Despite the repeated collapse of mining towns and sites in the Great Slave Lake region, most residents embrace new resource projects as possibilities for creating viable futures. Situated at the intersection of socio-cultural and linguistic anthropology, this ethnographic investigation of the Canadian diamond boom of the 2000s illustrates how imagining stable livelihoods despite a record of impermanence and crises depends on integrating and reframing past failures with present aspirations for “the good life”. At the height of the diamond boom in 2007, future imaginaries were largely associated with high wage job creation in the rapidly expanding industrial sector. Based on 18 months of fieldwork among those said to benefit most from new industrial development: the Aboriginal under/unemployed, this dissertation’s ethnographic attention is on job training programs and employment interventions that promised local residents new futures. The fieldwork coincided with the global financial crisis and almost none of the 90 students followed through the research secured work in the industry at the conclusion of their training. Nevertheless, people continue to maintain faith in a future linked to resource development. Capturing people’s everyday re-makings of tomorrow in uncertain times, this dissertation reveals that while employment in global extractive industries is unable to provide economic security to those who seek it, its promises are productive for four reasons. First, they (re)define the natural world as ‘opportunities for work’. Second, the specific techniques of industry and statecraft that surround mining (impact and benefit agreements, and socio-economic monitoring) transform everyday events of difference and inequality into catastrophes which render industrial development sensible even urgent. Third, they orient public sentiment towards a “future anterior,” a form of temporal longing that I argue impedes a deep reading of the historical present and participates in a politics of deferral. Fourth, they rely on and reproduce a chronotopically constrained public debate on natural resource development.

No description available.

A static chamber technique was used to measure methane emissions in July and August, 1995 from peatland sites in the Fort Simpson area, Northwest Territories, at the southern fringe of the discontinuous permafrost zone. Sites were classified ecologically and geomorphologically, and water table and temperature regimes were monitored. / Methane emissions ranged from $-$3.3 to 1144.2 mg/m$ sp2 cdot$d, from raised frozen sites to pond sites, respectively, similar to emissions recorded from other boreal regions. Water table was the strongest predictor of CH$ sb4$ emission. Although peat temperature is significantly correlated to methane flux, it did not significantly improve the flux-water table relationship. Methane storage within the saturated portion of the peat profile ranged from 0.2 to 4.2 g/m$ sp2$ over depths ranging from 30 to 76 cm, and did not play a large role in surficial emissions. The zone immediately above and below the water table appears to regulate methane diffusion to the surface. Residence times (storage/flux) ranged from 12 to 30 days in poor fens, and from 6 to 5789 days in fens. / Ranges and mean fluxes of methane were determined according to landform and water table position. Based on the geomorphology of the area, overall flux determined for the Fort Simpson area, map NTS 95H, NW1/4, is estimated to be 19 mg/m$ sp2 cdot$d.

The Dene are a subarctic people indigenous to northern Canada. The indirect and direct contact the Dene had with the European traders and Christian missionaries who came to their land around the turn of the 20th century triggered profound changes in their society and economy. This study focuses on some of these changes, and, particularly, on how they have affected the lives of Dene women who inhabit the small community of Fort Liard, which is located in the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories. / Using as context the formal and informal economy and the concept of the model of production, the author proposes two main ideas: first, "nurturing" or "social reproduction" and "providing" or "production" are vital and integral to the Dene's subsistence economy and concept of work; second, it is through the custom of "seclusion" or female puberty rites that the teaching and learning of these responsibilities occurred. Dene women played a pivotal role in this process. The impositions of external government, Christianity, capitalism, and free market economics have altered Dene women's concept of work. / The Dene women of Fort Liard are presently working to regain the social and economic status they once had. However, reclaiming their status in current times involves recognizing conflicting and contradictory ideologies in the workplace. The goal of these Dene women is, ultimately, to overcome economic and ideological obstacles, to reinforce common cultural values, and to reaffirm the primacy of their own conceptions of family and community. The goal of this study is to identify and examine the broad spectrum of factors and conditions that play a role in their struggles.

Thesis (Ph.D)--Harvard University, 1952. / Typescripts, signed; typescripts; typescripts (carbon copies). Gift of Elmer Harp.

The purpose of the thesis is two-fold: to document the results of a language survey of Northern Métis languages which examines the language practices and attitudes of those Northern Métis people who participated, and to reflect upon the research process by examining the assumptions I bring to the research and my role and the role of other Masters level researchers in language revitalization projects. The research presented here has been conducted within the Community-based language revitalization (CBLR) research model (Czaykowska-Higgins 2009), a model which can be a powerful way to frame linguistic research and which is increasingly called upon when undertaking language revitalization projects. This thesis addresses the application of CBLR practices to a language revitalization project undertaken in collaboration with the North Slave Métis Alliance in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Along with positioning myself in the research, I provide an in-depth description of the historical, political, and social landscape in which the research takes place. My epistemologies and the CBLR model are informed by feminist and Native American methodologies, as well as participatory, participatory-action and action frameworks. Through this lens, I reflect on the academic context of language revitalization and offer my own model of collaborative language research which builds upon work done by Leonard & Haynes (2010). Applying this model, I present the results of the North Slave Métis Language Survey, conducted in 2013 in collaboration with the North Slave Métis Alliance. This thesis contributes to the body of work on Métis languages, and is the first to thoroughly examine and document the language practices of Métis people of the NWT. It also contributes to the growing body of work on CBLR research. / Graduate

Staples theory has been used as a framework to explain the historical establishment and political economy of Canada and other “new” countries, based on the concept that Canada has been and continues to be built on an economy of resource extraction. The theory has been applied on both a macro and a micro scale to regions of Canada that have specialized in the extraction of cod, wheat, fur, and oil and gas. Two foundational academics of staples theory, Harold A. Innis and Mel Watkins, spent time in the northern region of Canada now known as the Northwest Territories (NWT) and, among other researchers, applied a staples approach to various periods of the region’s economic development. The application of staples theory in northern Canada, however, is problematic, particularly in view of the territory’s predominantly Indigenous, Inuit, and Métis population. A staples framework tends to ignore, or underplay, a fundamental reality in the NWT: the original political economy of the region was based on Indigenous values of communal trading and sharing in a subsistence economy. Most importantly, the Indigenous economy was controlled and distributed by the Indigenous people as they lived on, and carefully managed, the land and resources of the North. A theoretical approach that centers on the extraction and commodification of resources in the North by white traders and settlers who take over the land, obscures the critical questions of who owns and cares for the land and how it is ‘developed’. / Graduate

A study of the mineralogy of a suite of specimens, collected by Dr.C.Riley from the Bonanza silver deposit, has been made. Particular attention is paid to the silver mineralization and the origin of the dendritic structure. A brief examination of the wall rock alteration is included. The mineralogy of the deposit is relatively simple, consisting of the following metallic minerals in their order of abundance: native silver, magnetite, hematite, tetrahedrite, argentite, chalcopyrite, and an unknown mineral. Pitchblende and cobalt-nickel minerals are absent. Magnetite and hematite are restricted to the wall rock and are not associated with the other metallic minerals. The magnetite is believed to be of pyrometasomatic origin and related to a granodiorite intrusion, while the other metallic and gangue minerals are considered to be of hydrothermal origin. The gangue minerals consist of quartz, sericite, and carbonate. Ninety-five percent of the native silver occurs as dendrites and the other five percent as replacement of tetrahedrite and chalcopyrite. Core replacement by the silver is well developed. The dendritic structure of the silver is inherited from quartz through replacement. In a quartz gangue this structure appears to be controlled by rows of specially oriented, doubly terminated, quartz prisms, while in a sericitic gangue the euhedral quartz grains, arranged in a rude dendritic pattern, are the controlling factor. The mineral deposits of the Echo Bay area are compared with similar deposits throughout the world. / Science, Faculty of / Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of / Graduate

The thesis is divided into two parts. In Chapter I a new bedded copper deposit at Redstone River, N.W.T., is described for the first time. Emphasis is placed on those aspects of the geology, mineralogy and mineralography which may have significance in considering the origin of the ore. It is concluded that the ores were emplaced at low temperature subsequent to deposition of the host rock. Some redistribution and possibly addition of copper occurred at a later date as a result of tectonic disturbance. In Chapter II the problem of the origin of red bed copper deposits is discussed with the Redstone deposit considered as a typical example. An attempt is made to review the major aspects of the problem, including what the writer considers to be the most important ideas expressed in the literature. The writer discards the terms 'epigenetic' and 'syngenetic1 as applied to such deposits and proposes new lines of research based on the difference in electric potential between host rocks and adjacent red beds. / Science, Faculty of / Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of / Graduate

The Inuit of Pelly Bay, N.W.T. have been among the last groups of native people in Canada to experience contact, and to settle in a permanent community. In this isolated settlement the Inuit culture, although changing and constantly adapting, remains strong. The traditional economy, based upon the harvesting of land-based resources, continues to be a vital part of the culture. The thesis examines the nature and extent of this man-land relationship, in the present-day context, and follows the on-the-land activities of all members of this community through one harvest year. Particular emphasis is paid to the nature of the location of such activities, and the methods by which Inuit navigate from place to place. The thesis details the location and translated meaning of 307 Inuktitut place names within the Pelly Bay land-use area, and demonstrates that an ordered and logical pattern of organisation of named physical features exists, a perception of landscape unique to the local region. The knowledge of these toponyms, combined with several supplemental techniques, forms a complete and functional system of navigation which continues to be used by the Inuit of Pelly Bay in their yearly cycle of on-the-land activities. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate