Comprehensive Nutrition Interventions in First Nation-Operated Schools in Canada

Comprehensive school-based nutrition interventions offer a promising strategy to support healthy eating for First Nations children. A targeted strategic review was performed to identify nutrition interventions in 514 First Nation-operated schools across Canada through their websites. Directed content analysis was used to describe if interventions used 1 or more of the 4 components of the Comprehensive School Health (CSH) framework. Sixty schools had interventions. Nearly all (n = 56, 93%) schools offered breakfast, snack, and (or) lunch programs (social and physical environment). About one-third provided opportunities for students to learn about traditional healthy Indigenous foods and food procurement methods (n = 18, 30%) (teaching and learning) or facilitated connections between the school and students’ families or the community (n = 16, 27%) (partnerships and services). Few schools (n = 10, 17%) had a nutrition policy outlining permitted foods (school policy). Less than 1% (n = 3) of interventions included all 4 CSH components. Results suggest that most First Nation-operated schools provide children with food, but few have nutrition interventions that include multiple CSH components. First Nation-operated schools may require additional financial and (or) logistical support to implement comprehensive school-based nutrition interventions, which have greater potential to support long-term health outcomes for children than single approaches.

First Nations Peoples, Climate Change, Human Rights and Legal Rights

This article provides a First Nations standpoint on climate change, informed by human rights law and legal education. It is co-authored by a Yuin woman who is a law academic, a Wirdi man who is a Queens Counsel, and a human rights law academic. The article argues that for any responses to climate change to be effective, they must be grounded in the perspectives, knowledge, and rights of First Nations peoples. The utility of human rights instruments to protect First Nation interests in a climate change milieu is explored at the international and domestic levels. Concomitantly, structural change must begin with the Indigenisation of legal education and the embedding of legal responses to climate change into the law curriculum. A holistic approach is necessary.

Narratives of the future: immersive stories / indigenous roots

The way we tell stories shapes what we are: it articulates the way we position ourselves in relation to the world. This article explores how immersive practices, as used in virtual reality and intermedial performance, provoke novel dynamics between artist and audience that no longer fit within Western traditions of aesthetic exchange and furthermore challenge our understanding of narrative production and reception. It proposes that new ways of reasoning are needed to allow audience agency and the evolving role of the artist to be explored more fully than is currently possible in mainstream theatre scholarship. One source that can provide a model for considering the dynamics between audience and performer in immersive performance is the Indigenous story systems of Australia. There is a significant synergy between the structure and operation of First Nation songlines and contemporary immersive performance. This is explored with reference to the work of contemporary anthropologists and Indigenous scholars and to recent immersive work from the companies Kaleider and Theatre Conspiracy. The article considers how both ancient narratives and contemporary immersive practices require people to engage with data/ physical space in a specific manner in order for stories to be realised. Furthermore, both bestow creative responsibility and the role of custodian on the user, through whose actions narrative is manifested. Immersive performance challenges assumptions about how information is generated, processed, and passed on, and the power structures involved in such exchanges. This research explores how non-traditional narrative practices can assist the debate about the future of storytelling.

Conceptualizing the hydrogeothermal setting of Sloquet Hot Springs in the Canadian Cordillera on unceded St'at'imc Territory: an example of a reconciliation-based approach to field geoscience

Field geoscience has made important scientific advances but has not consistently considered the impact of these geoscience results on communities where the fieldwork is conducted. A reconciliation-based approach calls for critical thought about who defines, participates in, owns, and uses geoscience research, particularly in light of unresolved aboriginal rights and title claims and treaty rights throughout all of Canada. Geothermal research in the Canadian Cordillera has typically focused on hot spring systems and predicting maximum temperatures at depth, estimating fluid circulation depths, and investigating the distribution of hot spring systems and their relation to major geological features that often control thermal fluid flow. Detailed fieldwork to develop local and regional conceptual models of these systems has rarely been conducted and to our best knowledge, never in partnership with a First Nation. The scope of this project was working collaboratively with Xa’xtsa First Nation to conduct detailed structural, hydrologic and hydrogeologic fieldwork to develop local and regional conceptual models of Sloquet Hot Springs, on unceded St'at'imc territory. To motivate our research and provide a successful example of a reconciliation-based approach to field geoscience, we review how resource regulation, research, relationships, and reconciliation interact in British Columbia and consider our community partnership relative to Wong et al (2020)’s 10 Calls for Action for Natural Scientists. Well drilling, testing and monitoring revealed numerous soft zones in the subsurface as well as high transmissivity suggesting bedrock in the area has significant permeability. The annual flux calculated for Sloquet Hot Springs suggests a regional flow contribution from nearby watersheds. Although surface and subsurface observations did not identify the primary fault that conveys high-temperature fluids, the potential locations of buried fault structures are hypothesized based on zones with observably high temperatures and flow along Sloquet Creek. These results and interpretations are synthesized into a conceptual model of a localized hydrogeothermal system with local and regional groundwater flow along permeable pathways in the subsurface and mixing with cooler water before discharging in some of the springs.

Policy Forum: Implementing the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation Property Tax System—Opportunities, Challenges, and Lessons Learned

In 2018, the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation (GIFN) implemented a First Nation property tax system under the First Nations Fiscal Management Act (FMA)—one of the earliest First Nations in Ontario to do so. Implementation of a property tax system gave GIFN an opportunity to improve funding for and expand local services, and provide a more equitable sharing of local service costs between cottagers leasing First Nation land and the First Nation. Key challenges encountered when implementing the property tax system were building consensus around the need for a tax system, building an appropriate administrative infrastructure, carrying out property assessments, and professionals lacking knowledge of First Nation property tax. These challenges, however, presented opportunities to create a knowledge base around property taxation within GIFN, among cottage leaseholders, and in the wider community. Key lessons learned were (1) start as soon as possible; (2) First Nations Tax Commission support and standards are important; (3) staff training is important; (4) communicate early and often; (5) hold open houses; (6) local services are more than garbage collection; (7) property taxes do not harm lease rates or cottage sales; (8) educate lawyers, real estate agents, and other professionals; (9) startup costs were significant; (10) coordinate laws and standards with provincial variations; (11) modernize systems; and (12) utilize other parts of the FMA.