Browsing by Subject "Indigenous peoples"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Circulating citizenship practices: Bolivian routes of migration, hometown associations, and development.
    (2012-07) Strunk, Christopher
    International migration has become a widespread phenomenon across the Andes in recent decades. In Bolivia, where approximately 20 percent of the population lives abroad, long-term routes of migration have transformed cities and rural areas within the country and beyond. This dissertation examines the lives of Bolivian migrants from the Valle Alto of Cochabamba in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Drawing on Bolivian scholars, I analyze the non-linear paths taken by migrants and the varied nature of indigenous experiences through the vertical archipelago model. Using a collaborative multi-sited ethnography of migrant organizations, I explore the circulation of money, values and practices between migrant settlement nodes and places of origin. I show that Bolivian hometown associations have adapted rural organizational practices to a suburban U.S. landscape while also transforming places in the Valle Alto. I also analyze migrant efforts to negotiate their belonging within changing citizenship regimes in Washington D.C. and Cochabamba. By playing soccer, performing folkloric dance in public spaces and constructing transnational houses and public works projects, Bolivian migrants are able to be recognized as members of communities in Cochabamba and the Washington D.C. metro area even if they are not physically present or formal members of the national polity. Finally, I analyze the decisions of migrants to stay in the Washington or return to Bolivia through the lens of gender and the family, highlighting the importance of family responsibility and fatherhood for male migrants. The case of migration from the rural municipality of Arbieto offers important insights into both the struggles and opportunities confronting migrants as they traverse international, regional and local boundaries and put down roots in multiple places. Ultimately, I argue that migrant practices are changing what it means to be a campesino (peasant) from the Valle Alto. While Bolivian migrants are using collective remittances and the intention to return to construct a reformulated rural identity based on long-distance ties and investment in the rural economy, migrant identities also have to be located within a broader understanding of belonging that takes into account the deep roots that migrants have developed in multiple communities.
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    Fish as indicators of ecosystem health: Assessing the impact of contaminants of emerging concern
    (2021-08) Deere, Jessica
    Water is arguably the most essential natural resource in the world, yet the use of industrial, healthcare, and household products threaten freshwater ecosystems. Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are a diverse group of chemicals - often defined as chemicals that were previously unknown, unrecognized, or unregulated - that comprise pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and hormones. CECs now have a ubiquitous distribution worldwide and their presence is only increasing as quantitative detection limits continue to be lowered and new chemicals make their way onto the global market. Concern over their biological effects at the molecular, organism, and population level in aquatic ecosystems is also increasing. CECs are identified throughout the Great Lakes Basin and may have a variety of adverse effects on aquatic life. However, data describing the specific risks these contaminants pose to human, wildlife, and environmental health are scarce. The goal of this thesis was to characterize CECs in freshwater ecosystems of northeastern Minnesota and evaluate their potential impact on the health of subsistence fish species. We investigated CECs and fish health within the Grand Portage Indian Reservation (GPIR) and 1854 Ceded Territory, where the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa rely on subsistence hunting, fishing and gather as the foundation for their culture and way of life. Thus, to establish a baseline understanding of CECs on these Tribal lands and their potential impact on fish health, we assessed important subsistence fish species in waterbodies that have value as fish harvesting locations for Band members. Further, due to a gap in knowledge regarding the distribution of CECs in rural and Tribal areas, we targeted waterbodies along a spectrum of anthropogenic pressures: waterbodies with no human development along their shorelines, those with development, and those directly impacted by wastewater effluent. Chapter 1 provides background for why it is essential that we better understand the potential impact CECs might be having on aquatic ecosystems, and thus Ojibwe culture. Chapter 2 characterizes the occurrence of CECs in water, sediment, and subsistence fish species in 28 locations. We detected 117 different chemicals in water, sediment, and/or fish in wastewater effluent-impacted, developed, and undeveloped sites. Chapter 3 prioritizes the chemical hazards of the detected chemicals through a rapid assessment of chemical-specific information - including detection frequency, persistence, endocrine disruption, toxicity, and bioaccumulation - to evaluate the potential for these contaminants to cause adverse effects on aquatic life. We identified 50 contaminants in water, 21 in sediment, seven in fish as high priority, including antimicrobials, antihistamines, antidepressants, cardiovascular modulating agents, and insect repellant. Chapter 4 evaluates the health of wild fish exposed to CECs across varying anthropogenic pressures. We compared the utility of three different approaches that could be used to evaluate the health of fish exposed to CECs: a refined fish health assessment index (rFHI), a histopathological index, and high-throughput (ToxCast) in vitro assays. We mapped adverse outcome pathways (AOPs) associated with identified ToxCast assays to determine potential impacts across levels of biological organization within the aquatic system. The health of fish in undeveloped sites was as poor, or sometimes poorer, than fish in developed and wastewater effluent-impacted sites. Chapter 5 is a general discussion to conclude the relevance of this work and explore important future directions. Collectively, this thesis provides evidence of the potential hazards of CECs and their impact on fish health in a region that is important for sustaining Indigenous culture through subsistence fishing.
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    Indigenous global politics.
    (2009-11) Lightfoot, Sheryl Rae
    The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples passed the United Nations General Assembly on September 13, 2007. This document articulates the minimum international standard on indigenous peoples' rights that nation states are obligated to recognize and protect. It took more than thirty years of intense effort by the indigenous rights movement to achieve passage of the Declaration. This dissertation explores how indigenous politics at the global level compels a new direction of thought in International Relations. I argue that indigenous global politics is a perspective of International Relations that complicates the structure of international politics in new and important ways, challenging both Westphalian notions of state sovereignty and the (neo-)liberal foundations of states and the international system. A case study of the international indigenous peoples' movement and the development of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples demonstrates how attempts to secure indigenous rights at the international level are helping to forge new articulations of the concepts of sovereignty, the state, and territoriality. I have also detected a peculiar pattern of state response to these changes, a pattern that was previously undetected, unexamined and thus also unnamed in International Relations. I have termed this puzzling pattern "over-compliance," by which I mean that a state's indigenous rights policy behavior goes above and beyond its international commitments. My qualitative case studies of Canadian and New Zealand indigenous rights "over-compliance," based on original field research, analyze both the potential and the limits of the challenges posed by indigenous global politics. My research identifies several mechanisms that explain both legal "over-compliance" with treaty standards and de facto policy under-compliance, including the domestic and international strength of transnational indigenous movements and coalitions, and changes within a state's domestic political discourse regarding indigenous reconciliation.
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    Supporting data for "A chemical prioritization process: Applications to contaminants of emerging concern in freshwater ecosystems (Phase 1)"
    (2022-09-08) Deere, Jessica R; Streets, Summer; Jankowski, Mark D; Ferrey, Mark; Chenaux-Ibrahim, Yvette; Convertino, Matteo; Isaac, E.J.; Phelps, Nicholas B. D.; Primus, Alexander; Servadio, Joseph L; Singer, Randall S; Travis, Dominic A; Moore, Seth; Wolf, Tiffany M; deere007@umn.edu; Deere, Jessica R
    These data describe contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) detected in subsistence fish species and freshwater ecosystems on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation and adjacent 1854 Ceded Territory in Northeastern Minnesota, USA. They also contain chemical-specific information, including acute toxicity, endocrine activity, physicochemical properties, and frequency of occurrence data used to prioritize detected CECs based on their potential environmental hazard.