Elemental Analysis of Ochre Outcrops in Southern British Columbia,Canada

Ochre is a red mineral pigment that was a key element of social and ceremonial practices among cultures of the Pacific Northwest Coast. It is recovered routinely from archaeological excavations, is visible as pigment for pictographs, and is described in the historical record as a trade item and component of ceremonial practices. Despite its ubiquity in the archaeological record, it is difficult to interpret its significance without first understanding the nature of its procurement and distribution. As a step towards identifying procurement practices, trade and resource use, it is necessary to thoroughly characterize ochre outcrops with regard to their intra‐source and regional variability. We analysed ochre from three outcrops using INAA to determine their elemental chemistry. The purpose of this study is threefold: to provide an example of the range of elemental variability within and between outcrops, to illustrate the effect of scale and geomorphological processes on elemental compositions and statistical interpretation, and to create a database of known deposits in southern British Columbia. The results demonstrate that ochre deposits may be differentiated on the basis of their chemistry, and that conservative statistical interpretation needs to be employed to assess true elemental variability within and between ochre deposits and regions.     

Testing Alternative Theories of Agenda Setting: Forest Policy Change in British Columbia, Canada

In an effort to add to our understanding of why government chooses to take actions in certain situations and not others, this article applies competing theories of agenda building to a specific environmental issue, forest policymaking in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Clearly, how well BC and the rest of Canadian provinces manage their forests and other natural resources will contribute to the ability of Canada as a whole to become a sustainable society. In the 1990s the BC government enacted the Forest Practices Code, a comprehensive approach to managing the province's forests. This study relies on several different theoretical approaches to explain how such an ambitious program was developed and implemented. How difficult and complex environmental issues manage to reach the political agenda is crucial to our understanding of policy change and is addressed in this study.     

Union Responses to Mass Immigration: The Case of Miami, USA

This article places the attitudes of US unions toward immigrants within the context of a "globalized" environment and a contested and problematic history of the US labor movement regarding its conflicting tendencies toward international solidarity and nationalism. Following a review of that history, the article examines the relationships of four unions in the heavily immigrant Miami, Florida area with immigrant workers in the past four decades. The evidence indicates that explanations for differing responses can be found in the union's structure, its external environment, its leadership' vision and ideology, and its internal "cultural" practices.     

Negotiating Neoliberal Empowerment: Aboriginal People,Educational Restructuring,and Academic Labour in the North of British Columbia,Canada

Aboriginal peoples in Canada are gaining influence in post‐secondary education through Aboriginal‐directed programs and policies in non‐Aboriginal institutions. However, these gains have occurred alongside, and in some cases through, neoliberal reforms to higher education. This article explores the political consequences of the neoliberal institutionalization of First Nations empowerment for public sector unions and workers. We examine a case where the indigenization of a community college in British Columbia was embedded in neoliberal reforms that ran counter to the interests of academic instructors. Although many union members supported indigenization, many also possessed a deep ambivalence about the change. Neoliberal indigenization increased work intensity, decreased worker autonomy and promoted an educational philosophy that prioritized labour market needs over liberal arts. This example demonstrates how the integration of Aboriginal aspirations into neoliberal processes of reform works to rationalize public sector restructuring, constricting labour agency and the possibilities for alliances between labour and Aboriginal peoples.     

An anti‐racism methodology: The Native Sons and Daughters and racism against Asians in Nanaimo,British Columbia,Canada

Over the past number of years there has been increased interest in racism and anti‐racism amongst geographers. This paper focuses on one type of anti‐racism methodology that relates to critically interrogating my own white colonial settler ancestors and particularly the institutions and structures of which they were a part, and using those understandings to resist the contemporary increase in white supremacy and anti‐Asian racism. It also seeks to demonstrate the links between anti‐racism and decolonization. Particularly, I examine the Native Sons and Daughters of British Columbia, Canada, in the Nanaimo city area, where my great‐grandparents from northern England and Scotland settled as working‐class miners at the beginning of the 20^th century. I examine white working‐class settler racism against Asians, especially as practiced against Chinese and Japanese immigrants. While I do not argue that this is the only or even the most important type of anti‐racism methodology, this sort of research and associated production of knowledge can be useful in resisting present‐day anti‐Asian racism, even though I acknowledge that I am still embedded in colonial structures of racism and white privilege.     

