We acknowledge that the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and the University of British Columbia-Vancouver are located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded homelands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ -speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.
We value our long-standing relationship with the Musqueam Nation and are grateful for the many ways in which they support and strengthen our unit.
Andrea
CONTRIBUTORS
Alice Te Punga Somerville
Amanda Engen
Andrea Herrera
Aynur Kadir
Bernard Perley
Cass Minkus
Charlotte Taylor
Cole Pauls
Coll Thrush
CTLT Team
David Gaertner
Davison Donnelly
Dory Nason
Erica Commons
Hannah Doyle
Isabella Corbet
Janey Lew
Jayden Emslie
Jess Wylie
Josh McKenna
Karlene Harvey
Linc Kesler
(Bonnechere Algonquin
Maggie Moore
Maize Longboat
Mariana Mota
Mark Turin
Meryl Bishop
Pasang Yangjee Sherpa
Sabrina Moshenko
Summer Tyance
Tait Gamble
Veronica Surette
DESIGN & LAYOUT BY COVER ARTWORK Jess Wylie “Wolf in the Dakwakada High Cache” [2023, Digital Illustration] by Cole Pauls (Tāłtān Konelīne First Nations and Shadhäla Äshèyi yè Kwädän [CAFN] Citizen, Wolf Clan)
OUR DIRECTOR
BERNARD PERLEY Director of CIS & Associate Professor
The 2022-2023 academic year saw continued growth and change for the Institute as well as FNIS and FNEL. Among the significant changes was the retirement of Dr. Linc Kelser. Linc’s untiring dedication to promoting Indigenous engaged research and institutional responsibility will be lasting legacies of his knowledge and advocacy. Over the past twenty years he was the inspiring leader developing what would become the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program. We will miss his humour and honesty as we continue to build upon the foundations of FNIS.
Our amazing staff continued to make CIS a caring and welcoming community. They managed the day-to-day activities as well as special events with care, efficiency, and professionalism. I was delighted with the teamwork that went into creating our annual magazine Raven/Spa:l. Our tenth issue (the previous one) is a particularly striking issue and it is truly a collector’s edition! We took a big step to fulfilling our outreach and community engagement capacity goals by hiring Davison Donnelly. Welcome to the team, Davison! Thanks to our team effort, we’ve received lots of positive feedback from students who participated in the events as well as positive feedback from our CIS affiliates.
contest 2023. We also saw the inaugural course offering of FNEL 191A in the Musqueam Language Program. It is exciting to see the MLP program continue to grow.
CIS co-hosted with MOA a Climate and Biodiversity luncheon honouring Pacific Navigators at the Haida House. CIS also welcomed the Sami President and delegation in FNIS 220. CIS was pleased to sponsor a workshop with Australian Indigenous writers for students and faculty.
The recognitions our students are receiving for their scholarship and creativity are impressive and potentially transformational. The students in FNIS 454 were recognized for their creative work with prizes from the Vancouver Poet Laureate’s City Poems
It has been quite a year. We’re just getting started!
Hello everyone! Thank you for picking up this year’s edition of spa:l’/ The Raven.
My name is Mariana and I am a white Portuguese settler in the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, səl̓ilwətaɁɬ, and Skwxwú7mesh peoples since 2021. Before I talk about my journey with the Raven, I would first like to extend my gratitude to everyone who has helped me work on this year’s publication. From our wonderful graphic designer, Jess, to everyone who submitted their words or who sat through an interview with me, to the past editor, Sabrina, as well as to the faculty and staff at CIS who supported in this endeavor. Thank you for your time, patience, and kindness. And thank you, reader, for appreciating the fruits of our labour!
When I first started at CIS for my co-op work term, I didn’t know how it was going to go. I wasn’t as educated on Indigenous issues as I wish I had been and I didn’t have experience working on a publication of this size. The prospect of being the Communications Assistant here was daunting. Even so, I was supported through all the ups and downs and silly mistakes I made. I have been able to learn so much from this experience, not only about myself, but about the land and the people whose land I reside in. For this, I am sincerely grateful.
EDITOR’S REFLECTION
Student, Cognitive Systems
Editor of spa:l’/the Raven 2022/23
I hope this year’s publication allows you to see even a little bit of what makes CIS, and the talented, passionate people who make it up so great!
MARIANA MOTA
FACULTY REFLECTIONS
DAVID GAERTNER Assistant Professor, First Nations and Indigenous Studies
In 2022, I co-organized a two-day video games conference at the Chan Centre, Games In Action: Interactivity / Activation \ Activism. The conference featured six panels, two keynote presentations, a pop-up arcade, and a concert. With the support of CIS, we were able to include seven Indigenous developers in the proceedings, including the “Indigenous Futures In Games” panel and “Game Making Through Indigenous Storytelling” featuring Maize Longboat, Josh Nilson, and Josh McKenna.
In Fall 2022, I also took over as the President of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA). As President, I organized our 2023 gathering, “Reckonings and Reimaginings,” which was held at York University May 31-June 2nd. The conference featured keynote presentations from Leanne Simpson and Robyn Maynard, Lisa Jackson, Chelsea Vowel, Daniel Justice and Terese Mason Pierre.
In my role as the ILSA President, I also co-organized “Gatherings in Tkaronto,” a gala event celebrating the launch of two historical literature anthologies: Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology (Penguin Random House) and The Journey Prize Stories 33: The Best of Canada’s New Black Writers Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology (McClelland & Stewart).
In my teaching, I collaborated with Musqueam artist and author Debra Sparrow and Vancouver’s Poet Laureate, Fiona Tinwei Lam. This collaboration was based on Sparrow’s poem, “Know Who You Are, Know Where You Come From.” Lam and I worked with Sparrow to create the poem out of an essay that Sparrow wrote in 2000 and Students worked in small groups to create poetry films based on the poem, some of which went on to win awards.
