Canadian processes such as the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and Comprehensive Land Claims as well as flashpoint events (Simpson & Ladner, 2010) such as the Kanien’kehaka resistance at Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke (the “Oka Crisis”) and more recently, the Idle No More movement, signal to Canadians that something is amiss. What may be less visible to Canadians are the 400 years of colonial oppression experienced and the 400 years of resistance enacted by Indigenous peoples on their lands, which are currently occupied by the state of Canada. It is in the context of historical and ongoing Canadian colonialism: land theft, dispossession, marginalization, and genocide, and in the context of the overwhelming denial of these realities by white settler Canadians that this study occurs. In order to break through settler Canadian denial, and to inspire greater numbers of white settler Canadians to initiate and/or deepen their anti-colonial and/or decolonial understandings and work, this study presents extended life narratives of white settler Canadians who have engaged deeply in anti-colonial and/or decolonial work as a major life focus. In this study, such work is framed as living in Indigenous sovereignty, or living in an awareness that we are on Indigenous lands containing their own protocols, stories, obligations, and opportunities which have been understood and practiced by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Inspired by Indigenous and anti-oppressive methodologies, I articulate and utilize an anti-colonial research methodology. I use participatory and narrative methods, which are informed and politicized through words gifted by Indigenous scholars, activists, and Knowledge Keepers. The result is research as a transformative, relational, and decolonizing process. In addition to the extended life narratives, this research yields information regarding connections between social work education, social work practice, and the anti-colonial/decolonial learnings and work of five research subjects who have, or are completing, social work degrees. The dissertation closes with an exploration of what can be learned through the narrative stories, with recommendations for white settler peoples and for social work, and with recommendations for future research. / February 2017

As Canada’s courts recognize and redefine the scope of Aboriginal title and rights in the country, alliances between Indigenous communities and environmental groups are playing an increasingly central role in the fight to stop fossil fuel infrastructure projects and address the global threats of climate change. Recognizing the importance of relationships between environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGO) and Indigenous peoples to environmental campaigns in Canada, and the need to include land-politics into the national conversation of reconciliation, this research project aims to investigate the role of reconciliation efforts in environmental campaigns in BC. Indigenous-ENGO relationships offer important opportunities to learn how actions and language of reconciliation are (or are not) being expressed in environmental campaigns, and to learn how ENGOs are approaching their work with Indigenous communities in an era of reconciliation. Using two campaigns as my case studies I explore these topics by interviewing ENGO staff and Indigenous peoples working collaboratively on the Site C Dam campaign in the Peace River region of Treaty 8 in northeast BC, and the Pacific Northwest liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal project in the Skeena River watershed region in the traditional territories of the Tsimshian, Gitxsan, and Wet’suwet’en nations of northwest BC. Informed by Indigenous and anti-colonial research methodologies, a principle of relational accountability is used to center relationships with land as a foundation for reconciliation, and for recommendations on how Indigenous-ENGO relationships can be improved. / Graduate