Historical trauma has affected the lives of all Aboriginal people in Canada. This thesis argues that Aboriginal art has the potential to contribute to recovery from trauma on an individual and a communal level but that its continued analysis through the Western gaze may take away from this restorative impact. The main purpose of this research is therefore to explore how historical trauma theory and the Aboriginal ethos can be viewed together to create a new hybridized lens though which to interpret Aboriginal art. This lens has been named the Spirit Mender Model. The thesis explains and illustrates how this model provides a useful Aboriginal lens through which to understand, interpret, and appreciate Aboriginal art in it restorative impacts.

During the latter half of the 20th century, the term sovereignty has become a pivotal concept for describing the political goals of Indigenous movements. The term has come to stand for the general rights of Indigenous peoples to be self-governing and describe efforts to reverse and resist processes of ongoing colonization, dispossession and assimilation. The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold. First, it explores the role of planning in the erosion of Indigenous sovereignty and the creation of conflicts over urban land use and development. More specifically, it examines the role of planning in the project of securing, aggrandizing and normalizing Canada’s sovereignty claims, and illustrates how the idea of sovereignty influences the configuration of relations between Canada and Indigenous peoples. While the concept of sovereignty is not commonly discussed in planning literature or planning policy, it is argued that concepts such as property, jurisdiction, and Aboriginal rights serve as a cipher for sovereignty in the context of planning. This dissertation research finds that the practices and principles of planning aid in the narration of a political imaginary and the creation of a legal geography which affirms Canada’s territorial and moral coherence. This examination of planning is placed against the backdrop of broader historical tendencies in Canadian Aboriginal policy. The second purpose of this dissertation is to consider how taking Indigenous political authority seriously can present new ways of thinking about both planning and sovereignty. It is argued in this dissertation that Indigenous understandings of sovereignty originating in Indigenous law and Indigenous interpretations of Canadian law must be placed in the foreground in planning theory and practice. In the past, the interventions and alternatives advocated by planning both theorists and policy makers to improve the position of Indigenous peoples in planning processes have largely emphasized the recognition and inclusion of Indigenous peoples and reduced Indigenous struggles over territory to the realm of identity politics. As an alternative, foregrounding Indigenous political authority can present new ways of thinking about both planning and sovereignty.

During the latter half of the 20th century, the term sovereignty has become a pivotal concept for describing the political goals of Indigenous movements. The term has come to stand for the general rights of Indigenous peoples to be self-governing and describe efforts to reverse and resist processes of ongoing colonization, dispossession and assimilation. The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold. First, it explores the role of planning in the erosion of Indigenous sovereignty and the creation of conflicts over urban land use and development. More specifically, it examines the role of planning in the project of securing, aggrandizing and normalizing Canada’s sovereignty claims, and illustrates how the idea of sovereignty influences the configuration of relations between Canada and Indigenous peoples. While the concept of sovereignty is not commonly discussed in planning literature or planning policy, it is argued that concepts such as property, jurisdiction, and Aboriginal rights serve as a cipher for sovereignty in the context of planning. This dissertation research finds that the practices and principles of planning aid in the narration of a political imaginary and the creation of a legal geography which affirms Canada’s territorial and moral coherence. This examination of planning is placed against the backdrop of broader historical tendencies in Canadian Aboriginal policy. The second purpose of this dissertation is to consider how taking Indigenous political authority seriously can present new ways of thinking about both planning and sovereignty. It is argued in this dissertation that Indigenous understandings of sovereignty originating in Indigenous law and Indigenous interpretations of Canadian law must be placed in the foreground in planning theory and practice. In the past, the interventions and alternatives advocated by planning both theorists and policy makers to improve the position of Indigenous peoples in planning processes have largely emphasized the recognition and inclusion of Indigenous peoples and reduced Indigenous struggles over territory to the realm of identity politics. As an alternative, foregrounding Indigenous political authority can present new ways of thinking about both planning and sovereignty.

Historical trauma has affected the lives of all Aboriginal people in Canada. This thesis argues that Aboriginal art has the potential to contribute to recovery from trauma on an individual and a communal level but that its continued analysis through the Western gaze may take away from this restorative impact. The main purpose of this research is therefore to explore how historical trauma theory and the Aboriginal ethos can be viewed together to create a new hybridized lens though which to interpret Aboriginal art. This lens has been named the Spirit Mender Model. The thesis explains and illustrates how this model provides a useful Aboriginal lens through which to understand, interpret, and appreciate Aboriginal art in it restorative impacts.

