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Teacher, Leadership, And Curriculum Factors Predictive Of Student Achievement In Indian Education For All, Erin Robin Lipkind

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study examines the teacher, leader, and curriculum variables predictive of student achievement in Indian Education for All (IEFA). IEFA, a Montana educational mandate based on Montana constitutional law, was first funded in 2005, and little research had previously been conducted on the effectiveness of implementation efforts. While compulsory, implementation had been piecemeal and wrought with misunderstanding, differences in opinion, prejudice, and questions about its legitimacy. The challenges inherent in the implementation of an ambiguous educational reform with no state-adopted curriculum or benchmarks for student achievement have become evident. With the dearth of research, it was not known how well …

Teaching Intercultural Communication Competence In The Healthcare Context, Jelena Stojakovic

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this project was to design a training program focused on intercultural communication competence in the health care industry. While international students make an important link between different cultures, serve as great resource in the exchange of cultures and ideas, and make large contributions to the U.S. economy; international students also pose new challenges for higher education. One of the challenges that came up as a result of the diversification of U.S. campuses has to do with intercultural competence, which is an important quality for anyone who wishes to competently and effectively navigate intercultural interactions. Along these lines, …

Training Characteristics Of Males At The 2008 Ncaa Division I Cross Country Championships, Philip A. Keller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The focus of previous running research has been on physiological determinates of performance utilizing small sample sizes and short time frames with little regard to previous training methods. PURPOSE: The goal of this research was to describe, compare, and evaluate the relationships between anthropometric, run training, and ancillary training variables during the 2008 season and performance of male finishers at the NCAA Division I cross country championship 10k race. METHODOLOGY: An online survey was created based on previous research and all coaches who had male runners finish the 2008 NCAA championship race were asked to include their athletes in the …

Educational Travel And Adolescent Development, Ann Saitow

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Educational travel forms the basis for novel learning experiences that enhance adolescent development by enabling students to make choices about their own survival in an unfamiliar setting. This biological adaptation is driven by stimulation of the midbrain which produces high levels of dopamine, the chemical associated with learning. The elements of educational travel that promote sustained adolescent learning are: clear communication, commitment and action, communal trust and respect, maturity developed through assigned responsibilities and exposure to varied life circumstances, flexibility, and transition back to traditional school environments.

Comparisons In The Cranial Form Of The Blackfeet Indians: A Reassessment Of Boas' Native American Data, Jenee Caprice Gesler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Franz Boas proposed almost one hundred yeas ago that cranial plasticity explained the differences in cranial form between European-born immigrants and their American-born children. Plasticity refers to the idea that the body responds to environmental forces during growth and development. If the environment does affect cranial growth and development, than differences should be seen in populations living under different ecological conditions. In this study anthropometric measurements will be used to test for differences in head and face measurements of members of the Blackfeet Nation using multivariate statistics. The tests are designed to detect differences between the three tribes of the …

Why Take The Risk?: Women's Interpretive Repertoires For Choosing Home Birth, Laura Ann St. Clair

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this project was to use a social constructivist approach to understand the perception of risk by mothers making the choice to give birth at home in Missoula, Montana. Social constructivism assumes that knowledge about risk is filtered through “social and cultural frameworks of understanding” (Lupton and Tulloch 2002, 321). The information gained from participants in this study was interpreted as a representation of the individual’s culture, including their beliefs, values and upbringing, as well as the influences of the individual’s social network which can include family members, spouses, friends, and community members. Various phenomena, elements or constructs …

A Phenomenological Study Of Reiki Practitioners And Their Perceptions Of Reiki As It Relates To Their Personal Health, Tannis Mardece Hargrove

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this study was to understand the essence of becoming a Reiki practitioner and Reiki’s relationship to an individual’s personal health. The phenomenological research perspective utilized in this study allowed the data to speak for itself and represented the essence of Reiki and Reiki practitioners in Missoula, Montana. Ten Reiki practitioners were interviewed about their personal experience with Reiki. Interviewees were all volunteers, over the age of 18, who were trained in Reiki II or higher and had more than three years of experience practicing Reiki. Participants had practiced Reiki either on themselves or someone else regularly, which …

"Blackfeet Belong To The Mountains": Blackfeet Relationships With The Glacier National Park Landscape And Institution, David R. Craig

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

National Parks are home to many landscapes of great significance to Native American peoples. The eastern half of Glacier National Park is considered a homeland by the Blackfeet people, and has historically been very important to their material, cultural, and spiritual well-being. This relationship, like those of many other Native peoples, has been severely disrupted by the establishment and presence of the national park, resulting in prolonged conflict between tribes and parks. Blackfeet relationships with this cultural landscape require interaction and engagement in order to realize the full extent of its benefits. Often, these practices serve distinct material needs, however, …

