A Case Study of Alberta’s Future Leaders Program (AFL): Developing Aboriginal Youth Leadership through Cross-cultural Mentorship, and Sport, Recreation, and Arts Programming

Abstract

In this thesis, in which I use the stand-alone paper format, I employ a Foucauldian lens to examine Alberta’s Future Leaders (AFL), an Aboriginal youth leadership development program. In the first paper, I identify how power relations shape AFL, including its ambitions and struggles towards developing sustainable programming. In the second paper, I examine AFL’s cross-cultural approach to mentorship and the ways in which failing to address issues of culture (re)produces colonial relations of power. Overall, my findings highlight the importance of recognizing and problematizing the power relations at work within Aboriginal youth leadership development initiatives.