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Manson, Johnnie

University of British Columbia

In Canada, approximately half of Indigenous peoples live in urban communities. However, in academic and popular discourse, ‘authentic’ Indigenous peoples are often located in rural ‘natural’ environments away from ‘man-made’ urban communities. I think this sets up a contradiction – where Indigenous peoples are factually present in urban communities but are absent in the contemporary academic and popular imaginary – and so marginalizes the realities of Indigenous persons who live in urban communities. The overall purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate the diverse ways contemporary Indigenous peoples who live in urban communities conceptualize and operationalize their values and enact their lives as this intersects with the meaning of land, reconciliation, relations, and work. Theoretically, I discuss different non-Indigenous and Indigenous discourses on what constitutes the land and their implications for how Indigenous peoples who live in urban communities recognize themselves, are recognized by others, and how they recognize others. I also consider the implication of different liberal (individualistic and relational) and Indigenous relational discourses on the project of transforming liberal institutions into relational institutions. The four substantive chapters include Chapter 2, which investigates how non-Indigenous and Indigenous discourses on reality (or what academics refer to as their ontological worldviews) structure how Indigenous persons see themselves and their relationship to others (human and nonhuman). Chapter 3 engages with the everyday acts of reconciliation of Indigenous persons who live in Vancouver and Nanaimo – whereby they seek to improve the relationships with themselves and others (Indigenous, non-Indigenous, and nonhumans) across several urban communities. Chapter 4 engages with liberal and Indigenous relational discourses on reality, particularly, how they are expressed in contexts assumed to be meritocratic. Chapter 5 engages with five Indigenous persons who live in urban communities’ conceptualizations and enactments of work and their economic lives and how they structure and are structured by their desire to build community and become the persons they want to be. I conclude this thesis by arguing for the importance of recognizing Indigenous diversity and the relational reality of existence.

Text

2021-10-25

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/80041

Resources, Environment and Sustainability

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/