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To examine whether indigenous critiques of globalization and critical theories of modernity are compatible, and how they can complement each other so as to engender more realistic theories of modern society as inherently constructive and destructive, along with practical strategies to strengthen modernity as a culturally transformative project, as opposed to the formal modernization processes that rely on and reinforce modern societies as structures of social inequality.

Comparison and assessment of the foundations, orientations, and implications of indigenous critiques of globalization and the Frankfurt School’s critical theory of modern society, for furthering our understanding of challenges facing human civilization in the twenty-first century, and for opportunities to promote social justice.

Modern societies maintain order by compelling individuals to subscribe to propositions about their own and their society’s purportedly “superior” nature, especially when compared to indigenous cultures, to override observations about the de facto logic of modern societies that are in conflict with their purported logic.

Social theorists need to make consistent efforts to critically reflect on how their own society, in terms of socio-historical circumstances as well as various types of implied biases, translates into research agendas and propositions that are highly problematic when applied to those who belong to or come from different socio-historical contexts.

An effort to engender a process of reciprocal engagement between one of the early traditions of critiquing modern societies and a more recent development originating in populations and parts of the world that historically have been the subject of both constructive and destructive modernization processes.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the issues related to the deployment of renewable electricity technologies (RETs) in remote indigenous communities by examining the views of key informants in a remote northern Ontario community through the lens of a wicked problem approach, with the goal to identify policy direction and strategies for the further development of renewable electricity projects.

The paper uses semi-structured interviews with community key informants, informed discussions with community members and energy conference participants and literature reviews of academic, policy and utility documents as complementary data sources for triangulation of results.

According to informants, the complexity surrounding the deployment of RETs in remote Canadian indigenous communities is the result of different stakeholder perspectives on the issues that RETs are expected to address. Furthermore, institutional complexity of the electricity generation system and uncertainty over both the choice of off-grid renewable technology and the future of electricity generation systems structure and governance add to this complexity.

Given the governments’ legal obligation to consult with indigenous people for projects within their territories, community perspectives provide insights for policy design to support both the deployment of RETs and address indigenous communities sustainability goals.

This paper offers views and opinions of community members from an off-grid Canadian indigenous community. Community members describe how they envision their electricity systems and the desired contribution of community owned renewable electricity generation to increase local control and economic development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Indigenous perspectives of work-life enrichment and conflict and provides insights to better support Indigenous employees.

Interviews were conducted with 56 Indigenous people from six Canadian provinces. In total, 33 of the respondents were female and 23 were male. The interview responses were transcribed and entered in NVivo10. Thematic analysis was used.

The authors’ respondents struggled with feeling marginalized and felt frustrated that they could not engage in their cultural and family practices. The respondents spoke of putting family needs ahead of work and that many respondents paid a price for doing so.

The results are not generalizable to all Indigenous peoples, however these results do fill a void in the literature.

Employers must consider revising policies including providing more supervisor support in the form of educating supervisors on various Indigenous cultural practices and examine ways of providing more flexibility with respect to cultural and family practices.

Indigenous peoples have been marginalized since the advent of colonialism. This research addresses a gap in the literature by presenting how a group of Indigenous respondents frames work-life enrichment and conflict.

Very few studies have examined Indigenous perspectives on work-life enrichment and conflict using a qualitative research design. It also aligns with one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s calls to action.

Indigenous populations and communities around the world confront historical, cultural, socioeconomic and forced geographic limitations that have profound impacts on mental wellness. The impacts of colonialism and, for some indigenous populations, forced residential schooling and the resulting loss of culture and family ties, have contributed to higher risks of mental illness in these groups. In addition, there are barriers to healing and mental wellness, including inconsistent cultural competence of mainstream mental health professionals, coupled with the limited numbers of indigenous mental health professionals. The Wharerata Declaration is a proposed framework to improve indigenous mental health through state‐supported development of indigenous mental health leaders, based on a new indigenous leadership framework. Developed by the Wharerata Group (original membership noted in the acknowledgements section at the end of this article), the framework will be presented for support to the member countries of the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership (IIMHL) in 2010.

This qualitative case study provides a detailed description of the ways a Kindergarten/Grade 1 teacher in a Gulf Islands school, located on Canada’s west coast, integrated place-based education in her practice with young learners. The teacher’s integration of place-based knowledge over a school year, and her incorporation of traditional knowledge linked to local Coast Salish ways of knowing, was in response to the British Columbia Ministry of Education’s mandate to include local Indigenous ways of knowing in all classrooms. This study also reveals the ways an Indigenous educator affiliated with the school district and local community members provided the teacher and students with deeper understandings of Salt Spring Island from a historical, place-based, and Indigenous knowledge perspective. Specifically, the Indigenous educator and community members shared their knowledge on the vegetation on the island and shared information about the animals that lived on or near the island. Throughout the study, the teacher drew on a “critical pedagogy of place,” which focuses on the ecological aspects of place and the tenets of critical pedagogy. This study documented the ways the teacher included local Indigenous knowledge in her practice in culturally relevant and appropriate ways – primarily through outdoor learning experiences. The children also shared their perspectives on these learning experiences. In this study, the place-based learning opportunities provided to the children enabled them to acquire rich insight on the history and ecology of their community and island.