PASANG SHERPA Assistant Professor, First Nations and Endangered Languages
The 2022/23 academic year was my first full year as an assistant professor at UBC. We were all just beginning to resume our lives after the isolating experience of the COVID-19 lockdown. I taught my first UBC class in Winter 1. It was FNEL 381, a course on language, environment, and community. Although I had been teaching for more than a decade at that point, across six universities, this was the first class I taught centering Indigenous scholarship. I enjoyed designing and delivering the course and noticing how students were moving forward in their own Indigenous academic journey.
That year, I also joined the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (PWIAS) as a Catalyst Fellow working on the theme of Climate and Nature Emergency. Our cohort of 12 had faculty members representing a variety of disciplines. I was introduced to the program through the PWIAS director, Vanessa Andreotti. I was excited to learn that the program was open to global Indigeneity, and that Chief Ninawa Huni Kui was the Wall International Indigenous scholar. I was fortunate to learn about the Indigenous struggles in the Amazon directly from Chief Ninawa. I also had the privilege of joining Vanessa and Chief Ninawa at the COP 27 in Egypt. This climate summit was a remarkable space to connect with a global network of Indigenous Peoples and learn from them. My colleagues and I also launched the Knowledge Justice Collective that advances Indigenous science in international climate assessments at COP 27.
MARK TURIN Associate Professor, Anthropology
This has been a bit of an unusual year, in large part on account of having to take a three-month medical leave, but with many moments of joy and growth. I was delighted to have the chance to teach FNEL 480 in a compressed format in the summer, and to witness the excitement of the students as they learned from one another, partnering on collaborative projects and connected deeply with guest speakers and visitors to class. Working closely with FNEL and FNIS students through the Indigenous Undergraduate Research Mentorship Program is another real highlight, as it allows me to support undergraduates who are pushing their inquiry to the next level and asking questions that go beyond our curriculum.
I was very honoured to have been nominated by colleagues and students for the new Dean of Arts Mentorship Award this year, and to be one of five inaugural faculty members to receive it. University life is overwhelmingly occupied with what goes on in our minds, prioritizing our ideas and questions. While this focus is what makes academia so exciting, it must not come at the cost of the wider context in which we all find ourselves: as people embedded in complex relationships, with needs and doubts, hopes and fears. I like to understand my students and colleagues in their full lives—in ways that extend beyond the classroom—and I wish to be understood in the very same way.
AYNUR KADIR Assistant Professor, First Nations and Endangered Languages
This has been a very exciting year for me—and one that has made me feel closer than ever to my colleagues and students. I had the honor of teaching an amazing group of students in FNEL 380, each of whom demonstrated considerable thought and knowledge, as well as a variety of creative skills throughout their production of community-centered multimedia course projects. Together, we gained a greater appreciation for community ethics and met technological challenges and opportunities, designing podcasts, documentaries, animations, magazines and Duolingo prototypes, both in BC and internationally.
In Fall 2023, Colleen Laird and I had the privilege of opening our multimedia lab, CoDHerS, a space aimed at supporting global Indigenous and minoritized communities through various collaborative cultural heritage initiatives. We are eager to learn from and share new student and community-driven approaches to technology and heritage. This work continues to foster important relationship-building and knowledge co-creation between communities, students, researchers, and faculty, and helps foster new ideas for my ongoing research with Uyghur communities across the globe. I was also privileged to receive the Dean of Arts Award, an SSHRC Insight Development Grant, and a Luce/ACLS fellowship to further develop my research.
Importantly, I want to thank my colleagues in CIS, including but not limited to Bernard Perley, Pasang Sherpa, Alice Te Punga Somerville, and Glen Coulthard, for their utmost support, intellectual discussion, and genuine kindness as I have continued to make a home here at UBC. I look forward to what the next year will bring.
CIS RESEARCH, RECOGNITION, AND ACADEMIC HIGHLIGHTS
Mariana Mota
Like the years before, the CIS community has taken this year to make their mark on an ever-evolving world. Through a deep commitment to kindness and excellence, they have continued to flourish during the 2022/23 academic year, extending their reach far beyond that of CIS. From awards, to research, to book publishing, this year has been full of impactful ventures from CIS students, faculty, and alumni .
In late 2022 Alice Te Punga Somerville graced the literary world with her first book of poetry “Always Italicise: how to write while colonised”. The collection, which dwells on the ramifications of colonialism in the Pacific and throughout the Indigenous world while meditating on what it means to be a Māori woman and scholar in a colonized world. This profound work not only intrigued and captivated its readers, but also went on to receive the prestigious Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry in 2023!
Early that year, Dr. Linc Kesler was appointed as a member of the Panel on Responsible Conduct of Research (PRCR). The PRCR is a body dedicated to promoting integrity and accountability in research practices across Canada. As a member, Dr. Kesler will contribute to the promotion of responsible and ethical research practices.
In the same year, CIS associate professor Dr. Mark Turin went on to be one of five recipients of the new Dean of Arts Mentorship Award! The well-deserved recognition is a testament to Dr. Turin’s exceptional commitment to nurturing the academic and personal growth of the community around him. This award is emblematic of the profound impact his mentorship has created.
Dr. Aynur Kadir also went on to receive a Dean of Arts award as one of the selected recipients of the 2022/23 Dean of Arts Faculty Research Awards. This award will allow her one semester to focus solely on her research on documentation and revitalization of global Indigenous cultures and languages. Not stopping there, Dr. Kadir also went on to be among one of the 15 emerging scholars awarded the Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowship in China Studies, paving the way for innovative research at the intersection of Indigenous and global studies.
In the summer of 2023, the students of FNIS 454 were awarded for their creativity and expression in the Vancouver Poet Laureate’s City Poems Contest. Robert Burns, Delaine Austin, Bea Lehmann, and Rachel Williams won the Best Visual Storytelling award and Madison Harvey, Cass Minkus, Sofia Bergman, and Olivia Carriere McKenna going on to win the Audience Choice Prize!
