Indigenous Studies Commons^™

Caribou Migration And Non-Local Hunting In Northwest Alaska: A Gis Analysis Of Hunting Activity And Its Relationship With Caribou Migration Corridors, Brittney L. Jiménezszabo

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Indigenous Alaskans rely on subsistence hunting for food, with Barren-ground caribou making up approximately 27% of their diet. It is believed by subsistence hunters that non-local hunting is forcing a change in caribou migration behavior. This study examined non-local harvesting records from 2013 – 2025 in the northwest and interior Game Management Units (GMU) and Alaksa’s Western Arctic Caribou Herd (WACH) migration range data to answer the question, is there a spatial relationship between non-local harvests and WACH migration behavior. Mixed methods included spatial autocorrelation and local statistics. Findings led to the rejection of the null hypothesis which will help …

Comfort In Cases Of Sickness: Health And Colonialism At The Eastern Pequot Reservation, 1800-1850, Katherine N. Brauckmann

Graduate Masters Theses

Health and sickness were major concerns for the Eastern Pequot community in the first half of the 19th century. At this time, the Eastern Pequot’s collective finances were controlled by a court-appointed overseer who rented reservation land to non-Pequot individuals and used the generated funds to purchase goods and services for those on the reservation. In an 1841 petition to remove an overseer for failing in his duties, issues of health were brought up twice among their grievances: that they received little support “in Sickness or in health” and that “our Land if family rented […] would add much to …

“To Complete Our Declaration”: The American Indian Chicago Conference, The Declaration Of Indian Purpose, And The Quest For Self-Determination, Joseph W. Ferguson

Department of History

The American Indian Chicago Conference (AICC) illuminates understudied elements within twentieth century Indigenous history. Post WWII policies of termination came to frame the conference, and archival evidence from the planning and establishment of regional conferences and founding documents allows for analysis of the deeper meaning the conference held. The planning phases, schedule, events, and outcomes of the conference indicate factors of a national Indigenous community and identity that have yet to be fully explored in the historiography of this period. The implications of termination policies on Indigenous peoples in North America act as a starting point for the conference’s development. …

Ka Here Tāngata:1 Mātauranga And Te Ao Māori In Biocultural Kākāpō (Strigops Habroptilus) Conservation Approaches, Sophie Perfetto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This master's thesis examines conservation as a form of living cultural heritage practice through the co-management of kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus), a critically endangered parrot and taonga species in Aotearoa New Zealand. Situated within ongoing histories of colonial dispossession and Western frameworks of land and species management, contemporary kākāpō conservation is shaped through the partnership between the Department of Conservation’s Kākāpō Recovery Programme and Ngāi Tahu. Drawing on semi-structured interviews collected during fieldwork from July to August 2025, this study examines how institutional partnerships structure decision-making, authority, and responsibility in contemporary conservation governance. Findings demonstrate that Māori knowledge systems …

Reseeding Relations: Comparing Museum And Indigenous Seed Sharing & Rematriation Protocols In The Midwestern United States, Madeline G. Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) paved the way for the repatriation of ancestors and certain cultural objects to Indigenous communities, museums still struggle to address other forms of cultural returns. Heritage seeds, those which hold cultural significance to Indigenous peoples, held within museum collections perpetuates the colonization of Indigenous lifeways. This research examines rematriation as an Indigenous form of cultural return better suited to address these needs than limited repatriation models. I analyze how museums are working to create rematriation processes for their collections which reflect diverse Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies through a three-tiered approach: …

Vestigial Choreographies: Climate Consciousness In The Long Nineteenth Century, Alexandra A. Rego

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aims of this project are twofold: (a) to develop a method of theoretical analysis and (b) to put this method into pointed use. In service of (a), I propose a method of choreographic analysis. This method operates relationally, highlighting the production of movement and stillness among and between bodies, objects, and encounters. Choreographic analysis draws from methods typically sequestered to dance studies. Towards aim (b), this project demonstrates the relevance and breadth of choreographic analysis by connecting it to ecocriticism. Throughout this project, I apply choreographic analysis to a diverse set of case studies. I use choreographic analysis to …

Looking In All Directions, Abby Sunde

Masters Theses

“Looking in All Directions” mobilizes attention towards the concepts of ‘desettling’ through art and ‘desettling’ as a way of being. Desettling constitutes resistance, resilience, survivance, and refusal of current Western modalities within our society. This body of work is a material exploration of these worldviews to find potential ways to embody a practice that aligns ourselves outside of a colonial settler mindset while living within its societal condition. Using glass, sound, and installation work, the artist un-centers expected encounters with an inherited dominant worldview and instead offers an actualized shift in awareness. Concepts of interconnectedness, interwoven time, and embodied memories …

Somatic Prosthetics For Planetary Resonance, Disha Dharesh Kumar R

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates how industrial design can transcend extractive technological paradigms in favor of relational interfaces that foster planetary attunement. Framing the climate crisis as a 'crisis of imagination', the research challenges the Western bifurcation of nature and culture by drawing on Indic cosmologies- which recognize stones, plants, and ecosystems as conscious at different levels and participants in a shared cosmic field. By synthesizing research in Biosemiotics, Quantum Information Pansycishm, and Neuroscience, the project redefines intelligence as a distributed, more-than-human phenomenon.

The research materializes as a speculative design artifact: a device that functions as a somatic prosthetic for planetary resonance. …

“A Land No One Would Want”: Environmental Activism And The Rejection Of ‘Wasteland’ Narratives In Southern Nevada, Steven Butler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This paper traces events within the history of environmental activism in Southern Nevada. The first chapter discusses the proposed high level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The second chapter examines the closure of the Reid Gardner Generating Station in Moapa, Nevada. The third chapter details the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s Groundwater Development Project. Each of the three chapters is linked by common themes within the history of Southern Nevada environmental activism, including dedicated coalition-building and the refusal of “wastelanding” of the region.

Local And Indigenous Knowledge, Innovation, And Sustainable Development: Creating Sustainable Futures Amidst Crisis Conditions At The Community Level, Carlos Andrés Arias

Dissertations and Theses

In 1987, the Brundtland Commission's Our Common Future (1987) made clear the need to reject longstanding development processes and focus on sustainable development. The Commission stressed that actual sustainable development integrates three elements: social development, economic development, and environmental protection. Though developed nations have achieved economic growth through conventional and extractive development practices, these practices have intensified natural disasters driven by climate change, increased food insecurity, and deepened poverty. This has acutely impacted Indigenous and local communities, many of whom face crisis conditions, such as war, terrorism, civil disorder, and their aftermath. Even so, many of these communities successfully implement …

Haapxtàm Ka'Ál Yimisapʰíkʰ We Dream For Our Children Indigenous Pedagogies In Early Childhood Education: Survivance, Truth Telling, And Healing On Native Land, Sara Anne Koyano

Dissertations and Theses

Since Time Immemorial, Indigenous Peoples have lived, learned, and thrived on this continent, exercising their inherent sovereignty as Original Peoples and passing down Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and learning across generations. US settler colonial violence and assimilation policies have had historical and contemporary detrimental impacts on Native children, families, and communities by attempting to disrupt the intergenerational transmission of Indigenous knowledges. Consequently, many young Native children in Oregon do not have access to educational opportunities that value, honor, and affirm their Indigenous identities and cultures, nor do they see themselves reflected in their classrooms and curricula. Furthermore, in 2019, …

Haunting As Heritage: Mapping The Interior And Indigenous Ghosts, Koda L. Animkii

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Within Stephen Graham Jones’ novella Mapping the Interior, the connections between history and identity are analyzed and emphasized through the exploration of identity formation and the impacts of settler colonialism on the self. These connections are heightened through the novella’s use of horror, as the rhetoric of the normative and monstrous within the genre holds the potential for both resistance and oppression. Looking at the genre of horror as a whole, and at the subgenres of ghost stories and hauntings more specifically, the shifting structures of the Self and the Other as established by Robin Wood’s “An Introduction to …