Around The World And Back: A Discovery In India, Charlie L. Gaare

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The impetus for my journey was the desire to learn more about another culture, and pursue the idea of the old cliché: be the change I wanted to see in the world. This journey fulfilled the requirements of the project in multiple ways. It was a major risk to travel to another country with a language barrier on my own. The amount of work it took to prepare for the trip and face the challenges of the experience itself was very labor intensive. I had to do this because I needed to see that I could make a difference. I …

The Klamath's Path After Termination, Monika Nicole Bilka

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

During the 1950s, termination policy dominated federal Indian policy. Termination policy was an effort by the federal government to complete the assimilation process by ending the federal trust relationship it held with Native American tribes. US federal officials chose to terminate the trust relationship with tribes that they considered assimilated and wealthy. As many other historians have argued, termination history did not end in a positive way for tribes. Many tribes witnessed the social and economic collapse of their communities, as well as the loss of their tribal identity. Although the Klamaths suffered from their termination experience, they faced a …

An Analysis Of Alberta's First Nations, Metis, And Inuit School-Community Learning Environment Project, Kelly Burke Thomas

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The First Nations, Métis, and Inuit School-Community Learning Environment Project was one of the programs through which the Aboriginal Branch of Alberta Education attempted to increase the academic success rate of First Nation, Métis, and Inuit students. Sixteen school jurisdictions in Alberta were asked to choose one school within their district on which to focus the resources offered by the Project. These resources included a large amount of money and print materials prepared by the Aboriginal Branch. The schools were asked to consult with the school community and area residents, including elders, to prepare strategies they believed would fulfill the …

Wildlife Decomposition In West Central Montana: A Preliminary Study Conducted To Provide Field Investigation Material And Training For Wildlife Officers, F. Carleen Gonder

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

An issue with many poaching investigations is the discovery of carcasses in advanced stages of decomposition with little information to indicate time of death (TOD). To address TOD issues of carcasses found in a state of decomposition, and to provide training materials and field tools for investigating officers, this project was initiated to identify decomposition stages and to monitor decomposition rates for those stages in the west central area of Montana. A total of 15 carcasses were placed in electrified exclosures during various times of the year which provided seasonal variation and include: a pair of gray wolves (8 total) …

Custer's Last Drag: An Examination Of Tobacco Use Among The Seventh Cavalry During The Nineteenth Century, Shannon Marjorie Vihlene

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Tobacco has played an integral role in global history, and there are numerous historical records related to tobacco use over the past five hundred years. The odontological evidence recovered from the Custer National Battlefield infers a high frequency of tobacco use within the Seventh Calvary, yet nineteenth century historical records fail to mention such intensive use in the Seventh Calvary. This paper will briefly discuss late nineteenth century tobacco culture and apply that to a bioarchaeological research project associated with remains from the Custer National Battlefield to addresses this contradiction between historical and physical records.

Depression-Era Coloma: A World-Systems Study Of Mining And Daily Life Experiences In A Reoccupied Montana Ghost Town, Benjamin Woody

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Anthropologically based studies are underdeveloped on the subject of people living in Montana during the Great Depression. During the summer of 2006, archaeological materials were retrieved from a Depression-Era trash dump at Coloma, Montana. From these artifacts and the available historical records about the area, this thesis postulates on the possible daily experiences of the people responsible for the creation of this dump. The data is then used as the foundation for a World-Systems perspective on the site, which, in turn, connects this mining camp to the world at large during the 1930s.

Changes In Osteoarthritis Of The Elbow And Shoulder Joints In Women When Trasitioning From Hunting And Gathering To An Agricultural Subsistence, Kirsten Anne Green

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Changes in bone morphology have always been a concern of physical anthropologists who are trying to explain a culture's everyday activity. These types of changes, including arthritic and musculoskeletal, are based on subjective observation of the researcher and therefore subject to observer error. I used three samples; the Indian Knoll sample, the Nutwood and Rosedale Mound sample, and a control sample from the Terry collection I was able to employ a scoring method based on Hawkey (1988). This current research uses the scoring method for arthritic changes in women to test for changes in patterns of distribution and/or severity when …

Age At Death Estimation From The Sacral Side Of The Sacroiliac Joint, Misty Marie Keahi Rego