Congratulations to all the members of our community for their exceptional contributions to the 2022/23 academic year! We are looking forward to what the next year will bring!
Left to right: Fiona Tinwei Lam, Claire Everson, Eva Moulton
CIS ASSOCIATES
COLL THRUSH
Professor, Department of History CIS Faculty Associate
I’m deep in the writing of my new book Wrecked: Navigating Colonialism in the Graveyard of the Pacific, which looks at Indigenous and settler histories on the BC, Washington, and Oregon coasts through the lens of shipwrecks. Essentially, I’m looking at moments of maritime misfortune to think about the ways in which colonialism might have been a failure more generally. It’s been a great project so far, and the book should be out in 2025. I’m also just starting a collaborative project with Daniel Justice on queer, two-spirit, and trans family histories - it’ll be an anthology of writings by various people about their relationships to ancestors, blood or otherwise. Lastly, I’m co-chairing the Place & Power initiative, in which Arts students will be taking a required course dealing with settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and other structures, with a significant local emphasis.
CTLT INDIGENOUS INITIATIVES
CTLT Indigenous Initiatives has had another active year! Our team continues to respond and adapt to increased calls for teaching and learning support. As the Indigenous Strategic Plan (ISP) moves into implementation, we are supporting faculty and staff in areas related to curricular changes and professional development. Building relationships is a cornerstone of our work, and our connections with different programs and communities make the work of our small (but growing) team possible. A highlight of our work is continued collaborations with partners, such as the customized Indigenous Initiatives Design Series (IIDS) for STEM faculty. Similarly, we piloted the IIDS for the Faculty of Arts to support the forthcoming roll-out of Place and Power. Over the last year, we have focused on developing and sharing our educational resources: What I Learned in Class Today (WILICT) and in/relation. In Spring 2022 we launched the Renewed Student Perspectives film for What I Learned in Class Today at the Longhouse. We have been able to utilize the film in piloted partner facilitation opportunities with Douglas College and the šxʷta:təχʷəm Collegium. The WILICT facilitator guide launches Summer 2023, and the in/relation website and facilitator video launch Fall 2023.
Over the past year, the Community Engaged Documentation and Research (CEDaR) space hosted several dynamic events. Highlights include a Bitsy pixel art workshop by FNIS alum Maize Longboat, Indigenous film screenings, beading circles, and other maker space activities. We invited youth and community workers from Stó:lō Xwexwílmexw Government (SXG) for a workshop based on “Kw’í:ts’téleq: The Video Game,” a game produced by CEDaR for SXG. We also kicked off our Relational Technologies Speakers Series with a lecture on Indigenous Place Name Reclamation by Dr. Christine Schreyer and Tamis Cochrane. Part of a broader series exploring storytelling across the areas of digital curation, mapping, and gaming, plans are underway to host additional guest speakers.
We completed the installation of CEDaR’s soundbooth and audiovisual suite—a cherished resource for students, faculty, and community affiliates. With the assistance of Anthropology MA student and podcast producer Lilith Charlet, the soundbooth has supported the production of several podcasts. Lilith also facilitated our 2023 training initiative, empowering students and community partners in audio production, with additional training in Tsulquate for teachers and learners in the Gwa’sala-Nakwaxda’xw Nations Language Revitalization Program.
On the projects side, CEDaR has been collaborating with Vancouver Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam on the City Poems locative audio project. Set to launch in mid-2024, the app combines augmented reality and geolocation technology with poetry, offering an immersive experience of Vancouver’s places and poems with poets like Joy Kogawa and Debra Sparrow. Our Language Reclamation team has been collaborating with a group of Kwak’wala language learners, computer scientists, and linguists to improve optical character recognition (OCR) for early publications written in old writing systems. We use a post-correction, machine-learning OCR model to “read” images of 100-year old texts written by George Hunt to make them machine-readable, convert them into preferred writing systems, and distribute them to community language teachers, learners, and others to support community-based language reclamation. Our team has also been developing an in-house data management system and protocols for digital stewardship, which is at the heart of the community-engaged research we do at CEDaR.
Visit us at: cedarspace.ca and @cedarspaceubc on Instagram!
CIS STAFF
JESS WYLIE Program & Communications Assistant
I am Algonquin First Nations, from the Bonnechere Algonquin community in Ottawa but for the past 5 years I have loved living in Vancouver. In 2022, I graduated from UBC with my bachelor’s degree in psychology. Shortly thereafter, I joined the CIS team in administration and communications. I have worked at UBC ever since I first moved here, and I can confidently say that working with CIS has been the most enjoyable and rewarding position I have had to date. The work that we do has a lasting impact on our students and wider community, and I am very grateful and proud to have been a part of this wonderful team. While I have enjoyed my time in the office … nothing beats a game of Rutabaga Bocci, “Rutabaga-ball”, with Bernie.
As I move on from my time in Vancouver, I am excited to begin my next chapter in New Brunswick and start my new position with the University of Fredericton as Curriculum Coordinator. I wish all the best to the entire CIS family – thank you for always making me feel like I have community to lean on.
ANDREA HERRERA Administrative Assistant
My journey with CIS started in the spring of 2022 in my first assignment as a part-time, temporary worker with UBC Hiring Solutions. I had no knowledge of what to expect at UBC and even less knowledge of the dauntingly named “Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies.”
The first few weeks (and months) were a blur of new faces, tasks and learning to navigate the campus (including once getting lost in the maze of Buchanan buildings before admitting defeat and walking the outdoor perimeter of the buildings). The patience and acceptance I have felt from every staff and faculty member encountered has made my experience with CIS incomparable to any other previous position before.
