abstract: no / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Administration and Supervision 2014

This thesis addresses the issue of aboriginal representations in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Canadian Television (CTV) news coverage of the Caledonia land dispute. The theoretical framework derives from the scholarly work done in the field of media and minority studies. The methodology that will be used to address the issue of aboriginal representations in the media is a socio-semiotic analysis of news clips generated by the CBC and CTV. The medium of television was selected for analysis because of its reliance on sound and image to convey meaning, which allows for a visual and a conventional textual analysis of how the aboriginal identity is represented by the media coverage of aboriginal land claim disputes. The results of this study suggest a possible biased representation of the aboriginal identity, one which is primarily based on their status as a minority within Canada.

Aboriginal women and their concerns are largely underrepresented in most political arenas in Canada. In order for their preoccupations to be adequately addressed by governing bodies, these must first be identified and better understood. An exploration of how Aboriginal women resist and challenge oppression is thus needed. In this thesis, I examine a selection of academic works, authored by three prominent Aboriginal women activists in Canada: Sharon Donna McIvor, Patricia A. Monture and Kim Anderson. Their writings address the multiple injustices faced by Aboriginal women. The authors' methods for claiming individual and collective rights range widely, from awareness spreading, to reviving traditional ways, to taking legal action. They all express the difficulties and contradictions they face as indigenous women, though they diverge in their opinions concerning possible solutions. This, as well as their decisions to label themselves feminists or not, is perhaps due to their personal backgrounds and histories.

Recent evidence suggests an association between persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and type 2 diabetes. In two First Nations communities of high wild food consumption, specific objectives were formulated to: (1) compare POP levels between diabetics and non-diabetics; (2) investigate the association between POPs and insulin resistance in non-diabetics; and (3) determine the effects of POPs on certain inflammatory markers. Results indicated significantly higher age-adjusted plasma concentrations of some POPs in diabetics as compared to non-diabetics. Body mass index was found to be the most significant predictor of insulin resistance. There was a positive association of Tumour Necrosis Factor (TNF)-alpha with oxychlordane and mono/di-ortho substituted polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Positive associations were detected between adiponectin and mono/di-ortho substituted PCBs as well as some pesticides. Results indicate that diabetics have higher levels of some POPs than non-diabetics. In non-diabetics, POPs are unrelated to insulin resistance although some are positively associated with inflammatory markers.

I examine the mobility and circulation of peace medals featured in nineteenth-century portraiture of Native Americans through the lens of object-oriented ontology. This research strives to establish a different perspective for considering nineteenth-century portraiture of Native Americans by situating the works through the framework of materiality and circulation. By applying this approach to a series of portraits of Native Americans with peace medals, my research seeks to define issues of movement and power within the transient, fluctuating space of the nineteenth-century American frontier. To accomplish this, I trace the production and distribution of peace medals within paintings widely viewed at the time, as well as the movement of groups and individuals involved with transporting and receiving the medals. Tracking these objects and their mechanisms of movement within the visual culture of the nineteenth century, indicating not only the thing itself but also its processes of production and movement, reveals a dimension of specificity to pictorial narratives, even as the exhibited artworks promoted generalized ideals regarding Indian policy through their circulation. I follow the peace medals’ logistics of production and transit to underscore issues of value and currency on the American frontier, highlighting the ways in which peace medals and the artwork depicting them participated in narratives of Native displacement.

<p> This dissertation explores the artistic expressions of Native womanhood by Native women artists. The intention is to offer further examples of creative acts of resistance that strengthen Native identities, reinforce female empowerment, and reclaim voice, and art. This qualitative study utilized the narratives and the artwork of six Native women artists from diverse artistic practices and tribe/nation affiliations. Visual arts examples included in this study are digital images, muralism, Ledger art, beadworks, Navajo rugs, and Navajo jewelry. Through Kim Anderson&rsquo;s theoretical Native womanhood identity formation model adopted as framework for this study, the results revealed three emergent themes: cultural connections, motherhood, and nurturing the future. Native women artists lived experiences shaped their visual expressions, influencing their materials, approach, subject matter, intentions, motivation and state of mind. This dissertation discloses Native womanhood framework is supportive of visual expressions created by Native women.</p><p>