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis presents a new method of age estimation in adult human skeletal remains based on age related degenerative changes of the sacral side of the sacro iliac joint. It is inspired by the existing method of aging based on age related degenerative changes of the iliac side of the sacro iliac joint developed by Lovejoy et al. (1985). This new method uses a ten-year-wide incremental scale of age estimation. The development and testing of this method was done using the Documented Collection from the University of New Mexico's Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. Results suggest that utilizing sacral deterioration to …

Into The Den Of Evils: The Genizaros In Colonial New Mexico, Doris Swann Avery

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As a result of the Indian slave trade in the American Southwest, a group of detribalized Indians emerged in New Mexico during the Spanish colonial period. These Indians came to be known as the genízaros and, through the process scholars call ethnogenesis, developed their own identity by incorporating Hispano-Christian cultural practices while preserving their native ways. The genízaros were products of a widespread and lucrative trade in Plains Indian captives and, as such, they represented various tribes, including Apaches, Navajos, Comanches, Kiowas, Pawnees, Utes and Wichitas. The term “genízaro” emerged as a caste label during the Spanish colonial period and …

Agricultural Certifications And Beekeeping: Lessons From An Apicultural Cooperative In Northeastern El Salvador, Central America, Jason Andrew Seagle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Beekeeping, and especially the production and sale of honey, is an on-farm diversification strategy that has significance to rural livelihoods in some of the most economically and environmentally marginalized regions of the world. Beekeeping also supports sustainable agriculture since it requires that vegetation and forest cover remain intact. However, the limited resources of beekeepers, including marketing constraints, make it difficult for them to realize the full value of their beekeeping enterprises. This professional paper focuses on the Eco-Morazán Cooperative in El Salvador as a case study to examine the costs, benefits and market potential of three types of certification schemes: …

Using 3-D Geometric Morphometric Techniques To Further Understand The Relationship Between Neanderthals And Homo Sapiens, Jolen Anya Minetz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The relationship between hominids in the middle and late Pleistocene has been a heated subject of debate since Neanderthals were first recognized. Neanderthals are either a distinctly separate species from Homo sapiens that were replaced by Homo sapiens without any genetic interaction, which supports the taxonomical title for Neanderthals as Homo neanderthalensis, or there was at least a minimal genetic interaction between contemporaneous Neanderthals and early humans, designating Neanderthals as a subspecies with a taxonomic title of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. The purpose of this research was to further explore this issue by conducting a quantitative analysis on several aspects of …

Producing A Biblical Atlas, Elizabeth Anne Hertz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this thesis was to develop a procedure for simplifying the production of a biblical atlas. The atlas was to be designed specifically for those people interested in the geography of the Bible, and looking at the themes and events in the Bible in a spatial way. The procedures used in developing the contents involved the use of interviews with different experts and reviewing different biblical atlases. Telephone and email interviews were given to twelve experts to gain information about producing a biblical atlas. The participants in the interviews were selected based upon their knowledge of the specific …

A Clean Slate: The Archaeology Of The Donner Party's Writing Slate Fragments, Molly Elizabeth Swords

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Archaeological investigations into the whereabouts of the Alder Creek Donner family campsite yielded a number of artifacts. One type of artifact collected was writing slate fragments, the topic of this thesis. Why were writing slate fragments found at the Alder Creek camp? An investigation into writing slate in the historical record had to be conducted to address this question. The lack of pertinent research associated with writing slate posed a major obstacle, as it has been disregarded as a diagnostic artifact in historical archaeological literature. This paper addresses this problem by a history of writing slate and its uses, as …

Anthropometric Variation In California: A Study Of Native American Populations, Catherine R. Mahoney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Physical anthropologists study the patterns of human morphology to observe the influence of genetics and environment on cranial form. The following study compares cephalic and nasal index means from four Native American populations using modern statistical methods, including one-way ANOVA tests and Games-Howell comparison tests. The individuals used were of only Native American ancestry, over the age of seventeen when the data was collected, and were divided into male and female samples. The climatic conditions of each of the regions are compared to examine the relationship between the mean cranial and nasal indices and the environments in which the populations …

Human Bonds With Public Wildland Places: Segmenting Communities To Inform Natural Resource Management, Neal A. Christensen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Public land managers must consider a broad range of information to develop effective and equitable plans for addressing contentious management issues. Appropriately designed social science research may contribute to better understanding of public interests regarding resource use, thus reducing conflict and contributing to cooperative solutions. This dissertation describes a social science methodology for developing understanding of human / place bonds using indicators of human expression of behaviors, beliefs, and emotions. The dissertation develops the concept of human / place bonds with a goal to better reflect the publics' views and desires for management of public lands. The purpose of the …