In my time here, I feel CIS is more than just a scholarly place, but also a place of community. Gatherings are warm and welcoming as we celebrate each other’s professional and personal accomplishments and milestones. When I found out that part of my role included being on the Events, Engagement & Outreach Committee, I was beyond delighted! I was happy and honored to contribute in planning opportunities to gather and celebrate.
My time with CIS has taken me on a rewarding journey of making connections and has taught me invaluable skills. I expected to be on this assignment for 6-8 weeks and at the time of writing this, it has been well over a year and a half. To me, this is a testament of a culture that strives for authentic community and support of one another.
INDIGENOUS LEADERSHIP COLLECTIVE
The Indigenous Leadership Collective (ILC) has been active since 2017 and has been an important community group nurturing strong student connections and leadership skills for Indigenous students in the Faculty of Arts. The ILC is coordinated by the AISA student peer. Veronica Surette (Nuu-Chah-Nulth, Gitxsan and Kwakwaka’wakw and Ukrainian) was the peer for the 2022 Winter Session, she is a fourth-year student studying a double major in International Relations and Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice.
An incredible program that was developed through the ILC was the pilot program for Indigenous Peer Mentorship. This program was designed by Veronica and Rachelle Grabarczyk (Métis), a fourthyear student studying a major in Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice major with a minor in Law and Society who has recently been admitted to the Peter A. Allard School of Law for this fall. The goal of the Indigenous Peer Mentorship program was to pair a first-year student with an upper-year student to create a form of mentorship and connection across year-levels. Five pairings were created, and a series of events were coordinated to ensure that the pairings had opportunities to socialize and connect. Due to the tremendous success of this pilot program, AISA will be supporting the development of this mentorship program for next year’s Winter Session.
ARTS INDIGENOUS STUDENT ADVISING
Arts Indigenous Student Advising (AISA) in the Faculty of Arts encourages and supports the success of new and continuing First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students. As part of Arts Academic Advising, AISA provides students with academic and cultural supports and connections to achieve their personal and academic goals. The team consists of three academic advisors and one student peer position.
This past Winter Session, AISA received funding from the Indigenous Strategic Initiative Fund: Stream 1 Innovative Projects to develop programming to support the academic success of Indigenous students. The team is extremely excited for opportunity to research, and program enhanced services for Indigenous students. The project will continue over the 2023 Summer and Winter session.
FNIS STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
My name is Isabella Corbet and I am a fourth year student pursuing a dual major in First Nations and Indigenous Studies (FNIS) and Honours English Language and Literature. I am a proud member of Tsawwassen First Nation.
Declaring a dual major was the best decision of my degree, as I was able to combine my two passions which interplay off each other very well in my studies. I am currently writing my graduating essay for my English degree. My essay relies on both my English and FNIS backgrounds as the topic is on “ocean as pedagogy” in Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach. I have been assigned Robinson’s novel in at least one class for every year of my degree, so I felt it was the right decision to reciprocate some knowledge into the field of study of the novel by analysing how the ocean is often an underacknowledged source of pedagogy in comparison to the land. Outside of school, I continuously build upon the knowledge I am obtaining from my degree. Some extracurriculars I do include being the Honours representative for the English student association, as well as working for my Nation in the summers as a policy intern. Through the policy intern position, I have learned valuable lessons of engaging and collaborating with many different levels of government in Canada and British Columbia and the complexities that come from being a modern treaty nation.
FNIS has provided me with a special opportunity to grow my education to fit my passions and interests within and outside the classroom. After graduation, I plan on pursuing a master’s degree in journalism. I know the education I am getting from the FNIS department will allow me to amplify Indigenous voices in the writing I will be doing in the future.
Taansii! My name is Jayden Emslie, and I am of mixed settler and Métis descent rooted in Treaty 6. I was born and raised in Quesnel, BC, with very minimal connection with my Indigenous heritage– and a lot of that came from a lack of information regarding where my family came from. I struggled with my identity before coming to UBC. Here, I was able to connect with some resources that helped smoothen this path. CIS was a huge contributing factor to this. After spending some time at the Longhouse in my first year and pursuing familial research projects, I decided to declare a minor in First Nations and Indigenous Studies. In doing so, CIS has opened up innumerable opportunities that I would not have otherwise pursued if it were not for the wonderful program faculty and staff. I will be travelling to Nepal for the Global Indigeneities seminar to supplement my minor requirements in May, and I have had the opportunity to volunteer as an Arts Indigenous Student Advising x Indigenous Leadership Collective Peer Mentor over the last two semesters, where I have gotten to participate in many Arts Indigenous and CIS collaborative events. I am also taking part in the Indigenous Undergraduate Research Mentorship Program (IURMP) and hope to focus on Indigenous New Media (specifically photography and digital media), which ties together my passions for Indigenous Studies and Media Studies– my minor and my degree. I love the Bachelor of Media Studies program, and the First Nations and Indigenous Studies minor complement my degree exceptionally well. Every day, I am more and more convinced that I am exactly where I need to be, and I would like to extend my greatest thanks to CIS.
ISABELLA CORBET
JAYDEN EMSLIE
CIS ALUMNI
My name is Meryl, I am a settler from Haudenosaunee, Mississauga, and Anishinaabe territories. I didn’t originally come to UBC for FNEL, but switching into the program was one of the best things I could have done. I initially took FNEL180 to learn more about a side of linguistics I hadn’t heard much about, but quickly found myself drawn to what I found to be a less clinical, more human side of the field. By the end of the term, I took the leap and changed my major. I don’t think there were any core courses that I didn’t like, but FNEL381 with Daisy and FNEL382 with Mark were absolute highlights and I recommend them to everyone who was looking for a class.
