NEWS: Building Connections: Mobilizing Indigenous Histories for Social Change

Please share the following presentation taking place next week via a zoom webinar on November 10, 2021, from 3:00-4:30 p.m. and 7:00-8:30 p.m. with your colleagues, students, and networks. We will have French translations and landing page on our website in the coming days.

Treaty and Inherent rights and kinship responsibilities to guide all the children in a natural ethical way

Presenter: Dale Saddleback, University of Alberta

Registration: https://uottawa-ca.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gIJ5KRuySJWz0l_lM27bbg

 

Dale Saddleback is a member of the Samson Cree Nation but experienced early life on the Pigeon Lake Indian Reserve #138A currently working toward his Ph.D. Candidacy in Secondary Education with an interest in Indigenous ways as formalized education. As a nehiyaw scholar under the supervision of Dr. Dwayne Donald also aspires to explore potentialities with regards to working with kehte-ayak (Elders) in places of higher learning. It is with the aid and guidance of kehte-ayak that specific areas of study that require their feedback, such as, methods and methodology, theory and its relationship with traditional nehiyaw ways of being, inter alia.

 

Description: Measurable impacts of the contact experience in history altered traditional life for all time, as such, so has the way in which Indigenous people now think, do, and are. In short it means the changes evident over time have to do with loss, arguably beginning with discernment. Historicity implies that the Indigenous oral historians give mutual voice and authorize reciprocally accepted versions of past events. Mutual respect is exemplified with great regard to differences in language and the spoken word knowing that the discovery of Turtle Island by Europeans clearly indicates the true possessors of knowledge of the land. The generations that bore witness to the atrocious behaviours of early settlers refusing such criterions for legitimate and mutually beneficial co-existence failed. My research is about learning from those mistakes and reconciling with Mother Earth and Father Sky. This can be accomplished by and through the sustained ways of thinking doing and being of the Indigenous peoples as exemplified by and through kehteyak (Traditional Life Ceremonial Elders). Options will be presented.

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Indigenous Research Chairs on Historical Memory and the Teaching of the Past

Presenters: Dr. Alan Corbiere, Dr. Brenda Macdougall, and Pierrot Ross-Tremblay

 

Dr. Alan Corbiere, Citizen M’Chigeeng First Nation and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous History of North America, Department of History, York University. As Canada Research Chair in Indigenous History of North America, Dr. Alan Corbiere hopes to “re-right” and “re-write” Indigenous history. He and his research team are using oral traditions and Anishinaabemowin and material culture (museum collections) to re-interpret colonial records. Their aim is to weave these sources together to revitalize Indigenous language, culture and knowledge to ensure it plays a central role in our understanding of the past.

 

Dr. Brenda Macdougall, University Research Chair in Metis Family and Community Traditions and Director, Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies, University of Ottawa. Professor Brenda Macdougall is a leading expert in the history of Métis and First Nations as University Research Chair in Metis Family and Community Traditions. The Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and the University of Ottawa established this chair, which will help increase our understanding of Métis history in general and specifically as it relates to identity, community formation and coherence. Macdougall is deeply committed to engaging with Métis and Aboriginal communities, organizations and policy makers. She regularly works with the Métis Nation of Ontario, for example, and makes presentations to this group as well as to the Canadian Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, federal and provincial deputy ministers of Aboriginal Affairs, the Department of Natural Resources Canada and the Law Society of Upper Canada.

 

Pierrot Ross-Tremblay (Innu Essipit) is Professor at the Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies, University of Ottawa. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Intellectual Traditions and Self-Determination. His research focuses on memory and forgetting, resistance, sovereignties and effective self-determination.

 

Description: Panel discussion around three big questions related to the speaker series: 1) How are Indigenous communities taking control over their own histories? 2) How can teachers in Indigenous and non-Indigenous schools and post-secondary institutions access these histories without appropriating them or recolonizing Indigenous peoples and their meanings, and 3) What are the best practices, pitfalls and possibilities in doing 1 and 2. Come prepared with questions. Audience will be able to ask questions via the chat throughout the panel discussion.

 

Link: https://uottawa-ca.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GJB8SyxrSfavslR7IviZ2A

Sincerely, Nicholas

 

Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, Ph.D, (He/Him/il/lui)

Professor of Curriculum Studies

Vice-Dean of Graduate Studies

Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa

Phone: 613-562-5800 ext. 4407

e-mail: nngafook@uottawa.ca

Twitter: @nick_ngafook