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Regina v Johnstone
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The document containing to Regina v Johnstone talks about how Walter Johnstone was a descendant of Aboriginal people and how he was not living on First Nation land and did not pay his taxes. The document goes over medical taxation under Treaty six rules Aboriginal people will not pay for medical bills while living on their community.
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Remaking Indignity
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--Description taken from "Remaking Indignity:Indigenous Missionaries in the British Empire, 1820-1875"--
In the 1840s, Christian mission organizations from Britain began establishing self-governing, independent indigenous churches staffed by ordained indigenous missionaries. By the 1860s, this initiative had created a world-wide cohort of ordained indigenous missionaries with close ties to Britain and Christianity. This dissertation compares two of these early indigenous missionaries, Henry Budd a Cree from western Canada (1812-1875) and Tiyo Soga a Xhosa from southern Africa (1829-1871). It argues that while Budd and Soga were part of the same process of modernizing indigenaity, their local frontier and particular missionary network led them to create different definitions of indigenaity and distinct kinds of indigenous communities. The thesis begins by explaining how both men were guided by their family and sense of "home" to become missionaries and how both articulated, through their writings and actions, a similar sense of "modern indigenaity." This modern indigenaity comprised of two parts: a new identity that located the meaning of indigenaity not in religion or lifestyle, but in land, language and history; and a new sense of global consciousness that enabled the missionaries to see connections between their lives and the lives of people around the world. The second section of the thesis examines how Budd and Soga, acting as advisors to and advocates for indigenous people, tried to establish new - but very distinct - kinds of indigenous communities in their respective regions. Budd, drawing on the Cree band structure and fluid fur-trade frontier, hoped to establish a "Cree village community" that was Christian, semi-agrarian and bound together by the Cree language. Soga, relying on the hierarchal tribal structure of the Xhosa and nearly a century of race-based warfare between whites and Africans in his region, fostered a "Xhosa national community" that was larger and more robust than Budd's village and bound by race and history as well as language. These different communities reveal that while Budd transformed Creeness into a predominantly linguistic and territorial category of identity, Soga made Xhosaness into a political identity. These remade community identities, and their connection to British Christianity, are the legacies of indigenous missionaries.
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Restorative Prisons?
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--Description taken from "Restorative Prisons?"--
In its infancy, restorative justice emerged not only as an ‘alternative’ to prison but also as a competing justice model that sought to reduce our reliance on the existing retributive ‘criminal justice’ system. It is said that restorative justice initiatives distinguish themselves from the prevailing punitive approach to ‘crime’ as they are guided by a different set of questions, objectives, values and principles that provide opportunities for restorative outcomes. In theory, these community-based ‘alternative’ programs were to divert cases away from the retributive ‘criminal justice’ system’ so that reparations between ‘offenders’, victims and affected community members could be made possible.
In my study, I have identified 277 initiatives that claim to be in the business of restorative justice, many of which are either funded, administrated or receive their case loads from institutions within the existing ‘criminal justice’ system. In these cases, we must ask ourselves whether the restorative justice initiatives operating within the parameters of the ‘criminal justice’ system adhere to the objectives, values and principles outlined in the philosophy of restorative justice.
To begin to address this very question, which is the central objective of this study, I examine one particular pilot project administrated by Correction Service Canada (CSC) from April 2001 to November 2005 called the Restorative Justice Unit (RJ Unit). This program, which was housed in Grande Cache Institution (GCI), was created by CSC to determine whether or not it would be feasible to transform the prison into a restorative correctional environment. In my analysis of this program, I unpack this notion and demonstrate that CSC has merely adopted the descriptors of the restorative approach to legitimate punishment and control under the guise of restorative justice and the rehabilitative rhetoric of the cognitive behavioural approach.
In a story that reads more of the same, I conclude that the RJ Unit failed to adhere to the objectives, values and principles of the restorative approach due to the clear absence of political, relational and operational changes at the structural level of the organization and of the prison in which the program participants were housed. As such, I argue that CSC has and continues to be involved (with its other ‘restorative justice’ initiatives) in a process of absorption, whereby only the descriptors and practices of the restorative justice model that do not threaten the interests of the organization are incorporated into its existing framework. I contend that such a process allows CSC to maintain the dominant punitive character of its prisons by employing the language of restorative justice to deflect criticism from those who argue that the ‘criminal justice’ process, especially imprisonment, does not address the needs of ‘offenders’, victims and affected members of the community and also further contributes to the pain and marginalization experienced by these parties.