I’ve met, and continue to meet, some of the most wonderful, bright, caring, absolute powerhouse people in the program and greater field of language revitalisation. I often think of the group I was with during the 2017 BC Breath of Life conference and how we laughed as much (if not more) as we worked. I’m truly lucky to have been engaged in the wide variety of work I did while I was a student, in the classroom and outside of it as a project assistant and undergraduate research assistant. The experience I gained broadened my horizons, encouraged my curiosity, and has helped me become more flexible with work.
I’ve been busy since I graduated in May 2022! I packed up my life here and moved back to Algonquin territories for almost a year. While I was away, FNEL’s own Mark Turin reached out asking if I would be interested in finishing a task I started several years ago, while I was working with him as a project assistant. Of course, I agreed, and worked on reformatting and indexing Thangmi Grammar vol. I and II for republishing. Shortly after, I started a contract that brought me back to Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories. Currently I’m building, updating and maintaining desktop and mobile keyboards for “BC” based languages. Though I had never pictured myself in this type of role, I’ve been having such a great time delving into the tech side of the field, and meeting with speakers, educators, and learners of so many different languages.
MERYL BISHOP
10 YEARS OF THE SPA:L’RAVEN
INTERVIEW WITH PAST EDITORS ERICA COMMONS, MAIZE LONGBOAT, AND TAIT GAMBLE
CIS: Briefly introduce yourself. How did you become involved with spa:l’/The Raven?
E: My name is Erica Commons. When I studied at UBC I studied under my maiden name “Baker”, so in all materials I am Erica Baker. I was an FNIS served as the worklearn student working in the FNIS office. This was before CIS existed and we were actually known as FNSP. I was working on the Raven as part of my Worklearn job.
M: Signo, my name is Maize Longboat. I’m Mohawk from the Six Nations of the Grand River in southwestern Ontario, but I was raised in Shíshálh and Squamish territory on the Sunshine Coast. I got involved with the Raven when I was the FNIS programs assistant. In that role I had the opportunity to work on the Raven and lead that as the Editor. I helped grow the publication from kind of a leaflet to a full-fledged magazine, which was pretty cool.
T: My name is Tait and I use she/her pronouns. I’m a white settler from Toronto, Ontario and moved to Vancouver for my undergrad at UBC where I majored in FNIS. In September 2020, I started as the Communications and Outreach Assistant work-learn position with CIS for which the Raven was one of the assigned tasks.
CIS: What were the highlights of working on spa:l’/The Raven?
M: I think my favorite part was thinking about all the different ways that we can expand it. I was just thinking about what were some fun things that we could include. We were looking at how we could get more engaging content, rather than just words from the professors or updates on the Practicum projects. The second thing was working with the designer. It was a blast! I was tasked with all this editorial content, but I got to direct some of the visuals too. I had a really fun time.
T: I liked having the meeting where you draft the contents and get everyone’s opinions on the ideas you have. Either the last edition I worked on or the one before we were commemorating 20 years of FNIS and 25 of FNEL. I had an idea of doing a timeline which I didn’t get to see all the way through, but I remember seeing the edition that Sabrina worked on and it just looked so good. It was just really awesome to see it come to life.
PEOPLE AREN’T JUST DOING THIS AS A CHECK BOX TO GET A DEGREE. THEY ARE DOING REALLY COOL STUFF AND I DO SEE THEM BECOMING LEADERS FOR THEIR COMMUNITY.
CIS: For Erica: As the first editor, do you remember how spa:l’/The Raven came about?
E: I think it was Daniel Heath Justice after he came in as the department chair. What I noticed at the time was that the faculty was giving the department a lot of resources to help communicate the program and its value to stakeholders. All of a sudden, we were doing really cool things like the very first version of the Raven.
Before that, we didn’t really have a very strong brand identity. There was the logo that Tanya Bob’s dad did, but besides that there wasn’t much. The color palette now, the a font, all these things didn’t come until around, I think, when Daniel Heath Justice came in and really got buy in from the Dean to really put resources behind communicating what, at the time, was a very small program.
ERICA COMMONS
Issue 1 2012/13
Issue 2 2013/14
We were like “ok, let’s be intentional about telling people what is happening”. And I feel that way to this day. When people ask me what I studied I talk about how well resourced this program is, the opportunities, the fact that you get to do a Practicum in your undergrad. I don’t think there’s a lot of programs out there like that and the people in the program really do go off and do really important things for their communities. I think this is so impressive. People aren’t just doing this as a check box to get a degree, they are doing really cool stuff and I really do see them becoming leaders for their community or a cause they really care about. I think the Raven was a way to show this and I’m actually really glad to see that there still is that thought and intention behind communicating those stories.
CIS: What challenges did you face while working on spa:l’/The Raven?
E: I think with the first edition of everything you’re trying to get a sense for the look and feel of the project. We didn’t have a roadmap. Whereas now I think there is more of a template to follow.
M: Getting to the point where people had what they needed to create was challenging and then they needed time, weeks or months to be able to fit that into their schedule. It’s nice with this because we’re not doing monthly publications and we were aiming for the beginning of fall. That being said, I don’t want to say the hardest part was bothering people for their content, but it probably was. Especially in the first year it became a magazine, we wanted to try as many different content requests as possible.
T: There’s actually a lot that you do in this position. You do the newsletter, the website, the weekly briefings, the Raven, social media, emails. It was a bit overwhelming, but the previous editor, Sarah, left me in a great position.
I think it’s also just the follow-up. You can be as organized as you possibly want, you can have all the timelines that you can dream of, but because people are busy, it might not happen. Sending emails out to profs was originally very intimidating, but they were always very gracious and kind. I think getting over the outreach part is something that you had to get used to and just accepting it’s going to be late and that’s okay.
CIS: How do you think working on spa:l’/The Raven has impacted you and your future decisions?
E: I always had an aptitude for visual design and communications. I always want creative outlets and these things always come naturally to me. The Raven gave me a way to continue that and now as a working professional I do have to do a lot of visual design and writing. I see the Raven as one of those building blocks that got me to where I am now. I work as a BC public servant working at a crown corp with a mandate to bring Indigenous cultural competency training to construction workers. I’m bringing Indigenous-related topics to an audience that probably doesn’t know much about Indigenous history and culture in Canada and you have to find a way to communicate it and make it digestible.
M: I love how much of an education this was for me in terms of project management. I was being more of an administrator of an idea as opposed to someone who was taking the direction. I did have support from the director of CIS and the staff and all, but I think the number one thing for me was having that creative space to build something that I wanted to build. I had creative control as a student, which makes sense because if you’re a student in the program you’re closest to what would be interesting to students or prospective students. I found that freedom really enjoyable and I would encourage future editors to explore what that means to them.
It’s been a small part of my growth, but it was a very formative and important part. I think it was one of the first projects that I can remember where I really felt a true sense of empowerment to self-direct, but also collaborate with people I wanted to collaborate with. It set the tone for me being able to build my confidence in making things which is something I kept doing in my masters and now in my work too. MAIZE LONGBOAT
Issue 3, 2014/15
Issue 4, 2015/16
T: I think it really affected me. I genuinely considered going into publishing. I just found it was so satisfying to put such a project together. I liked copy editing and liaising with people. As hard as it was, I liked the gathering process and numbering all the articles and seeing it become a draft which then you edit. I liked the back and forth of it.
It taught me a lot about project management. Learning how to make my life easier and how to streamline things was so helpful. I think that helped me grow. It also just helped me gain that skill and practice that skill a little bit more so I can now apply in different ways.
I THINK IT WAS ONE OF THE FIRST PROJECTS THAT I CAN REMEMBER WHERE I FELT A TRUE SENSE OF EMPOWERMENT TO SELF DIRECT, BUT ALSO COLLABORATE WITH PEOPLE I WANTED TO COLLABORATE WITH.
I FEEL THE RAVEN IS VERY UNIQUE TO THE INSTITUTE. I DON’T KNOW OF ANY OTHER DEPARTMENTS OR UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS THAT DO SOMETHING LIKE IT. “
CIS: Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience as the editor of spa:l’/The Raven or any final thoughts on the significance of this magazine?
E: When I was in the program, the program was all encompassing and it was so valuable to me. I didn’t expect going into university that I would have such a strong sense of a friend community (and that’s also an advantage of it being such a small program). I didn’t expect to be so involved in my academics. I went into university thinking I would do visual art and then I decided, when I took an entry level First Nations course that I needed to pivot. So, I’m super thankful that I had a program where I could use my skills and my skills were wanted and desired.
TAIT GAMBLE
Issue 9, 2020/21
Even after graduation, I went to Queens for grad school and Glen Coulthard came through and gave me a big warm hug. Or Daniel who even came to my wedding! It’s things like that where the program was so generous to me and I was excited to have opportunities to be generous back to it.
M: I still keep up with the Ravens. I’m collecting them all. Every time I get a notification saying the new Raven is ready, I am very quick in inputting my name and address to get a copy. Just because UBC and CIS and FNIS were such a big part of my life for so long, I still feel very connected to that community and the Raven is one of the ways I remain connected and I really value that.
I STILL FEEL VERY CONNECTED TO THAT COMMUNITY AND THE RAVEN IS ONE OF THE WAYS I REMAIN CONNECTED AND I REALLY VALUE THAT. “
What it comes down to in my opinion is CIS does really important work and it’s really impactful for many people in Vancouver and beyond. I think the Raven is something to show the excellence of the institution, the activities, the students and the professors. There is cool work that should be talked about and shown.
T: I feel the Raven is very unique to the Institute. I don’t know of any other departments or undergraduate programs that create something like it. It’s a really interesting way to show how FNIS and FNEL have evolved over time and also who has been a part of the program. You get a lot of different faces and stories and it’s a cool way to show what is going on and what the Institute does and how it changed over time.
2022 - 2023 PRACTICUM PRESENTATIONS
“Accountability in Care: Storytelling Methodologies for Measuring Indigenous Patient Experiences”
Hello, my name is Hannah Doyle and I am a settler of European descent from the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee peoples and unceded Algonquin territory and am grateful to have lived, worked and learned on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and TsleilWaututh First Nations. My practicum was unlike any other research class that I have taken. The practical knowledge and opportunity to partner with a community organization not only allowed me to apply the concepts that I learned throughout my degree but also participate in translational research rooted in community interests.
HANNAH DOYLE
Left to right: Hannah Doyle, Tenayah Schaufler, Tanya Bob, David Gaertner, Amanda Coulis, Nakoda Hunter, Delanie Austin
For my placement, I was fortunate enough to work alongside the Indigenous Health Research Team at Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH). The research team is situated in the larger Indigenous Health team at VCH that works to provide equitable access to health services and improve health and wellness for 14 First Nations communities in the VCH region. The research team is currently looking at how we evaluate Indigenous Patient experiences and the ways that we can improve these evaluation strategies to uphold Indigenous knowledge sharing practices in culturally safe frameworks.
This led us to the two research questions that we sought to answer in my practicum project:
How can we better understand Indigenous patient experiences in healthcare?
How can storytelling be used as an approach to understand and evaluate Indigenous patient experiences?
In this project, I conducted a systematic review of the current literature and evaluation strategies in patient experience alongside a series of interviews with Indigenous Elders that work with VCH. With limited research in the applications of Indigenous storytelling methodologies in the field of patient experience, I wanted to understand how the Elders use storytelling in their work with patients and how they saw this method being applied in patient experience evaluation. My project culminated in a final report that was then shared with the VCH team and the Elders.
This project would not have been possible without the support and guidance of Dr. Brittany Bingham and Dr. Andreas Pilarinos. I am extremely grateful for their mentorship and supervision as well as their ongoing support for my research aspirations. Through the highs and lows of my practicum I am grateful to have had the support of the teaching team, my supervisors, and fellow classmates. The practicum was the culmination of all of my learnings throughout the FNIS program and continues to influence how I conduct research today.
