This ethnographic dissertation study contains a total of six chapters. Chapter One provides an introduction to the topic, Perspectives of Saskatchewan Dakota/Lakota Elders on the Treaty Process within Canada. It also discusses the following: the purpose of the study; the rationale & justification for an interdisciplinary approach; the research methodology; the definition of terms; the limitations of the study; assumptions; and the ethical protocols applicable to this study. Chapter Two provides a review of literature pertaining to the various theoretical and methodological considerations to be addressed within this study. These include the traditional Rankean approach to the study of history; that termed within Western academia as Oral History, combined with that termed as Oral Tradition; that termed as Dakota Oral Tradition; and that termed within Western academia as Outsider vs. Insider Research. Chapter Three provides a review of the history of the treaty negotiation processes that occurred both in the United States and Canada and concludes with an analysis of research findings to date. Chapter Four reviews previously written documentation pertaining to the Dakota/Lakota treaty negotiation process within Canada and concludes with an analysis of research findings to date. Chapter Five discusses in detail the data collection process employed for this study. In addition, the data generated from the interviews with the Saskatchewan Dakota/Lakota Elders regarding their perspectives on treaty are presented. Chapter Six provides a synthesis and analysis of research findings for the data collected from the Saskatchewan Dakota/Lakota Elders during the interview process. In addition, an epilogue is provided regarding the implications of the research for the treaty negotiation process of the Dakota/Lakota people within Canada. In this way the findings of the study are placed within the context of the Native-White treaty relationship currently evolving and being negotiated within the province of Saskatchewan. Recommendations are also presented to assist and enhance the contemporary political and legal position of the Dakota/Lakota First Nations within Saskatchewan in their efforts to either sign adhesion to the Numbered Treaties, or to adhere to an alternate treaty protocol agreement with the Canadian federal government, which would include provisions regarding land, as well as related treaty benefits and annuities.

This ethnographic dissertation study contains a total of six chapters. Chapter One provides an introduction to the topic, Perspectives of Saskatchewan Dakota/Lakota Elders on the Treaty Process within Canada. It also discusses the following: the purpose of the study; the rationale & justification for an interdisciplinary approach; the research methodology; the definition of terms; the limitations of the study; assumptions; and the ethical protocols applicable to this study. Chapter Two provides a review of literature pertaining to the various theoretical and methodological considerations to be addressed within this study. These include the traditional Rankean approach to the study of history; that termed within Western academia as Oral History, combined with that termed as Oral Tradition; that termed as Dakota Oral Tradition; and that termed within Western academia as Outsider vs. Insider Research. Chapter Three provides a review of the history of the treaty negotiation processes that occurred both in the United States and Canada and concludes with an analysis of research findings to date. Chapter Four reviews previously written documentation pertaining to the Dakota/Lakota treaty negotiation process within Canada and concludes with an analysis of research findings to date. Chapter Five discusses in detail the data collection process employed for this study. In addition, the data generated from the interviews with the Saskatchewan Dakota/Lakota Elders regarding their perspectives on treaty are presented. Chapter Six provides a synthesis and analysis of research findings for the data collected from the Saskatchewan Dakota/Lakota Elders during the interview process. In addition, an epilogue is provided regarding the implications of the research for the treaty negotiation process of the Dakota/Lakota people within Canada. In this way the findings of the study are placed within the context of the Native-White treaty relationship currently evolving and being negotiated within the province of Saskatchewan. Recommendations are also presented to assist and enhance the contemporary political and legal position of the Dakota/Lakota First Nations within Saskatchewan in their efforts to either sign adhesion to the Numbered Treaties, or to adhere to an alternate treaty protocol agreement with the Canadian federal government, which would include provisions regarding land, as well as related treaty benefits and annuities.

The purpose of this thesis is to determine the key explanatory factors that explain why some First Nations reach an agreement through the British Columbia Treaty Process, while others do not. To do this, analytical frameworks from Gabrielle Slowey and Christopher Alcantara are empirically applied to three First Nations who are (or were) negotiating agreements in the province. The findings conclude that negotiations in the Treaty Process produce different results for the same reasons that Alcantara and Slowey identify for Aboriginal groups throughout Canada. They depend on the particular circumstances of each First Nation within the current institutional structure. This structure defines the relationship between Aboriginal and state actors and provides a set of options from which the former may choose to navigate their futures. However, in addition to the determining factors that Alcantara and Slowey identify, this thesis finds that it is also imperative to take into account the desire of a First Nation to use the Treaty Process as a means to progress along its own path of self-determination.