The high incidence of obesity and obesity related diseases have been well-documented within First Nations communities across Canada. Therefore, examining current dietary choices and then altering and managing alternative healthier choices are essential in the treatment of obesity and its related diseases. The present article describes a dietary study looking specifically at the dietary choices of women living in a First Nation's community in northwestern Ontario. An ethnography was conducted over a three-week period in which the researcher attended community events and interviewed twenty six women. Experiences in women's lives led them on different life courses. Family involvement and age of women influenced transmission of informal knowledge and feelings of self worth. These and other factors influenced the life course and the resultant "dietary trajectory" from which women made choice. Considering individuals in changing social, cultural and historical climates deemed the life course perspective applicable in this study. Findings suggest that solutions to the "health epidemic" can be found by looking to the women in the community who are making nutritious choices. From this point, formal and informal programs that facilitate reintroduction of traditional knowledge into lives of younger community members can be developed.

This study examines the representations of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis geographies within a contemporary grade-nine Canadian geography textbook. Although First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples have lived on the territory now known as Canada for thousands of years, in the past two hundred years, with the exception of some place names, colonialism has worked to largely remove evidence of their presence from the landscape and to exclude them from the dominant narratives of Canadian geography. In this study, I conduct a critical discourse analysis of a textbook currently approved by the Ontario Ministry of Education's Trillium List for the compulsory grade-nine applied-level Canadian geography course: Canadian Geography: A Sense of Place. First, I consider how the textbook creates knowledge of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples and their geographies. Next, I examine how this creation compares to the textbook's representation of Canadians. Finally, I explore what an Aboriginal geography might look like and how Aboriginal perspectives could be incorporated into the text. The grade-nine Canadian geography course is the only mandatory geography course for students in the applied stream. If students do not continue with geography, the text they use in this course or used by the teacher to organize this course will be their last exposure to geography texts and formal discussions of Aboriginal geographies. This textbook is important because for many students, it will be the only time in their lives that they are systematically exposed to knowledge about First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples. While there are attempts at inclusion, old misrepresentations appear again in new forms within this textbook. A major task of this textbook is constructing the nation and presenting a nationalized geography.

In its review of international law, court decisions and federal legislation and policy, this paper confirms that the Crown is not meeting international standards of respect for the connection between Indigenous peoples and the land, is consistently in breach of the Constitution and recommendations from the Canadian Courts to reconcile the rights of Indigenous peoples with the sovereignty of the Crown, excludes First Nation peoples from environmental decision making, and rejects a fundamental principle of most First Nation peoples' traditional cultures; the interconnectedness of all things. This attack on First Nation peoples' inherent rights to self-determination and self-government undermines their capacity to sustain their traditional cultures, which in turn frustrates the preservation of biological diversity. This paper recommends the inclusion of First Nation governments, as equals to the Crown, in environmental governance, thereby facilitating the exercise of traditional laws of respect for the land as a means to help sustain biological diversity.

In October 1869, the fledgling Canadian federation was preparing for the transfer of Rupert's Land and the Northwestern Territory when the Metis set up a Provisional Government in order to resist what they saw as a unilateral annexation of their homeland. Although there were multiple references made to 'republicanism' during the Resistance, no scholar has ever explored whether republican conventions were actually present in political discourse in the District of Assiniboia prior to the Resistance and whether they were effectively activated during the Resistance. Working from the Cambridge School approach of discourse analysis, it first identifies the conventions of democratic rhetorical republicanism, which includes positive and negative liberty, the rule of law, the mixed and balanced constitution and citizenship, which in turn involves virtue, the militia and real property. It then looks at the gradual introduction in Assiniboia of republican discourse from multiple sources, including the United States, Lower Canada, Upper Canada, Ireland, France and Great Britain and its circulation throughout several practical political struggles during the period from 1835 to 1869. In doing so, it shows that certain 'organic intellectuals' acted as 'transmission belts' of republican conventions and that institutional structures were a factor that rendered the activation of such conventions almost inevitable. By the time the Resistance took place in 1869, a more or less fully developed republican paradigm formed part of the linguistic matrix and was available to political actors in Assiniboia. Finally, the thesis shows that republican discourse was effectively mobilised by identifying fragments of republican conventions that were harnessed in various speech-acts during the Resistance. It is argued that republican language was fundamental to the success of the ideological and political manoeuvres of the leaders of the Resistance as it was particularly effective both as an instrument of anti-colonialism and as a pragmatic ideal of self-government that sought to correct the iniquities of colonial government.