informants and thematically analyzed the data. Findings suggest that crowded households experiencing domestic water shortages may result in negative health consequences. As well, pre and early settlement water customs are influencing current public health risks thereby requiring special consideration by municipal planners. Given these findings, recommendations include increasing domestic water access, strengthening source water monitoring programs, and establishing intergovernmental public health policies that co-benefit water resource management agendas as well as other priority issues in Nunavut.

This thesis investigates the relationships between skills transmission and human adaptation to climate change. Elements of the relationships are empirically examined in an arctic community to document how environmental knowledge and land skills (referred to hereafter together as ‘land skills’) are transmitted among Inuit men and what role, if any, skills transmission plays in adaptation to climate change with respect to subsistence harvesting. It is well documented that climate change is already being experienced in the Arctic with implications for Inuit subsistence harvesting. The ability of Inuit to adapt to changing environmental conditions in the past has been associated with a profound knowledge of the Arctic ecosphere and land skills, which were transmitted from the older generations to the younger through hands-on training in the environment. Based on a review of vulnerability and skills transmission scholarship, a conceptual model for interpreting the relationships between skills transmission and adaptive capacity is developed. The model conceptualizes land skills as a key determinant of Inuit adaptive capacity to deal with climatic changes that affect subsistence. The ability of a hunter to draw on land skills to adapt to changing conditions also depends on whether or not a given skill has been transmitted, and transmission success depends on the level of skill mastery. The transmission of land skills was studied among Inuit men in Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada. The research found that there is a difference in the rate of land skills transmission among generations, with average transmission rates lowest among younger respondents. Several skills had not been transmitted, or were transmitted incompletely among younger respondents. Whereas these same skills had been transmitted by that age among older Inuit. Changes in skills transmission are attributable to changes in the educational environment, loss of native language, absence of skills teachers, and declining levels of involvement in some subsistence activities. These factors appeared to impair the traditional mode of skills transmission and hands-on learning in the environment, resulting in several skills not being transmitted to younger respondents. Incomplete skills transmission has already reduced some individuals’ involvement in subsistence, and has increased the sensitivity of others to changing climatic conditions.