Students of colonialism know well that the stories we tell have the capacity to make, maintain, or transform our relationships as well as our material futures. As earlier work has shown, Indigenous and settler peoples encountered and apprehended one another through story at first contact and in all subsequent contact moments, reaching right up to present-day mechanisms for negotiating conflicts over rights, resources, sovereignty, and historical injustice. In this dissertation, I explore in depth the role of story as a social practice in Indigenous-state relations, examining a series of key encounters over the last 150 years in which Indigenous peoples challenged and contested the state’s possession of their lands in what would become British Columbia. Informed by archival and community-based research with two Indigenous nations – the Stó:lō and the Haida – this study offers a history of Indigenous tactics in pursuit of the larger objective of decolonization, especially since the 1960s. Each of the four main chapters explores how Indigenous peoples have engaged distinct state-sanctioned mechanisms for addressing the state’s dispossession of their lands. The first chapter examines the dynamics of orality and literacy in a series of Stó:lō petitions from the late nineteenth century, a time when reserves were being reduced in order to accommodate a rapid influx of settlers seeking agricultural lands. Chapter 2 looks at Stó:lō experiences of treaty negotiation in the early twenty-first century, and how they are attempting to re-write the master narrative of Stó:lō -state relations. Chapter 3 focuses on the Haida blockade of logging in the mid-1980s, examining how the Haida acted into being what would become an iconic story of Haida nationhood. Finally, chapter 5 explores story and belief through a close study of the narrative dynamics of Haida participation in the Joint Review of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project between 2012-2014. In each of these encounters, Stó:lō and Haida people exceed the limited narrative spaces they are assigned for communicating who they are and how they relate to their territories and to the state, while attempting to shift the established narrative. Recent scholarship on Indigenous-state relations has focused on how liberal settler states continue to exclude Indigenous peoples even through their gestures at including them into the body politic. While such work on the state is critical, I suggest that it is equally important to understand Indigenous peoples’ demonstrated capacity for collective cultural endurance, and how it exists in tension with the forces acting to assimilate and subsume Indigenous difference within the normative structures of settler society. This study attempts to grasp the nature of this endurance, and demonstrates how narrative is as central to Indigenous peoples’ repossessions of their land as it was to the state’s original dispossession of it. / Graduate / 2018-08-08

Legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title and treaty negotiations with First Nations in British Columbia (BC) are inextricably linked. While much has been written on the impacts of a small number of such legal decisions, there has been very little research that critically examines how legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title, in general, influence the way the parties to the BC treaty process conduct treaty negotiations. In-depth interviews with ten First Nations, provincial, and federal chief negotiators/advisers, together with British Columbia Treaty Commission (BCTC) commissioners and senior-level program staff, suggest that legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title influence the conduct of treaty negotiations in an indirect and serpentine manner. Further to this, the results suggest that legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title may act to simultaneously facilitate and constrain the conduct of negotiations.

Legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title and treaty negotiations with First Nations in British Columbia (BC) are inextricably linked. While much has been written on the impacts of a small number of such legal decisions, there has been very little research that critically examines how legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title, in general, influence the way the parties to the BC treaty process conduct treaty negotiations. In-depth interviews with ten First Nations, provincial, and federal chief negotiators/advisers, together with British Columbia Treaty Commission (BCTC) commissioners and senior-level program staff, suggest that legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title influence the conduct of treaty negotiations in an indirect and serpentine manner. Further to this, the results suggest that legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title may act to simultaneously facilitate and constrain the conduct of negotiations.

Legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title and treaty negotiations with First Nations in British Columbia (BC) are inextricably linked. While much has been written on the impacts of a small number of such legal decisions, there has been very little research that critically examines how legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title, in general, influence the way the parties to the BC treaty process conduct treaty negotiations. In-depth interviews with ten First Nations, provincial, and federal chief negotiators/advisers, together with British Columbia Treaty Commission (BCTC) commissioners and senior-level program staff, suggest that legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title influence the conduct of treaty negotiations in an indirect and serpentine manner. Further to this, the results suggest that legal decisions on Aboriginal rights and title may act to simultaneously facilitate and constrain the conduct of negotiations.

In this Master’s thesis, I document my experience working with members of the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation in their efforts to revitalize the reef net fishery. As part of this research project, I interviewed W̱SÁNEĆ community members, and I created a digital map of reef net fishing locations (SWELSWÁLET). In each of these interviews, different W̱SÁNEĆ community members chose to frame reef net fishing differently, and they highlighted specific and unique “alternative political approaches” toward W̱SÁNEĆ cultural resurgence (Kew & Miller 1999:58-59). Despite these differences, each W̱SÁNEĆ community member that I interviewed believed that reef net fishing is something that “needs to be shared” (XA’LATE, pers. comm., June 14, 2016). In Chapter 1, I explore the variations in what specific W̱SÁNEĆ community members want shared. In Chapters 2 and 3, however, I examine the delicate cultural, political, and legal contexts that have made sharing a complicated process. In Chapter 2, I analyze how the BC Treaty Process (BCTP) has exacerbated conflicts among First Nations in British Columbia. Further, I discuss the impact that these conflicts have had on how the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation shares information with their intranational and international neighbours. In Chapter 3, I explore how my misaligned expectations of knowledge sharing in collaborative community-based research—as a white settler man—clashed with “the values and beliefs, practices and customs of [the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation]” (L. Smith 2012:15-16; Lassiter 2005). I also make recommendations for how settler researchers in the future should proceed with research projects in these contexts. / Graduate / 2019-12-06

No description available.

This thesis examines Tse Keh Nay (Sekani) ethnic identity over three periods of Aboriginal-European relations: the fur trade period, the missionary period, and the treaty and reserve period. It examines the affects these three periods have had on the Tse Keh Nay as an ethnic group in four chapters, the first two dealing with the fur trade and missionary periods, and the last two with the treaty and reserve aspects of the treaty and reserve period. In it I argue that during the first two periods wider Tse Keh Nay ethnic identity was reinforced, while during the latter period local Tse Keh Nay identities were reinforced through government policies that dealt with Tse Keh Nay subgroups on a regional and localized basis. Despite this shift in emphasis, wider Tse Keh Nay ethnic identity has remained, proving that Tse Keh Nay ethnic identity is both situational and dynamic. / History