Wiebe, Leanna2025-01-162025-01-162024-12-032024-12-052025-01-16http://hdl.handle.net/1993/38832Wetlands in the Swan Lake region were historically seen as highly valuable parts of the landscape by Ojibway Peoples and early non-Indigenous settlers alike, providing vital food and water on an arid prairie. Contrastingly, wetlands today are often seen as a nuisance, incentivizing their ongoing drainage. As a result, Swan Lake, like other prairie lakes, faces cumulative impacts from wetland drainage including an accumulation of sediment, lowering lake depth, damaged wildlife habitat, as well as increased nutrient loads causing algae blooms and deoxygenation. In short, the introduction of colonial land management and governance systems has transformed the relationship between humans and wetlands from a mutually beneficial to a dysfunctional one. This thesis examines the transformation described above by looking at the influence of historical and individual decision contexts experienced by Ojibway and non-Indigenous land users today in the Swan Lake region. In this thesis, wetlands become a prism refracting a much bigger context, one where dysfunctional relationships between humans and wetlands are part of a polycrisis affecting all earth systems. A gatekeeper sampling method and semi-structured interviews with six Ojibway participants from Swan Lake First Nation, Gaubiskiigamaug, and six non-Indigenous farmers from the surrounding region were used. Data were analyzed using thematic and grounded approaches. Results emerge in five themes: 1) Historical contexts shaping today’s wetland-related decision-making, including colonization and changes in the agricultural industry; 2) Tensions between Ojibway and non-Indigenous worldviews related to wetlands; 3) The influence of individual decision contexts including differences in land use on wetland-related decision-making; 4) Land user perspectives on the future of human-wetland relationships; and 5) The dynamic nature of human-wetland relationships in shaping the landscape itself. This thesis concludes that enduring solutions to today’s wetland crisis can only occur at pace with healing relationships between people and land.engagricultureagriculture wetland drainageCanadaCanadian prairiescolonizationcultural ecosystem servicesdeterritorializationfragmentationcontextualizing wetland issuesgrounding water studiesgrounding wetland studieslandmultiple theoretical approachontological ecologyontological pluralityontological politicspolycrisisrelational qualitative methodologyrelationalityrestorative narrativerural ecological knowledgesocial-ecological landscapetheoretical pluralismwaterwetland governancewetland historywetland policywetland politicsworldviewshuman-land relationshipshydrosocial territoriespolitical ecologysocial and ecological relationshipssocial dimensions of human-water systemssocial dimensions of human-wetland systemssocio-ecological systemsociohydrologycolonial mind controlcolonization of minddecolonial thoughtmonoculture of the mindFirst NationIndigenousOjibway ecological knowledgeOjibway water governanceOjibway wetland knowledgeOjibway wetland relationshipstraditional knowledgecross-cultural studiestwo-eyed seeingweaving knowledge systemssocioecological studiessystems thinking