Left to right, top to bottom: Hannah Doyle, David Gaerter, Jess Wylie, Andrea Herrera, Tanya Bob
Q&A WITH DR. LINC KESLER
CIS: Can you briefly introduce yourself?
L: My name is Linc Kesler and my Indigenous ancestry is Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge in South Dakota. I grew up in Chicago. Chicago was interesting in the 1950’s. It was a very segregated place with all kinds of issues. I was in the state of Oregon for about 20 years, then I was at UBC for about 20 years and before that I went to school a lot [laughs].
CIS: How did you become involved with Indigenous Studies?
L: I got a job at Oregon State after doing my graduate studies in English at the Univerity of Toronto. The 20 years there was good in some ways and in others it was really difficult. One of the things that happened was that it turned out that the building my office was in was right next to the oldest Indigenous Longhouse on the west coast. It had been there since 1967 and it was very modest. It was a concept basically.
I went down and introduced myself and met some of the students. There were very few and they were quite alienated. I was curious about that. I understood it all too well because I become rather alienated myself. The racial politics in the U.S. was nothing new to me. I had became very alienated in my department by some of the things people said in meetings and so forth. It made it really difficult to concentrate in some respect. Things changed pretty radically at that point. I got involved with another American Indian there, a Navajo woman in the student services role. We started putting our heads together about some things.
The system in Oregon at that time was that there were nine federally recognized tribes and they all had tribal education contractors. So other people were responsible for distributing their education money and interfacing with whoever. We formed a coalition with the contractors and some people from other universities. One of the things we did is we got an office established for Indian students. It took three years for us to get them to agree to it, but after the meeting we made sure they got one or two phone calls a day to the president’s office from these tribal organizations. And it was quite effective.
We then formed a larger coalition and one of the things we worked for was to establish an ethnic studies department. It was difficult and it was frightening at points, but we were successful in that too.
THEY WERE QUITE ALIENATED. I WAS CURIOUS ABOUT THAT. I UNDERSTOOD IT ALL TOO WELL BECAUSE I BECAME QUITE ALIENATED MYSELF.
CIS: How did you start working at UBC?
THE DIFFERENCE IN VANCOUVER WAS THAT THERE WAS A PRETTY ACTIVE COMMUNITY. “
L: Not to long after establishing the ethnic studies department, a friend of mine working in the high school at UBC sent me a job ad for the director of what was then the First Nations Studies Program. Truthfully, I wasn’t impressed with the job ad. We had fought really hard in our ethnic studies effort to have a department and not a program because programs are typically attached to departments and they tend to be condescending towards the programs.
The UBC one was a program, but it was interesting in that it was not part of a department. It was somewhat freestanding. They also weren’t requiring that the director who they were going to hire had an advanced degree. I could see the logic for this if they wanted to hire an Indigenous person, but I thought that if they did this it would not succeed. Universities are very structured places and can be intolerant to things which aren’t structured. Nothing would have happened and it would be an excuse to close down the program. I applied because my wife and I liked coming to Vancouver anyway. I thought if nothing else, if I got an interview, I would tell them what I saw in the job ads and what I thought the pitfalls were of establishing this program this way.
I did get an interview and when I started meeting people, I realized there were actually some pretty serious people here. I could see that there was a little more to work with. There were community people who came to the job talks and I realized there was also community here. In Oregon all the Indians had been removed out of that area. The difference in Vancouver was that there was a pretty active community. I had some decent conversations with people. There were enough in these other departments that I thought might make an interdisciplinary program model actually work. So, I continued with the interview and eventually got offered the job. My wife and I talked it over and decided it was actually worth doing.
CIS: What were the early days of the FNSP job like?
L: I think when I got here the fact that my academic background was in literature, in fact early literature was really beneficial for me. It gave me a way to talk about things in a manner that would not be easily dismissed. If you’re working out of an Indigenous perspective and talk about community and being more holistic, people will listen and nod at you but they don’t know what you mean. They place you into the stereotype of Indigenous people.
I got to UBC and I was the kind of person, even back in Oregon, where I would never walk into a Shakespeare class with a syllabus. I would just ask the students what they wanted to do. We would have a discussion about it and determine the reading list. Same for assignment structures. The students were enfranchised in the process. It wasn’t about me enforcing anything on them.
So I applied the same logic when I arrived to UBC. We had four core courses that had been approved by the Faculty Senate, but they were all just lines in a catalogue. There was a theory seminar, but what theory? A method seminar, what method? A research practicum, but what did that mean? So I met with the students with a preliminary syllabus for the first course I had in mind and I asked them about what they wanted to do and what were their concerns.
“
THEY TOLD ME THEY WOULD RESIST MY ATTEMPTS TO ASSIMILATE THEM. AND I TOLD THEM I DIDN’T WANT TO, I WOULDN’T BE HERE IF THAT WERE MY GOAL.
That group of students were largely graduates of a Langara partnership with the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and they were very politically informed and quite radical. Their major concern was that the university was assimilationist and a neo-colonial institution, which it is, and they told me they would resist my attempts to assimilate them. And I told them I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t be here if that were my goal.
CIS: How did the Practicum come about?
L: I suggested we work with organizations in the community off campus and ask them what research needs they might have that students would be able to work on. The students would work out a design of a research project in collaboration with them and then get feedback on how they did. Students liked the idea, but the faculty were quite horrified because it seemed like it would be out of control. You kind of have to trust the students a bit. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t smart and capable. They were cool and they were smart and they were interesting.
With the help of my colleague I set up a meeting with an organization downtown. I told them the design and they loved it because we were actually going to pay attention to what their needs were. They actually would get to have a say in the evaluation of these projects.
