The First Nation community of Poplar River in Northern Manitoba is using a UNESCO World Heritage Site nomination to assist with meeting local needs. Going beyond the expected, non-renewable resource development, Asatiwisipe First Nation is taking control over its own developmental plans, and forging an ecologically sustainable vision of community-controlled economic and political development. This initiative is an escape from the ‘progress trap’ where Indigenous resource stewardship practices will guide sustainable community economic development. This thesis explores the application of intangible cultural heritage as a lens for looking at the culture/nature discussion, food sovereignty, Indigenous resource management as well as Aboriginal and treaty rights. Based on longitudinal research over the past eight years, this dissertation is a collection of interviews and narratives from community members, personal experiences and policy research. Despite systemic Eurocentrism and many challenges, permanent protection of the Poplar River Community Conserved Area through the World Heritage Site nomination is perhaps the best solution for the community as it is an initiative that has been instigated by the First Nation itself.

This research focuses on the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic and its impact on and spread through two Aboriginal communities in Manitoba: Berens River and Poplar River. The mortality experiences these communities had during the 1918 influenza pandemic are used to examine (a) variations in disease experience between communities, (b) factors influencing the spread of influenza in the study communities during the 1918 pandemic, and (c) the usefulness of employing a holistic health model for community level health research. Reconstruction of the epidemic in these two communities is possible through the integration of both qualitative and quantitative data: ethnohistoric information, demographic, mortality, and mobility data, and environmental information. This thesis provides evidence that (1) closely related communities may have significantly different mortality experiences; while Berens River and Poplar River may have shared similar mortality patterns in some years between 1909-1929, the relationship was not predictable since significant differences could occur, as was the case during the 1918 influenza epidemic from which Poplar River did not suffer, and (2) differences in local economic activities were important determinants in the spread of the 1918 influenza epidemic in these two communities. The results of this investigation suggests that although communities share characteristics in common, such as culture and history, and show similarities in mortality experience, in the case of the introduction of a virgin soil epidemic these similarities cannot predict the course of an epidemic. It is argued that the holistic approach to health research provides a useful method investigate this epidemic since the use of epidemiological, ethnohistorical, environmental and historical information were all necessary in order to understand all the factors that contributed the spread of the 1918 flu. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

East of Lake Winnipeg is what conservationists call the ‘east shore wilderness’ / ‘heart of the boreal.’ The largest contiguous tract of unindustrialized boreal forest on Earth, this area has been the focus of 15 years of discussion and planning in Manitoba. The area is also designated Waabanong Nakaygum, a homeland to the Anishinaabek of this bush-meets-lake region. Waabanong has seen limited access during the industrial period of personal mechanized mobility due to a lack of constructed all-weather roads. However, an older pattern of travel and mobility does exist across the land, for centuries constituting traditional Anishinaabek patterns of land use and trade. As all-weather roads are being constructed along Lake Winnipeg, oral interviews will examine the question: will the older trails remain in the collective culture of the people or shall the north-south cultural and economic flows replace the east-west bush history traced by the rivers that wind through?