Girlhood, Interrupted: An Intersectional Feminist History Of Decolonizing And Reclaiming Womanhood, Ayden Kelly

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In the past few decades, social and political discourse surrounding womanhood and who is considered a "real" woman has led to the execration of transgender women. This work will explore how recent discourse and rhetoric surrounding who is and who is not a “real woman” can be traced to nineteenth century notions of “true womanhood” that excluded women of color. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with westward expansion, settler colonialism, residential schools, slavery, and post-emancipation serving as backdrops, this work will also analyze how ideologies of womanhood have interrupted and suppressed women of color throughout Western American …

Imagining The Inuit: Myth, Market, And The Making Of The Contemporary Inuit Sculpture Canon, Kristen Sara Davidson-Schwartz

MA Theses

This thesis explores how qallunaat institutions used sculpture to shape and define Inuit life. I argue that contemporary Inuit sculpture, as conceived of by outsiders to support Inuit economic enfranchisement and modernization, became a vessel through which qallunaat institutions circulated ideas about Inuit culture and Arctic lands. Although purported to reflect the voice of Inuit, the meanings attached to Inuit sculpture rarely reflected Inuit intention and consistently aligned to qallunaat priorities: a performance of primitive, ancient, and authentic Inuit life; a gesture of indigenous gratitude and cheerful participation in state-designed development programs; or a masterful expression of the formal concerns …

Below The Rows, Beyond The Roots: An Art Exhibition Depicting Agriculture Across The Globe, Maggie Enoch

Honors Theses and Capstones

In Below the Rows, Beyond the Roots, artist Maggie Enoch creates multimedia works inspired by her exposure to diverse agricultural systems and perspectives while studying geography and sustainable agriculture/food systems around the world. By integrating complex histories with the contemporary realities of farming, Maggie paints vivid pictures of the power of food in this five-piece exhibition.

Reawakening Waⁿdat: Community Research & Reclamation, Darcy Allred

Theses and Dissertations

The Wyandot(te) have undergone language dormancy due to settler colonial impacts of warfare, refugee relocation, forced removals, and U.S. assimilation projects. One of the most pressing priorities among our people today is reawakening our ancestral language, Waⁿdat. The common follow-up question is: how? Through the conduit of Waⁿdat language reclamation, this project grapples with the above question in collaboration with the Wyandot(te) community, and in adherence to the tribal sovereignty of the Wyandotte Nation. The project engages with diasporic perspectives, community-based pedagogy design, and tribally specific research protocols and policies. The living collective knowledgebase with which I engage in this …

¡Salud! Sacrificing The Sacred Sip: A Critical Analysis Of The Impact Of The Spiritual Conquest On Alcohol Traditions In Central México, Elizabeth Vilchis

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

By thoroughly investigating the available primary sources, this thesis will convey the importance of the Mesoamerican inebriating drink pulque in both the ethos and mythos of ancient Nahua society, examining how the ritual use of pulque became problematic in the eyes of the Spaniards, by investigating the cultural and ideological contradictions or double standards that enabled the tensions, struggles, and violence with which the Spanish colonial regime repressed the ritual use of pulque. This thesis compares the Nahua ethos and mythos of pulque to the Christian ethos and mythos of wine, highlighting the parallels perceived by Spaniards in Central México …

Envisioning The Role Of Community-Owned Stores & Aligning Federal Food Policies: A Participatory Approach To Food Security And Food Sovereignty In Sambaa K’E, Denendeh (Northwest Territories, Canada), Narayan Subramoniam

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Northern Indigenous communities have relied on traditional food systems for meaningful, nutritious diets since time immemorial. But many Indigenous communities in remote northern regions of Canada still face disproportionately elevated levels of food insecurity due to climate change radically altering the availability for traditional foods, colonial food policies imposing Western diets, and the high costs of transporting store-bought foods. Extreme weather events such as wildfires further isolate fly-in remote communities increasing both the costs of transporting store-bought foods and the difficulties of harvesting traditional foods. There are many examples of community-based initiatives for supporting traditional and locally grown foods, however, …

