ReBraiding Frayed Sweetgrass for Niijaansinaanik: Understanding Canadian Indigenous Child Welfare Issues as International Atrocity Crimes

The unearthing of the remains of Indigenous children on the sites of former Indian Residential Schools (“IRS”) in Canada has focused greater attention on anti-Indigenous atrocity violence in the country. While such increased attention, combined with recent efforts at redressing associated harms, represents a step forward in terms of recognizing and addressing the harms caused to Indigenous peoples through the settler-colonial process in Canada, this note expresses concern that the dominant framings of anti-Indigenous atrocity violence remain myopically focused on an overly narrow subset of harms and forms of violence, especially those committed at IRSs. It does so by utilizing a process-based understanding of atrocity and genocide that helps draw connections between familiar, highly visible, and less recognized forms of atrocity violence, which tend to be overlapping and mutually reinforcing in terms of their destructive effects. This process-based understanding challenges the neocolonial, racist, and discriminatory attitudes reflected in the drafting and interpretation of the Genocide Convention and other atrocity laws that ignore the lived experiences of subjugated groups. Utilizing this approach, this note argues that, as applied to Indigenous populations, Canada’s longstanding discriminatory child welfare practices and policies represent an overlooked process of anti-Indigenous atrocity violence. Only by understanding current child welfare challenges facing Indigenous communities as interwoven with longstanding anti-Indigenous atrocity processes, such as the IRS system, can we understand what is at stake for affected communities and fashion appropriate remedies in international and domestic law

"very fine people on both sides"

Throughout history, monuments have been erected to act as reminders of sites, events and people. In Canada, many of these commemorative markers reflect one side of history and further Indigenous erasure. This thesis supports my 2018 MFA exhibition titled “very fine people on both sides” that interrogates the distribution of understanding and multiple perspectives surrounding monuments and reconciliation. The thesis considers the historical, social, and political positioning of monuments and their relationship to Canada’s engagement within the process of reconciliation. It investigates how monument interventions have been employed by Indigenous artists as a space for reclamation to acknowledge true histories. Through critical discourse analysis and case studies, this thesis investigates how “the monument” is perceived in contemporary timelines as an underpinning for further research into how the creation/prospect of new monuments proposed under the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action can be improved to better reflect Indigenous and Canadian realities

Assigning Backbone NMR Resonances for Full Length Tau Isoforms: Efficient Compromise between Manual Assignments and Reduced Dimensionality

Tau protein is the longest disordered protein for which nearly complete backbone NMR resonance assignments have been reported. Full-length tau protein was initially assigned using a laborious combination of bootstrapping assignments from shorter tau fragments and conventional triple resonance NMR experiments. Subsequently it was reported that assignments of comparable quality could be obtained in a fully automated fashion from data obtained using reduced dimensionality NMR (RDNMR) experiments employing a large number of indirect dimensions. Although the latter strategy offers many advantages, it presents some difficulties if manual intervention, confirmation, or correction of the assignments is desirable, as may often be the case for long disordered and degenerate polypeptide sequences. Here we demonstrate that nearly complete backbone resonance assignments for full-length tau isoforms can be obtained without resorting either to bootstrapping from smaller fragments or to very high dimensionality experiments and automation. Instead, a set of RDNMR triple resonance experiments of modest dimensionality lend themselves readily to efficient and unambiguous manual assignments. An analysis of the backbone chemical shifts obtained in this fashion indicates several regions in full length tau with a notable propensity for helical or strand-like structure that are in good agreement with previous observations

Propagation of Tau aggregates.

Since 2009, evidence has accumulated to suggest that Tau aggregates form first in a small number of brain cells, from where they propagate to other regions, resulting in neurodegeneration and disease. Propagation of Tau aggregates is often called prion-like, which refers to the capacity of an assembled protein to induce the same abnormal conformation in a protein of the same kind, initiating a self-amplifying cascade. In addition, prion-like encompasses the release of protein aggregates from brain cells and their uptake by neighbouring cells. In mice, the intracerebral injection of Tau inclusions induced the ordered assembly of monomeric Tau, followed by its spreading to distant brain regions. Short fibrils constituted the major species of seed-competent Tau. The existence of several human Tauopathies with distinct fibril morphologies has led to the suggestion that different molecular conformers (or strains) of aggregated Tau exist

Reading: Aylan Couchie

In this audiovisual recording from Wednesday, March 24, 2021, as part of the 52nd Annual UND Writers Conference: “Roots of the Earth,” Aylan Couchie presents her interdisciplinary work, which explores the intersections between colonial and First Nations histories, with a focus on place, culture, and Indigenous erasure. Couchie also responds to audience questions about the focus of pattern in her art, the value of language learning and preservation, how the aging and passing of elders affects the loss of language, her creative process, the GIS project she’s is working on for Nipissing University, her experiential work related to Indigenous women’s voice, and many more. Introduced by Nicole Derenne, Department of Art & Design

Contribution à la caractérisation d'un système de plusieurs formes enzymatiques: les phosphodiestérases

Doctorat en Sciencesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe

Contribution à la caractérisation d'un système de plusieurs formes enzymatiques: les phosphodiestérases

Doctorat en Sciencesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe