In her novel Tracks, Louise Erdrich tells the story of a band of Anishinaabe early in the twentieth century. Through the two narrators, one a tribal elder and the other a mixedblood who eventually abandons the traditions of the tribe, the novel offers two divergent perspectives of the events that take place as the government divests the tribe of its land. The conflicting perceptions of these occurrences, which are magical realist in nature, underscore the conflict within the tribe to maintain tradition in the face of the ever-increasing influence of European settlers. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the perceptions at odds with one another in order to shed new light on the significance of Erdrich’s use of magical realism in the text. Highlighting Erdrich’s engagement with magical realism, a largely postcolonial literary device, will hopefully expand notions of identity and authenticity within the Native American literary tradition.

This research investigates and documents the nature of the challenges faced by men upon their release from federal incarceration in the Province of Saskatchewan. Due to the high number of Aboriginal peoples incarcerated in Saskatchewan, this research necessarily investigates the differences between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ex-prisoners. A qualitative approach is employed in order to understand post-incarceration from the perspectives of those who have experienced what it is like to return to the community after prison and those who work with men making this transition. This thesis fastidiously describes parole board hearings, the difficulties related to integrating into society as perceived by ex-prisoners, and the role of the service providers and agencies in Saskatoon that assist former inmates. It is shown that there are certain difficulties common among ex-prisoners, such as finding employment and housing and accessing appropriate support resources. The particular difficulties of Aboriginal ex-prisoners are highlighted, revealing that the difficulties experienced by all ex-prisoners appear to be amplified for Aboriginal ex-prisoners. Racism and the overall disadvantaged position of Aboriginal peoples in Canada are identified as significant barriers to Aboriginal ex-prisoners attempting to integrate into the community.

Recent studies of labour have clearly established that the capitalist state is very involved in the recruitment, relocation and retention of migrant labour forces. Most of the literature tends to analyze migrant labour within the broader social, political and economic context of expanding capitalism. Consequently, studies tend to focus on how the use of migrant labour is profitable to capitalism because it is cheap and easy to exploit. Such studies, however, neglect the ways in which the state actually intervenes in the labour market in order to facilitate the flow of migrant workers to places of employment. Therefore, this thesis explores the relationship between the migration of labour, the state and the reserve army of labour through an analysis of the Native migrant work force in the sugar beet industry in southern Alberta.<p> Through the use of archival material, which includes various federal and provincial documents, annual reports of the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers' Association, newspapers and other materials, the circumstances underlying state intervention in the economy of the southern sugar beet industry became clear. While analyzing the structure of the sugar beet industry in southern Alberta, it was found that throughout much of the history of the sugar beet industry, farmers received low returns for their beet crops. Moreover, farmers also suffered financially from the high cost of machinery and, more recently, from the increased costs for fertilizer and chemical weed controls.<p> An examination of government documents on the FederalProvincial Agricultural Manpower Committee, whose mandate was to recruit workers and move them to areas of need in agricultural sectors throughout Canada, revealed that the federal part of the committee was represented by officials from the Department of Manpower and Immigration and, beginning in the early 1950s, officials from the Department of Indian Affairs, who represented Indians on reserves.<p> When the working conditions in sugar beet industry were examined, it was found that they were very poor for beet workers. In general, the weeding and hoeing of the sugar beets was difficult and the housing accommodations inadequate. Moreover, because of the low return on their beet crops and the high costs of machinery, fertilizer and weed control, the farmers had to keep the cost of labour as low as possible, which, meant paying low wages to beet workers. Moreover, it was found that throughout much the history of the sugar beet industry in southern Alberta, agricultural workers were unprotected by labour laws, which, was very conducive to reproducing conditions for cheap labour. Consequently, few wanted to work in the beet fields of southern Alberta if other employment could be found.<p> Prior to the 1950s the state recruited immigrant workers and even prisoners of war from internment camps to supply farmers with the needed labour for their beet crops. However, in the early 1950s unskilled immigrant labour could no longer be procured for beet work. It was at this time that the sugar beet industry, through the Federal-Provincial Agricultural Manpower Committee, turned to recruiting Natives, particulary northern Alberta and northern Saskatchewan reserve Indians, to perform their labour requirements. In order to maintain this needed work force, the state helped organize Native migratation to southern Alberta at the start of the beet season and also helped ensure that they stayed there for the duration of the needed period.

