In 1869-70 the Métis of the Red River region in Manitoba resisted the transfer of their homeland from the Hudson’s Bay Company to Canada. The Métis people responded to this transfer by blocking Canadian surveyors, government officials, and taking control of the territory through the establishment of representative institutions. Eventually, the Métis negotiated favourable terms with Ottawa which, this thesis argues, represented according to law, and to the Métis, a treaty. This thesis argues that this treaty was intended to protect the Métis homeland and provide political and social protections. The Manitoba Métis Treaty was intended to guarantee the Métis a land base in Manitoba the total size of which was to be 1.4 million acres. The reservation of this land came with protective obligations so that the entire community would receive a benefit from such lands. While Canada has developed a body of treaty law which will be used to interpret the Manitoba Métis Treaty, matters were convoluted by the enshrinement of this treaty agreement in the Manitoba Act of 1870, a document which would gain constitutional status a year later. The impact of this legislative history has led some researchers to link government obligations entirely to the Act, rather than to the negotiated agreement. Indeed, it would seem that the negotiations have been, for the most part, understood as nothing more than conversations. I reject that position and argue that both the negotiations and the Act must be taken into consideration when assessing the obligations undertaken by the Crown. The unique history of the Manitoba agreement means that Canada was under both constitutional and treaty law obligations to uphold the negotiated agreement between itself and the Métis. This thesis argues that not only is the treaty the correct legal interpretation of the events of 1869-70 but that the government of Canada failed to honour its commitments in several meaningful ways. The approach utilized in this thesis is designed to be reliant upon the basic structure and doctrines of Canadian law but to do so in a manner which gives weight to the Métis voice. It is neither a critique which is wholly internal to Canadian law nor is it completely dismissive of Canadian law. Instead, this thesis will illustrate that with only minor adjustments to the application and interpretation of colonial law, the Manitoba Métis Treaty could find a more receptive audience in Canadian legal thought. In the face of a reasonable alternative, such a project can allow other researchers to question why the courts have chosen a path which denies reception of Métis voice, community and culture in Canadian law.

A lack of reliable knowledge regarding the problems facing Indian and Metis people has hindered the development of intelligent programs and policies to facilitate their healthy integration into the larger Canadian society. Two large scale studies (Hawthorn, Belshaw, & Jamieson, 1958; Lagassé, 1959) have attempted to alleviate this problem by collecting extensive data on such aspects of Indian and Metis life as the community and family, resources, employment, education, relations with the law, social welfare needs, liquor and administration.<p> These broad studies dealt only indirectly with Indian and Metis philosophies, personalities and modes of thought, areas in which a comprehensive understanding will have to be achieved to thoroughly comprehend the nature of the problems facing people of Indian ancestry. The Hawthorn study stressed that other research which might follow should include topics such as those which lie within the vast area of psychology.

Presenting the curriculum from an Aboriginal perspective and/or including Aboriginal content in the curriculum is an important alternative to perspectives many students are accustomed to. In the past, the Aboriginal perspective has not been a recognized or perhaps respected way of teaching; however this is beginning to change. This study explores student and teacher identity when the curriculum is either presented from an Aboriginal perspective or when Aboriginal content is included in lessons; it also explores potential benefits for all students. This study addressed the following questions: 1) What differences are made, if any, for Aboriginal and non Aboriginal students when the curriculum is presented from an Aboriginal perspective? 2) What differences are made, if any, for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students when Aboriginal content is included in the curriculum? 3) How are teacher and student identities affected when either the curriculum is presented from an Aboriginal perspective or Aboriginal content is included? Using the case study qualitative research method teachers and students were interviewed to gain an understanding of how their identities may or may not have been affected. The research from this study indicated that from the teachers perspective all students, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike, benefit in many ways when either the curriculum was presented form an Aboriginal perspective or when Aboriginal content is included in classroom lessons. The research also indicated that teacher and student identities shift over time and may possibly be, although not necessarily, affected when the curriculum is presented in this manner. The results of this study indicated that there were benefits for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students when the curriculum is presented from an Aboriginal perspective or when Aboriginal content is included. The results of this study also indicated that when student and teacher identities are affected, they are affected in a positive manner.

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.

Parallelization of sequential programs is often daunting because of the substantial development cost involved. Various solutions have been proposed to address this concern, including directive-based approaches and parallelization platforms. These solutions have not always been successful, in part because many try to address all types of applications. We propose a platform for parallelization of a class of applications that have similar computational structure, namely graph-structured iterative applications. iC2mpi is a unique proof-of-concept prototype platform that provides relatively easy parallelization of existing sequential programs and facilitates experimentation with static partitioning and dynamic load balancing schemes. We demonstrate with various generic application graph topologies and an existing application, namely a time-stepped battlefield management simulation, that our platform can produce good performance with very little effort.