Stereotypes and Ambivalence: The construction of domestic workers in Vancouver,British Columbia

This article examines stereotypes of Filipina and British nannies presented by nanny agents in Vancouver, Canada in a series of interviews conducted in 1994, and then considers the influence of these stereotypes in structuring the work conditions of each group of domestic worker. Working with Bhabha's concept of ambivalence and Kaplan's ideas about the 'impossibility' of the concept, 'mother', the agent interviews are then reread for signs of inconsistency and ambivalence. The British nanny is portrayed as both superior in terms of training and temperament, but cold and controlling. The Filipina nanny is both uncivilised and poorly motivated, and well-educated. These ambivalences are read in terms of anxieties about maternal substitution, colonial pasts, racial difference, and working mothers. Some implications of the inconsistency in agents' portrayals of Filipina nannies for political practice are briefly outlined.     

How Capitalism Will Save Colonialism: The Privatization of Reserve Lands in Canada

This paper surveys the ways in which the First Nations Property Ownership Act (FNPOA) is the site of both tension and alliance between state, non‐state, and local Indigenous interests converging around a common agenda of land “modernization” in Canada. It is a convergence, I argue, that must be read in the context of a reorganization of society under neoliberalism. The FNPOA legislation is discursively framed to acknowledge Indigenous land rights while the bill simultaneously introduces contentious measures to individualize and municipalize the quasi‐communal land holding of reserves. The intersections of alliance around this land modernization project foreground the complex ways in which capitalism and colonialism, though inextricably tied, perform distinguishable economic processes, and how we must be attentive to the particulars of their co‐articulation with local formations of indigeneity.     

Archaeological Survey of Dynamic Coastal Landscapes and Paleoshorelines: Locating Early Holocene Sites in the Prince Rupert Harbour Area,British Columbia,Canada

We present and test a predictive archaeological survey model that targets early Holocene paleoshorelines in the Prince Rupert Harbour area using LiDAR bare earth digital terrain models and a 15,000-year reconstructed history of relative sea level change. Despite a century of archaeological research in the study area, no sites dating earlier than 6000 cal b.p. had been identified prior to our research. Our field survey identified three early Holocene sites associated with paleoshorelines 7–10?m above current sea level (masl). These locations demonstrate repeated use through the Holocene even as shoreline position changes. We discuss these new data in relation to the early Holocene archaeological record from the rest of the northern Northwest Coast and suggest that the region was ubiquitously occupied by this time and that the lack of recorded early Holocene sites in some areas is likely a result of survey and preservation bias, rather than historical reality.     

The distribution and morphometry of lakes and reservoirs in British Columbia: a provincial inventory

An inventory of provincial lakes and reservoirs has been developed to characterise and assess the distribution and morphometry of standing water bodies in British Columbia. In the province, there are over 241,500 lakes and reservoirs greater than 1,000 m ² in size. These water bodies cover 2.37 percent of the province area and contain an estimated 521 km ³ of water (312 km ³ in natural lakes and 209 km ³ in reservoirs). A hypsometric relation suitable for order-of-magnitude estimates of lake volume from lake area is presented. Based on the distribution and morphometric attributes of lakes, several distinctive limnologic regions were identified, including the northeastern Alberta Plateau (highest proportion of circular lakes), the southwestern Alberta Plateau (lowest lake density/coverage and highest proportion of irregularly shaped lakes) and the Milbanke Strandflat (highest density of lakes). Observed regional and scale-related patterns in lake distribution/morphometry appear to be largely related to geomorphic controls, particularly tectonic and glacial history. Large-scale hydrologic implications of these standing water bodies and potential ecosystem/water resource management applications of the provincial inventory are also discussed.     

The emergence of early childhood education outdoor programs in British Columbia: a meandering story

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the emergence of early childhood education outdoor programs in British Columbia, Canada. The story told follows paths not dissimilar from how one might observe children on a walk to the park. While the park is the destination, it is the journey to the park, of picking up pebbles, looking at flowers, and finding sticks, that enlivens and binds the journey. Through our consideration of stories from a number of outdoor programs, we weave patterns that join their emergence and consider how their stories might sustain and encourage educational action.     

Regional restructuring of industrial sport: The case of elite hockey player production in British Columbia

Although ice hockey has been characterized as a “people's sport,” since the 1980s neoliberalism has stimulated elite hockey to take on industrial characteristics, driven by: the commodification of sport; a growing scale of hockey performance; the branding of teams and cities; a strategic coupling with media; and the privatization of training and facilities. In British Columbia, elite hockey players are being produced in new regional settings. Formerly, many elite players came from smaller resource-hinterland towns offering strong local support. With neoliberal commodification of the sport, the Lower Mainland has emerged as the main centre of elite player production in British Columbia. This has occurred very rapidly as costly private training programs located mostly in larger metropolitan areas have become the main source of young players aspiring to elite status. High-performance training companies and private hockey academies offer costly routes to elite player status, with new class relations that exclude low-income families. A range of internal and external scale economies lead to these new facilities being concentrated in larger conurbations, particularly in Greater Vancouver.