Confronting Settler Colonialism Through Indigenous Feminism: The Structural Roots Of Mmiw, Miah Schiavi-Munoz

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S) across the United States and Canada represents a manifestation of ongoing settler colonial violence. This paper examines the MMIW crisis through the frameworks of settler colonial theory and Indigenous feminist scholarship, arguing that contemporary patterns of disappearance, assault, and murder are structural outcomes of colonial law, governance, and heteropatriarchal control. Drawing on historical analysis, legal critique, and participant observation from the 2025 MMIP Training Conference in Monterey, California, this study traces how the settler colonial logic of elimination operates through jurisdictional fragmentation, bureaucratic neglect, data erasure, resource …

Mountain Communities During A Time Of War: A Case Study Of The Hutsul Region In The Carpathian Mountains Of Ukraine, Pavlo Rybaruk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the ethno-ecological technologies employed by the Hutsul people within the highland agrarian economy of the Carpathian Mountains. Over centuries, the Hutsuls have developed ethno-ecological technologies that maintain ecological integrity while supporting community livelihoods.

The study addresses three primary research questions: What are the most important ethno-ecological technologies of the Hutsul highland economy? How might these traditional ethno-ecological practices be applied to economic, agricultural, and tourism development in the Hutsul region? How might these traditional ethno-ecological practices be combined with contemporary approaches to encourage sustainable development in the region?

The research explores the devastating impact of the Russian …

Frameworks For Repatriation: Moving Beyond Nagpra, Ashley Joplin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Museums and similar federally funded educational institutions have been collecting human remains since the Enlightenment era in the 1800s. Since then, these institutions have developed various collections practices that have encouraged the collection of human remains. Often unethical in nature, these collections have harmed historically marginalized communities, such as Indigenous and African American communities. While the ethics of collecting have been under scrutiny for decades, it was not until 1990 under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) that mainstream attention was drawn to the ethics of collections practices.

This thesis explores these collections practices and the repatriation …

The Weight Of Complicity: A Network Analysis Of Ecocide In Palestine, Marilyn Moy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper combines multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) with a network graph visualization to examine corporate and institutional involvement in ecocide in Palestine from 1917 to the present. Using a weighted sum model based on UN human rights principles and UNEP guidelines, actors are evaluated across three criteria: directness, scale, and duration of harm. A dataset of 50+ entities, including Caterpillar, Elbit Systems, and the Jewish National Fund, reveals a dense network of responsibility, with major enablers in the construction, tech, and military sectors. Findings highlight the severe impacts of the 2023–present assault on Gaza and demonstrate that ecocide is a …

Shifting From Damage Towards Desire At History Colorado: An Exploratory Case Study, Amanda Cali

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the paradigm shift within the fields of anthropology and museum studies away from decolonization and towards indigenization through a case study of the changes in museological practices of the History Colorado Center in Denver, Colorado, and one of its community museums, the Ute Indian Museum in Montrose, Colorado. This thesis examines the changes in consultation and collaboration, the care and stewardship of collections, the implementation of the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials (PNAAM), and co-curation of exhibits. This thesis looks at the paradigm shift as a movement away from “damage-based research” within communities to “desire-centered research” …

The Social Dimensions Of Aquaculture: Food Sovereignty And Indigenous Rights In Ketchikan, Alaska, Morgan J. Davis

Capstone Collection

This research project asks how the growing commercial aquaculture industry in Ketchikan, Alaska, functions to alleviate or exacerbate local food insecurity; reinforce or undermine food sovereignty among Indigenous communities, and enhance or restrict community participation in the control of marine resources. Global initiatives have responded to food insecurity through agricultural inputs and technology to create higher yields; however, conventional agricultural production has contributed to and is increasingly vulnerable to climate change. To address higher demands for food, government agencies and development experts have looked towards Blue Growth and aquaculture as a solution for food insecurity and environmental concerns. While aquaculture …

E Ho’Omau Mākau, We Will Continue: The Living Sovereign Entities Of Contemporary Hawaiian Songs, Kēhaulani Lagunero