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to develop a framework for the discussion of Aboriginal women's oppression, one which will reflect Indigenous women's perspectives. It is suggested here that feminism often assumes that all women, cross-culturally, share the same oppression and that this assumption may be false.</p> <p>The writer believes that the Indigenous "Circle of Life" philosophy more appropriately embodies Aboriginal women's conceptions of human nature, their political philosophy, and their strategy for social change and liberation.</p>

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to develop a framework for the discussion of Aboriginal women's oppression, one which will reflect Indigenous women's perspectives. It is suggested here that feminism often assumes that all women, cross-culturally, share the same oppression and that this assumption may be false.</p> <p>The writer believes that the Indigenous "Circle of Life" philosophy more appropriately embodies Aboriginal women's conceptions of human nature, their political philosophy, and their strategy for social change and liberation.</p>

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a framework for the discussion of Aboriginal women's oppression, one which will reflect Indigenous women's perspectives. It is suggested here that feminism often assumes that all women, cross-culturally, share the same oppression and that this assumption may be false. The writer believes that the Indigenous "Circle of Life" philosophy more appropriately embodies Aboriginal women's conceptions of human nature, their political philosophy, and their strategy for social change and liberation.

Sacred story has historically been essential to the proper functioning of Anishinaabe society. These represent the ways humans should live and act in the world in harmony with others, the land, and the spirit world. The transmission of these essential codes of conduct through sacred story is what has sustained identity and culture throughout history. As Indigenous languages were stolen from Indigenous people through the residential school system, so too were stories. My thesis argues that Aadisookewin such as Baagak can foster the recovery of Indigenous identity and help heal the wounds of colonization and facilitate reconciliation. To make this point I include a historical examination of existing research on Baagak derived from written accounts from theearly 1900's to the present day and analyze these narratives in their own spaces and places, asserting they provide important understandings to what constitutes Anishinaabe identity, community, and culture. / February 2017

This work explores the impact of the “vanishing Indian” paradigm on historical, museological, and anthropological interpretations of Native American Indian peoples along the Quinneticook—the middle Connecticut River Valley of west-central Massachusetts. The seventeenth century documentation of the region’s Agawam, Nonotuck, Pocumtuck, Quaboag, Sokoki, and Woronoco people is surprisingly dense, but their presence after that time is poorly understood. Sophisticated systems for reckoning and maintaining Indigenous governance, trade, kin relations, and inter-tribal alliances, and various means of preserving localized knowledges, were in operation long before colonial settlement, and survived after colonization. The records of this activity and the movements of Native families to other locales were obscured, during the nineteenth century, by local White historians. Accurate understandings of local Native histories have subsequently been difficult to reconstruct, given the lack of ethnographic information in Euro-American records, the flawed representations of Native people and events in local town histories, and the failure to recognize the lineal descendants of middle Connecticut River Valley Native families among today’s Western Abenaki populations. I suggest that the “invisibilizing” of the valley’s Native peoples is a trick of misdirection, caused, in part, by the research interests of three local collectors: geologist Edward Hitchcock Jr. of Amherst College, antiquarian George Sheldon of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, and zoologist Harris Hawthorne Wilder of Smith College. These men unearthed numerous Native individuals from local gravesites, and amassed thousands of artifacts, portraying the skeletal remains of dead Indians as “real,” while representing their descendants as “unreal” remnants of the presumably more authentic Native past. This project, therefore, discusses the ways in which local Native histories and oral traditions were marginalized, ignored or colonized, at the same time that Native bodies were being exoticized, fetishized, and commodified. One means of decolonizing the valley’s Native history is a four-part process that: first, reveals the discursive processes that disconnected living Native peoples from their own histories; second, investigates the physical interferences of archaeological collectors; third, articulates the persistence of Native families over time by linking oral traditions, family names, and material evidence; and fourth, begins to repair some of the damage done by restoring and repatriating the scattered archaeological collections. To illustrate the impact of misrepresentation on local Native histories, I discuss the appearances, in various documents over time, of one local Native family lineage (from Shattoockquis to Sadochques to Msadoques to Sadoques), and their repeated efforts to make their presence known to Deerfield historians. This case study directs attention to some of the Indigenous knowledges and territorial understandings that could be used to construct more accurate regional narratives. In sum, this work aims to demonstrate how decolonizing methodologies can reveal heretofore missing connections, while establishing a more equitable social venue within which the real work of restorative history can begin.

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