The purpose of this study was to determine teacher perception of education program suitability in Northern Saskatchewan. The sample consisted of one hundred sixty-five divisions I, II and III teachers in Northern Saskatchewan. Analysis was made on teachers as a total group, and teachers grouped according to the following variables: type of teaching certificate held; area of study in teacher training; total years of teaching experience; total years of teaching experience with Indian and Metis children; division level of experience with Indian and Metis children. Six hypotheses were proposed regarding the total group and the five variables.<p>In order to test these hypotheses, all teachers in divisions I, II and III in Northern Saskatchewan were asked to complete a questionnaire designed to determine their perception of education program suitability.<p> The first hypothesis, that teachers would generally perceive the education program as unsuitable, was tested by determination of standard score probability of error for teacher responses to Part II of the questionnaire. Hypotheses two to six inclusive, that teacher perception of education program suitability would vary according to the five variables mentioned above, were tested by means of multi-factor analysis of variance. Responses to Part III of the questionnaire were analyzed by means of frequency tables.<p>It was found that generally teachers felt that the education program in Northern Saskatchewan was unsuitable. Areas of the program perceived as least suitable included programs in reading and literature, English and social studies. <p>The shortage of relevant resource materials was seen as a problem by a significant number of respondents. Areas perceived as most suitable by the teachers included nature science, mathematics, the adapted social studies program for pupils of Indian ancestry and pre-vocational and vocational courses.<p>When teachers were grouped according to the five variables referred to earlier, several significant differences in perception of education program suitability were noted. Teachers who had taken courses in Indian or cross-cultural education perceived the education program to be less suitable than did teachers who had not taken courses in these fields. It was also noted that teachers with less than four years of teaching experience with Indian and Metis children, and teachers with a total of less than four years of teaching experience perceived the education program to be less suitable than did teachers with more experience. A significant interaction was found to exist between area of study and division level. No significant differences were noted when teachers were grouped according to the type of teaching certificate they held, or according to the division level in which they had experience with Indian and Metis children.

Throughout the history of the North West, Metis people frequently used their knowledge of European, Indian, and Metis culture to mediate Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal social, diplomatic, and economic encounters. Though acknowledged in Metis historiography, this aspect of Metis identity has not been the focus of scholarly analysis, which has primarily centred on Louis Riel, Metis resistance, and ethnogenesis. By closely examining the primary documents, it is evident that the Metis interpreters present at Treaties 1 through 7 were more than merely translators. Prior to negotiations these Metis had interacted with First Nations in a variety of ways, whether in the fur trade or in missionary endeavours. Metis people were well versed in Aboriginal language and cultural traditions, skills they had employed successfully in Rupert's Land prior to 1870.<p> In drawing upon this amicable relationship between Metis and First Nations, Canadian officials in the North West recognized the positive effect of personal diplomacy on securing First Nations signatures to the treaty documents. In this thesis many examples will demonstrate that the actions of Metis people were critical in preventing violence between groups, thereby enabling the treaty process to begin. These Metis individuals moved within a middle ground of context that developed in the era prior to the 1870's, thus indicating a measure of continuity between the pre- and post transition period in the Canadian West.

This thesis questions the adequacy of the Department of the Interior's response to the land claims of Metis settlers in Green Lake, Saskatchewan.<p> Metis people originally settled in Green Lake because of the pattern of development of the fur trade. Green Lake was a major nexus on the fur trade transportation system, which encouraged Metis settlement and community development. After Confederation, when the national policy generated regional differentiation through uneven development, Green Lake remained under fur-trade domination.<P> National policy expansion reached Green Lake with surveys in 1909 and 1911, replacing fur-trade property relations with the Dominion Lands Act. The surveys revealed Green Lake as a fur trade settlement with property claims consistent with the fur trade economy. Prior treatment of such claims under national policy regulations promised recognition of Metis claims based on prior settlement.<P> Economic recession and World War I led to the abatement of national policy expansion. As a result, the department postponed action on the Metis claims until renewed interest in national policy settlement. Legislation passed in 1919 provided new direction to departmental consideration of the Green Lake claims. The only remnant of recognition of fur trade settlement was reference to 1908 legislation requiring occupancy at the time of treaty. The department subsequently disposed of Metis claims by offering most claimants only a right to purchase claimed land.<P> Departmental response to Metis claims at Green Lake was inadequate on several grounds. It failed to consider adequately property relations extant from the fur trade economy. It acted without due consideration for established precedents associated with the national policy. It acted ultra vires to carry out and justify a restrictive and mean spirited response to Metis claims. The retroactive nature of 1908 legislation unfairly penalized claimants in the Treaty Six area. The department's limitation of the eligibility of claimants by constrictive criteria was compounded by its failure to examine seriously the evidence of Metis settlement that would have met such criteria.<P> At the time of the 1930 transfer of land administration to the prairie provinces, the land claims of the Metis settlers of Green Lake remained unsatisfied.

The discourse on education for Aboriginal people has long been limited to a curriculum of cultural assimilation often resulting in an erosion of self-esteem and disengagement. Consequently, this research puts forth narratives of how fiddle programs in northern Manitoba work as a culturally responsive curriculum that in turn address such curricular erosions. As a research methodology, Metissage afforded me pedagogical opportunities to weave the various perspectives of community members, parents, instructors, and former students into an intricate story that attempts to represent some of their social, cultural and historical experiences within the north. Braiding stories of the historical and present impacts of fiddle playing reveals the generative possibilities of school fiddle programs in Canadian Indigenous communities. In addition to building intergenerational bridges, the stories put forth in this thesis demonstrate how the fiddle has become a contemporary instrument of social change for many communities across northern Manitoba.

This dissertation examines the construction and evolution of categories of indigeneity within the context of the Oblate (Roman Catholic) apostolate at Île-à-Crosse in present-day north-western Saskatchewan between 1845 and 1898. While focusing on one central mission station, this study illuminates broad historical processes that informed Oblate perceptions and impelled their evolution over a fifty-three-year period. In particular, this study illuminates processes that shaped Oblate concepts of sauvage and métis. It does this through a qualitative analysis of missionary correspondence, mission records and published reports. In the process, this dissertation challenges the orthodox notion that Oblate commentators simply discovered and described a singular, empirically existing and readily identifiable Métis population. Rather, this dissertation contends that Oblates played an important role in the conceptual production of les métis.