You've got to paddle your own canoe: the effects of federal legislation on participation in, and exercising of, traditional governance while living off-reserve

Master's thesis in the Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies at the University of Victoria.

This project describes the challenges and impediments members of two clans experienced while growing up and living off-reserve. Members of the Gitimt’en clan and their father clan, the Likhts’amisyu, descendants of Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs Gisdayway (Thomas George), and Tsaybaysa (Mary George) respectively, and which includes the writer, related personal experiences of living off-reserve amidst the dominant colonial culture. Approximately 70% of the total Indigenous population in Canada live off-reserve. These experiences were documented through the Wet’suwet’en hereditary system which is an oral, transparent, publicly witnessed, and ever evolving living history. Consideration that the off-reserve population comprises approximately two thirds of the Indigenous population in Canada, and is yet to be recognized by government authorities, added legal challenges disproportionate to those of the dominant culture, and to the on-reserve population.