A partial history of the indigenous Owens Valley Paiute peoples and their relationships to water is presented for the purpose of understanding the Owens Valley Paiute resistance against the water transfer from Owens Valley to Los Angeles. This historical narrative focuses on the early to mid-twentieth century and the Paiutes' pre-contact sociopolitical organization. This thesis will add to the existing literature on the water transfer with new interpretations and perspectives regarding how and why water is culturally important for the Owens Valley Paiute peoples. The central research question for this thesis is why did the Owens Valley Paiute peoples resist the water transfer? The answer to this question is found within how water is thought of, valued, and used within their culture and aspects of their world view which is revealed through stories and interviews.

With this master's thesis, I attempt to understand a poorly written and ineffective law (Public Law 280) and examine the effects that this law has on Native communities in Southern California. My thesis will focus on the effects that Public Law 280 has on domestic violence. My own experience with domestic violence makes this project intimate and cherished. However, my experiences as a mixed, un-enrolled, Native woman and mother have directed my interest in the research that I undertake with this thesis. Living on an Indian Reservation in Southern California has allowed me to have an experience that many people will never have; however, it has, also, increased my awareness of the injustices that occur on Southern California Indian reservations today.

This thesis will test the sociological theory of social and cultural differentiation in the urban American Indian community of Minneapolis, Minnesota in order to examine the ways in which five prescribed, sociological elements of culture are organized, and for which previous sociological research would suggest, should remain nondifferentiated in contemporary Indigenous societies. Relying upon previous academic literature, independent research collection, photographic imagery, and a personal interview with artist, Mario Enriquez, a Nahua and Mayan Indigenous artist, this scholarship will test the theory of social and cultural differentiation utilizing of a contemporary case study from 2015. This scholarship serves to increase our knowledge of contemporary Indigenous mural art, urban Indigenous societies, contemporary Indigenous culture, sociological theory and analysis in the present century.

This thesis is a case study of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians' (Tribe) multifaceted practice of Tribal Cultural Resources Management (TCRM) as it relates to projects subject to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Tracing the Tribe's journey to weave traditional stewardship principles into the contemporary fabric of TCRM, this thesis investigates how the Tribe utilizes TCRM to express, assert, and preserve its inherent sovereignty over the land and its resources. With a jurisdiction encompassing northern Los Angeles County, the Tribe is confronted with numerous land-altering activities that require strenuous review to eliminate potential adverse impacts to invaluable tribal cultural resources. Yet, there remains no legislation in place to ensure that the Tribe is compensated for the professional consultation services, assessments, and /or expertise it provides in this effort. Lack of funding is one of four key disruptions to productive TCRM addressed in this research, which also presents the Tribe's partial solutions to them. This thesis then demonstrates how the Tribe's proactive response to these impediments has removed a fraction of the financial burden of consultation off the Tribe, and helped support its TCRM department become more self-sufficient, while interrogating the current policies that have necessitated such actions.

This case study involves Alaska Natives and how traditional narrative influences economic ethic. Alaska Natives are organized into Village Corporations and regional Alaska Native Corporations, with Village Corporations composed of traditional villages and Alaska Native Corporations roughly corresponding to traditional cultural areas. In the year 2000, CIRI gave a special distribution of $500 per shares to its shareholders. Most shareholders own 100 shares and received $50,000. I interviewed CIRI shareholders who received this amount on how they used the money from the special distribution, and classified uses as traditional, mainstream American capitalist, or as uses that could be characterized as either. For this case study, I discuss traditional Yupik narrative and cultural values and how the uses characterized as traditional are consistent with traditional cultural values. I briefly discuss mainstream American lottery winners and research on how they use a comparable windfall to provide an example of how a mainstream American might use a similar amount of money.

There is an ongoing crisis among the Native American male population as they seek higher educational attainment. Currently, Native American males are experiencing such low numbers of higher educational attainment that their reporting they could be considered non-existent. This study identifies the primary motives of Native American male students who have successfully reached educational degree attainment. Understanding and discovering the major barriers in higher educational attainment among Native American male students, their management practices and the strategies that contributed to successful completion of a college degree program is a secondary aim. Study finding indicate the primary motive of Native American male students to earn college degrees is to obtain knowledge and skill sets that would allow them to engage in work that will result in positive outcomes within their tribal communities. The findings also identified major barriers to educational attainment which were lack of support within higher educational institutions, cost associated attendance and living expenses, and being away from their communities. In addition, the inability to ask for and receive the help necessary to move forward in the educational process was noted. The findings highlight the need for and significance of asking for help, traveling home often to participate in ceremonies and tribal gatherings, finding and building support groups within the university setting, and religious practices that contributed to the success and excellence of the participants to reach degree attainment.

Indigenous scholars and academics play a pivotal role in creating and defining social terms and frameworks for what it means to be a Native person in contemporary U.S. society. These terms and frameworks contribute to social norms, how we as Native people view ourselves, and how others view us. In this study, I draw on the work of Native scholars and practitioners who have been instrumental in conducting groundbreaking work to document the role of historical and intergenerational trauma in the continuity and disruption of tribal epistemologies and lifeways. The groundbreaking work on historical trauma has provided explanatory models for educational and health disparities that do not lay blame at the individual level. These models, in contrast to deficit-based narratives that focus on what is inherently "wrong" with Native peoples and cultures, point to structural, historical, societal, and structural determinants for inequities. In this thesis, I employ autoethnography to develop historical and intergenerational wisdom as a parallel and complementary strand of work to historical and intergenerational trauma. Drawing on my life-long experience with the Native Wellness Institute, a national non-profit organization, as well as interviews with leaders in the Native wellness and healing movement, including family members, I sift through information, stories, and examples from everyday experiences to bring forth the spirit of our ancestors. By doing so, I aim to simultaneously change models in academia that have fore-grounded deficit-based narratives and re-focus the lens on abundance-based, also referred to as strength-based or culture-based, research. A framework of intergenerational wisdom can guide and influence future students and scholars as well as permeate beyond academia. As individuals, families and communities continue to learn more about historical and intergenerational trauma, they can also learn more about historical and intergenerational wisdom. My hope is that through this, Indigenous peoples will understand that the answer to trauma is healing and the tools to healing are embedded in intergenerational wisdom.

This thesis investigates the reproduction of settler-colonial violence within human science discourse and its regulation of Native people. The manifestation of settler-colonial violence is reproduced within the hegemonic discourses that permeated early Anthropological and Archaeological study and research relating to Native peoples and Native places. The knowledge produced, about Native people and Native cultures, emanating from “salvage anthropology” created an authoritative voice that informs Anthropological research and Archaeological fieldwork. This thesis necessarily locates and positions a Native American voice within the context of cultural resource management (CRM) to disrupt the Western authoritative voice and to interrogate the function of power and control over Native bodies and spaces. By investigating one incident within Southern California involving the desecration of a sacred site, this thesis highlights how settler-colonial violence is manifested. The goal of this research thesis is to promote an approach to cultural resource management that incorporates Native worldviews to advance a more holistic context towards the protection of sacred sites and the understanding of Native-centric significance of traditional cultural landscapes found in Southern California tribal ancestral territories.