<p>This dissertation explores the history of the Assemblies of God's Home Missions to American Indians, the development of an American Indian leadership in the denomination and the development of a Pentecostal Indian identity. The history that is told in this work is that of a century-long struggle by American Indian Pentecostals for autonomy, leadership, and recognition within the Assemblies of God. I argue that the AG's efforts to establish indigenous churches in its home missions work to American Indians bore two important and largely unanticipated consequences. The first was that it prompted American Indian Pentecostals to forge a new identity: fully Indian and fully Pentecostal. The second was that it forced white Pentecostals to own up to their belief in the indigenous principle: that God's Spirit fell equally on peoples, without regard to ethnicity or social standing. I focus mainly on giving voice to the Pentecostal Indian actors in this history, in order to fill in the gaps on a group of modern Pentecostal believers that were almost never written about in the histories of the movement.</p><p> I have rooted this work in the history of American religious history, as well as Native American history and the history of American Pentecostalism. The majority of the sources come from the Assemblies of God's archives, chiefly, ministerial files, Pentecostal periodicals, letters, tracts, meeting minutes, and self-published autobiographies.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (M. Geomatics Sc.) -- Dept. Geomatics, Univ. of Melb.

My research builds upon interdisciplinary trends in Native scholarship emphasizing tribal-specificity; attention to understudied periods, writers, and texts; and a political commitment to engage contemporary challenges facing Indigenous communities. My dissertation examines the persistence of nationhood in Cherokee writing between the dissolution of the Cherokee government preceding Oklahoma statehood in 1907 and political reorganization in the early 1970s. Situating writing by John Milton Oskison, Rachel Caroline Eaton, Rollie Lynn Riggs and Ruth Muskrat Bronson explicitly within the Cherokee national contexts of its emergence, I attend to the complicated ways they each remembered, imagined, narrated and enacted Cherokee nationhood in the absence of a functioning state. Often read as a transitional “dark age” in Cherokee history, this period stands instead as a rich archive of Cherokee national memory capable of informing contemporary debates in the Cherokee Nation and Native Studies today. / text

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

As a scientific field, phonetics systematically analyzes human speech sounds using segmental distinctions and state of the art technology. Ideally, these analyses are based on cross-linguistic data from a wide variety of language families. This dissertation provides the first phonetic analysis of Southern Ute, a severely endangered Uto-Aztecan language and presents the only published discussion of language policies and revitalization efforts on the Southern Ute reservation, located in Southwestern Colorado. This research is important because although there are 1,419 enrolled members of the Southern Ute tribe, according to a 2002 informal language survey, there are only forty remaining speakers, who are all over the age of sixty. It is important to note that the previous work on Southern Ute, three dictionaries (Goss 1961, Givon 1979, Charney 1996), one grammar (Givon 1980), one dissertation (Goss 1972) and a collection of traditional narratives (Givon 1985), does not include phonetic analysis or discussion of language policy or revitalization efforts on the Southern Ute reservation. This research benefits the Southern Ute community, the linguistic community and other indigenous communities in two ways. First, it provides a model for phonetic analysis of an endangered language utilizing fluent speaker intuition about stress. Second, the language policies and revitalization discussion adds to revitalization resources especially in the area of curriculum development. In the theoretical domain, Southern Ute offers rich data. It is imperative that Southern Ute phonetic properties are analyzed, documented and archived before the small number of fluent speakers die, leaving no digital audio recordings behind for future generations.

In this thesis, contemporary Native American images on skateboards that extend Native American art beyond such traditional crafts as beadworks and pottery are explored. The study reveals that Native American skateboard graphics express history, culture, and myths. Native American curriculum, Native American art, and Native American stereotyping in visual culture are critically examined. The purpose of the study is to provide additional Native American art and visual culture examples and methods for the development of Native American art curricula.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.