A Comprehensive Case Report On University Of Montana Forensic Case 66, Christopher John Buckley

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

UMFC 66 is an anatomical specimen from the Physical Anthropology Lab at The University of Montana-Missoula. It is a nearly complete skeleton that exhibits no trauma. I examined the literature on suitable approaches to estimating age from the skeleton, because age is difficult to estimate for this case and presents an interesting challenge. I also estimated sex, ancestry, stature, and weight. I concluded that UMFC 66 is an American Indian, perhaps 20 to 28 years of age with a relatively short stature of about 1.56m (5’01”), weighing approximately 115 to 129 pounds. There is severe osteomyelitis throughout the left lower …

Debating Identity: Urban Indians In The Healthcare System, Erin J. Klahn

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In recent years, the public health sector has recommended that healthcare practitioners become culturally competent in order to reduce health disparities in minority groups. It was reported later in the Surgeon General's Report (1999) on mental health, that culture shapes the healthcare experience for minority groups and in turn may influence the treatment course. Cultural competence models have been proposed in conjunction with the development of ethnic-specific mental health clinics, where practitioners and patients are ethnically similar, and programs are designed with the groups’ unique cultural needs in mind. This poses a particularly unique dilemma for urban Indians as their …

Dynamic Human Relationships With Wilderness: Developing A Relationship Model, Bob G. Dvorak

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Dvorak, Robert, Ph.D., Summer 2008 Forestry

Dynamic human relationships with wilderness: Developing a relationship model

Chair: William T. Borrie

Wilderness managers are charged with the challenging goal of balancing resource protection and experience quality across a broad, value-laden landscape. While research has provided insight into visitor motivations, psychological outcomes, and meanings, a struggle exists to implement experiential concepts within current management frameworks. A need also exists to manage wilderness for concepts outside of setting attributes. This research posits the human experience of wilderness to be an evolving, enduring relationship. Therefore, research needs can be addressed by investigating and conceptualizing an …

My Brother The Buffalo: An Ethnohistorical Documentation Of The 1999 Buffalo Walk And The Cultural Significance Of Yellowstone Buffalo To The Lakota Sioux And Nez Perce Peoples, Sarah Anne Tarka

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study was prepared for the National Park Service to serve as documentation of the cultural significance of Yellowstone buffalo to two American Indian cultural groups, the Nez Perce and the Lakota Sioux, and of the 1999 Buffalo Walk and accompanying ceremony that took place within the boundary of the park. Both Lakota Sioux and Nez Perce peoples had leadership roles in the Buffalo Walk, which was a benchmark event in the history of the park and of Yellowstone buffalo management. Participants in the Buffalo Walk walked and rode more than 500 miles from Rapid City, South Dakota to the …

Faunal Analysis Of The Tongue River Bison Kill Site (24rb2135) In Southeastern Montana, Hilleary Allison Sutton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The University of Montana excavated the Tongue River bison kill site (24RB2135) in 2005 on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. This was the site of a prehistoric bison hunt. Over 20,000 bone fragments and over 1,000 stone tools were recovered during the excavation. This study focuses on the bone material in order to understand past hunting practices at this site. In order to complete the analyses required to understand the faunal material, specific data was gathered for each bone element. These data points include: the taxon, skeletal element, side, body orientation, portion, color, size, weathering, age, and any natural or cultural …

Resiliency And Risk In Native American Communities: A Culturally Informed Investigation, Annjeanette Elise Belcourt-Dittloff

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper reviews recent research findings and empirically investigates resiliency and vulnerability factors within two Native American communities. The primary factors under consideration are related to American Indian psychosocial factors. This project is an exploratory investigation of pathology and wellness for understudied American Indians, and it examines the nature of resiliency and risk for American Indians. The factors under investigation include adversarial growth, spirituality, ethnic identity, communal identity, social support, historical trauma, stressors experienced, hope, quality of life, and general psychological status for American Indians sampled. Numerous statistically significant relationships emerged, providing empirical support for culturally embedded aspects of resiliency …

The Diaspora Of Korean Children: A Cross-Cultural Study Of The Educational Crisis In Contemporary South Korea, Young-Ee Cho

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The diaspora of Korean children first started after the Korean War in the 1950s. Abandoned by their impoverished mothers and shunned by society, many orphan children were sent abroad for adoption, which was the best, if not the only, available solution at the time. Half a century later, South Korea today is no longer a desperately poor country, and yet an increasing number of young children are still being sent abroad. The exodus of children, termed as the diaspora of Korean children in this study, is an out-of-country solution chosen by both students and parents in response to an educational …