This paper aims to address the notion that the relationship between being indigenous and business success is inconclusive because there are tensions between indigenous values and business success. The research questions are: How do indigenous entrepreneurs define success? Does the third space create a different meaning of success in the indigenous context?

A qualitative approach was adopted for this study because the ability to define success requires subjective meanings. Participants’ lived experiences and stories were the main sources of information. Open conversational-style interviews were used because they allow participants to freely share their stories.

A defining line is that not all indigenous entrepreneurs have the same view of success. The homogeneity that emanates from sharing indigeneity does not equal unity in views, but shows that people from the same group can view success differently. However, the meaning and views formed are also connected to the wider community, relationships and predominant values that characterise the social cultural context of the entrepreneur.

This study focuses on one indigenous group; more studies need to be conducted to gain wider variation on the meaning of success in indigenous entrepreneurship and how indigenous subculture alters these meanings.

The findings of this study show that success for indigenous entrepreneurs should be defined based on individual philosophy. Hence, practitioners should endeavour to clarify what success means from the initial stage of the business to avoid misconception and make this clear to others that are connected to the business.

This paper suggests a different view of success in an indigenous context using the hybridity viewpoint to explain why success can be perceived using the in-between space without opposite binary.

This chapter explores the governance structures of Indigenous societies with special focus on the Meru community in Kenya. The chapter reviews the elaborate structure of governance that ensured and entrenched the basic parameters of a fair society. It outlines the impact caused by colonization and the subsequent loss of social fabrics that bound individual members and the entire community. The colonizers looked at the Indigenous as primitive and backward. They therefore classified them as tribes, natives' ethnic nationalities all of which demeaned the Indigenous communities. From such derogatory perspectives, the Indigenous systems including governance, culture, social, legal and judiciary, philosophy, economic systems were replaced with supposedly more advanced systems to assimilate and “modernize” Indigenous peoples. The chapter will demonstrate how these critical aspects and components of governance existed within the Indigenous governance structures of the Ameru community long before the colonial government. The chapter by use of practical illustrations advocates for decolonial perspectives to the realization of fair governance.

Intergenerational confinement is an under-recognized, policy-driven issue which greatly impacts Indigenous and racialized peoples in countries with ongoing colonial legacies. Numerous policy solutions enacted over colonial history have exacerbated instead of mitigated this situation. This chapter advances an improved understanding of the impacts of carceral legacies, moving beyond the dominant focus of parental incarceration in the literature. Focusing on Indigenous peoples, multiple generations in families and communities have been subjected to changing methods of confinement and removal. Using critical policy analysis and interview research, this chapter interrogates these intergenerational impacts of carceral policy-making in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 124 people in the three case countries, this chapter centers perspectives of people who have been intergenerationally confined in carceral institutions. With a goal of transformation, it then explores an alternative orientation to policy-making that seeks to acknowledge, account for, and address the harmful direct and indirect ripple-effects of carceral strategies over generations.

In this chapter, I suggest that institutional guidelines and principles for conducting ethical research within Indigenous and cross-cultural contexts (see for example, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Guidelines for Ethical Research in Indigenous Studies, 2012) may not, in themselves be enough to promote the ethical practices nor lead to innovative outcomes if the fundamental premises of Western research in Indigenous contexts remain the same. Alternatively, valuing and applying Indigenous conceptions of Being, relationality and knowing when engaging with Indigenous participants and also, within actual procedures of research may lead to greater ethical know-how and a deeper understanding of how Indigenous modes of knowledge production can extend the frontiers of knowledge to solve real world problems. Such possibilities are predicated on recognising the limitations of our own epistemologies and ontologies and addressing the question of how we might refigure the role and positioning of ‘outsider’ researchers in ways that imbed, more self-reflexive and culturally appropriate modes of engagement and the application of Indigenous notions of Being, knowing and doing into research procedures to enhance the impact and benefits of research both within and beyond Indigenous communities.

In this chapter, the author explores the conditions of sexualised, gendered violence against Indigenous women and girls. The author asks how various responses to this violence have shaped the present-day legal personhood of Indigenous women and girls from two perspectives: an Indigenous legal perspective and a Canadian legal perspective. To avoid the troublesome pan-Indigenous generalisations of legal personhood, the author focusses on one Indigenous society, the Gitxsan people from northwest British Columbia and their legal order and laws.² The author examines several specific questions about how the Gitxsan legal tradition historically defined the legal personhood of Gitxsan women and girls, and how this has changed with colonisation. The author takes up specific aspects of the operation and structure of Gitxsan law and legal institutions and analyse the ways that they are gendered.