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between contemporary Hawaiian mele (songs) and Hawaiian ea (sovereignty), focusing on how mele acts as sovereign living entities representing cultural resilience, identity, and resistance to settler-colonial influences. Through semi-structured interviews with Kānaka Maoli, participant observation at cultural events, and close analysis of mele, I identify that these songs are not only expressions of cultural memory, but also living embodiments of ea—sovereignty because they are alive, and they are alive because they are ea. Drawing from the frameworks of cultural survival, survivance, symbolic power, and defiant indigeneity, I explore how mele actively engage …

The Idea Of Ethiopia: Heritage Tourism In The Land Of Origins, Hosaena T. Tilahun

Geography Undergraduate Senior Theses

Hosaena Tilahun's "The Idea of Ethiopia" explores how heritage tourism in Addis Ababa cultivates Ethiopian patriotism and exceptionalism. Through an in-depth, close reading of the National Museum of Ethiopia, Unity Park, and the Oromo Cultural Center, supplemented by observations at the Red Terror Memorial Museum and Dergue Prison, Tilahun examines how heritage sites shape the political memory of national resistance, revolution, and Black internationalist thought. Tilahun discovers omissions of Menelik II's role in the Red Sea Slave network, encountering museum and archival silences about the internal conquest of peoples peripheral to the northern Abyssinian empire. As these heritage site renovations …

Unsettling Home: Traces Of An Unrepaired Settler-Colonial Past In "Redding, California," 1846-1924, Celeste Hegy

University Honors Theses

This thesis critically reads primary documents from the settler-colonial past of "Redding, California," my hometown. In this paper, I sketch out a series of moments of historical trauma which continue to cry out for repair. Through a series of episodes from the mid-nineteenth through the early-twentieth centuries, I examine how original settler thirst for land wrought a contested hegemony in principally genocidal flows of power between the settler-state and its settler inhabitants and the pre-existing local Indigenous nations and peoples. In the first chapter, I argue for an understanding of the dispossession of the northern valley as genocidal. In the …

Indigenous Language Revitalization: The Klamath And Cherokee Tribes, Josephine Stapleton

University Honors Theses

In recent decades, there have been initiatives to revitalize Indigenous languages all across the globe. This paper explores the efforts of two Native American tribes to revitalize their Indigenous languages in the face of historical and ongoing colonial pressures. Models for language revitalization necessarily differ based on an Indigenous group’s specific historical, cultural, and even geographical contexts, which makes the development of standardized models for Indigenous Language Revitalization challenging. This literature review will examine how the Cherokee Nation and the Klamath Tribes are implementing language revitalization on a tribal level in ways that address each tribe’s unique historical successes and …

Indigenous Science And The Legacy Of Fire: Resilience, Fuels, Mosaics, And Eco-Cultural Landscapes In Oregon’S Coastal And Cascade Range, Julia Alcalá

University Honors Theses

Most of Oregon's western Cascade and Coastal range is a landscape that has historically been considered devoid of mid to low-intensity fires by Western science. However, for time immemorial, Indigenous peoples have been stewarding the forests through the use of "good fire," creating diverse and heterogenous landscapes with mixed fire regimes, ranging from less than a decade to several centuries since the last fire, resulting in a mosaic of patchy forest, oak savannas, prairies, and wetlands. Yet centuries of Indigenous displacement, cultural assimilation, and suppression of cultural burning contributed to this prevailing belief. Despite that, in recent decades, Western scientists …

For The Time Beings, Tori Hong

Masters Theses

For the Time Beings is a socially engaged installation and artist book exploring the material consequences and future possibilities of sociocultural time theories. Time, in the West, is typically associated with Newtonian linearity, while in the East, time theory relies on Buddhist principles. These epistemologies reinforce hierarchical and patriarchal structures. Centered on Indigenous Asian and Asian American perspectives, For the Time Beings challenges dominant ideologies of existing in time and space.

For nearly a year, I’ve burned handwritten prayers on new and full moons. The ashes of these prayers are incorporated into reverential drawings of chosen ancestors, made with charcoal …