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Rethinking Treaty Six in the Spirit of Mistahi Maskwa ( Big Bear)
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--Description taken from "Rethinking Treaty Six in the Spirit of Mistahi Maskwa ( Big Bear)"--
The numbered Treaties in western Canada were negotiated between the British Crown and the Nehiyawak (Cree), Anishinabek (Saulteaux) and Nakota in the 1870s. These Treaties were made in order to help people live together in peace and to share the resources of the land. Treaty Six was the largest Treaty and covered most of central Saskatchewan and Alberta. While many Cree leaders within this area accepted the terms offered by the Crown, others such as Mistahi Maskwa resisted and sought better terms. By examining Treaty Six through the struggle of Mistahi Maskwa, new perspectives about the moral foundations of Canada arise in terms of both the past and the present.
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Revisiting the Meaning of Treaty Number Four in Southern Saskatchewan
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--Description taken from "Revisiting the Meaning of Treaty Number Four in Southern Saskatchewan"--
The signing of Treaty Number Four provided access to the fertile lands of the prairie belt. The Indian Nations opened up these lands in exchange for certain rights and with certain expectations. However the interpretation of the treaty has not been representative of the Indian perspective. This brings forward the question whether or not Indian people intentionally relinquished their birthrights to the land when they signed Treaty Number Four. This thesis examines that question based on whether or not Indian people were in a strong negotiating position at the time of the treaty and whether or not they understood the treaty outcome. A brief history of the Indian Nations in the Treaty Number Four region provides the reader with an understanding of the religious, cultural, and traditional attitudes in 1874, as well the actual dynamics that were present during the negotiations. Existing oral history is used to provide the Indian Nations' perspectives, and selected government documents and other primary/secondary sources are used to provide the government's perspective.
The Indian people came from a strong position, they had certain expectations that they believed would be met through treaty obligations. Issues of land ownership, education and reserve creation provide ideal examples of misunderstandings and misinterpretations in the treaty outcome.
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Rhetorics of Colonialism in Visual Documentation
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--Description taken from "Rhetorics of Colonialism in Visual Documentation"--
Using a historical framework and interdisciplinary methodologies, this
dissertation examines early representations of the North American West in a dialogue as a
frontier of difference iterated through technologies of illustration and photography.
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Sacred Sites and Secular Reasoning
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--Description taken from "Sacred Sites and Secular Reasoning "--
This study investigated the human-induced factors affecting the Majorville Medicine Wheel area, and whether the Historical Resources Act (Alberta) provides adequate protection from these factors. The study also sought to incorporats aboriginal concepts of sacredness into the analysis of protection. Interviewing members of the Siksika Nation, local land-owners and lease-holders, government officials and representatives of industry, the study documented sacred significance for the medicine wheel and larger area on the part of the Siksika, and a lack of knowledge of such significance on the part of other interviewees. The government has involved neither aboriginal people, nor local land-owners or lease-holders in developing or implementing a management plan for the area. The management plan is based upon an informal arrangement with the oil and gas industry. While providing for site-specific protection, the management plan depends upon development-induced historical resources impact assessments for site detection.
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Sessional Papers Volume 11, 1898
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Sessional Papers Volume 11 examines different First Nation communities within the Treaty six territories. The archive also acknowledges Reginal and Qu’Appelle Industrial School.
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Seven Persons
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--Description taken from "Seven Persons"--
Seven Persons is a lyrical meditation that explores landscape, origin, identity and compromise in the rural prairies of Southern Alberta. Cinematically weaving together the story of a conflicted 1880's Metis surveyor that makes a haunting
discovery that eventually leads to the naming of the hamlet of Seven Persons and a ten-year-old urban boy in 1990 whose innocence is challenged while on a visit to the family farm. The stories are interlaced within a portrait of the land they
share and an area called Seven Persons.
Based on various mythologies of the origin and naming of Seven Persons as well as the childhood memories of the filmmaker, the film sets out to create a dreamlike enigma where environmental tones resonate within the main characters, merging notions of past and present. The film is an experiential work using traditional narrative devices played out in an interpretive way. The film tries to
challenge the audience with the absence of an overt plot and invites them to engage with the images that feel familiar at once and yet haunting at the same time.