The first summer I cold called 190 organizations. The conversations always went the same way. They would pick up and I would introduce myself and say I was from UBC and they would go really cold. As I kept explaining, the conversation really shifted - it went from this hostile, alienated, abrupt attitude to people being kind of intrigued.
The first year we had 30 different people from different organizations. We had 11 students and they all got placements. They were all positively evaluated and it was a range of organizations. This accomplished several things. This program went from being absolutely invisible to being known in First Nations circles. They knew not just that it existed, but that we were interested in talking with them.
CONNECTION WITH COMMUNITIES IS THE MODEL THAT WE’RE WORKING WITH AND THAT’S WHAT IS DRIVING OUR PROGRAM. IT’S PRETTY INTERESTING BECAUSE THIS IS ABSOLUTELY STILL NOT THE DESIGN OF INDIGENOUS STUDIES ANYWHERE ELSE, AS FAR AS I KNOW .
The way our program is set up is that we’re constantly asking the community what they want. What do they think is important? If they tell us sovereignty is important, then we need to make sure we have a curriculum surrounding sovereignty. But if they tell us they have other issues that are not abstract issues of sovereignty, then we’re going to do that because connection with communities is the model that we’re working with and that’s what is driving our program. It’s pretty interesting because this is absolutely still not the design of Indigenous studies anywhere else, as far as I know.
CIS: What was your experience with the FNIS/FNEL merge into CIS?
L: The whole time that happened I was working in central administration and I came back to teach but then COVID hit so I didn’t get much interaction with anybody. It was all online and then I was away on leaves and then I retired, so I don’t know how it worked out.
VANCOUVER AS A PLACE FOR INDIGENOUS STUDIES, IT’S LIKE THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD. YOU GET TO TALK TO THE ENTIRE INDIGENOUS WORLD OF CANADA AND THE U.S. EVERYONE COMES TO VANCOUVER SOONER OR LATER.
I was really not in favor of the merger. I thought it was potentially quite a problem. I wasn’t there, I was in central administration and I could offer a perspective, but no one had to listen to it.
I’ve been told different versions, sometimes conflicting, by different people. One theory was the Dean thought the units were both too small and that they would be stronger as a combined unit. There was some investment in the program working. They didn’t want it to fall apart. One of my conditions upon taking a central role was that things were stable with FNSP. I wasn’t going to go to central administration to watch the program fall apart. We worked out an understanding that this was a different design. It was a different design for a reason.
FNIS was sort of stable but the language program was not because of the internal dynamics of the program. It was a real problem of how it was going to survive. So, I think the agenda was that putting the two programs together would bring stability to the language one. But, what would the effect of that be on FNIS?
I kind of thought that in the long run language is such an important part of Indigenous everything that it might really make sense, and if it worked out, it might be great and innovative. But the problem in the short run was recruiting people into that design. It’s a small community of scholars, they all know each other. For a while we were recruiting quite well because we were on a pretty serious roll.
Vancouver as a place to do Indigenous studies, it’s like the best place in the world. You get to talk to the entire Indigenous world of Canada and the U.S. Everyone comes to Vancouver sooner or later. Even people from remote communities come here for meetings.
Still, I was really surprised that the practicum survived as long as it has. Teaching a practicum is really difficult and time consuming. It’s there to teach you at every step of the way. It’s a pain in the ass. Part of the reason was the difficulty in hiring additional faculty, which in early years was evident. There were no graduate programs at that level. We had searches that went for two or three years before they were successful. We would get maybe 40 applications, but when I was in the English department in Oregon, if we put pretty much anything out, we would get 300. It would come down to two or three people, maybe, and they would work or they wouldn’t.
Pasang
Sherpa & Charlotte Taylor
GLOBAL INDIGENOUS LEADERSHIP ON CLIMATE ACTION
On April 11th, 2023, an all-Indigenous panel gathered at the UBC Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre to discuss global Indigenous leadership on climate action. Dr. Pasang Yangjee Sherpa moderated the event.
Chief Ninawa Huni Ku from the Amazon Region in Brazil shared his remarks via a recording filmed in the province of Acre. He emphasized the vital role of the Huni Kui in defending the lands and waters of the Amazon Rainforest, and discussed CO2lonialism (a term coined by the Indigenous Environmental Network to describe the systematic continuation of the “colonial norm” via carbon emissions) to point out commodification, commercialization, unsustainable
crisis. She mentioned that such push for “false solutions” has launched us toward a climate discourse without complexity. She also shared the challenges she faced over the years in advocating for the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous Knowledge in academic research and climate policymaking, and noted that “Nothing is impossible if you’re passionate…if you move ahead with your collective efforts.”
Dr. Bernard Perley from Tobique First Nation shared two stories from his community and discussed future directions for a participatory climate justice research agenda. He remarked, “The end of the world is something that is at the forefront of everybody’s
This semester, Professor David Gaertner led our FNIS 454 class through the process of designing, prototyping, and presenting a poetry film based on Musqueam weaver and knowledge keeper Debra Sparrow’s work, “Know Who You Are and Know Where You Come From”. With the expert consultation of “Vancouver’s Poet Laureate” Fiona Lam and Debra Sparrow herself, the students spent the term storyboarding, prototyping, filming, compiling, and editing our films.
At each stage, Debra and Fiona provided us with in-person feedback on how we could improve our projects technically and stylistically. Not only was their involvement necessary to the narrative success of our films, but it also allowed us to approach filmmaking through an empathy-based design framework: a set of collaborative techniques that became invaluable to us throughout the term.
As it stands, the mistreatment of traditional materials has long defined the settler-Indigenous relationship in the context of both academia and new media. It is for this reason that we worked in
FNIS454 POETRY TOUR
Cass Minkus
respectful consideration of potential appropriation and misuse rather than in spite of it.
Prior to filming, our class was grateful for the opportunity to join Debra on a bus tour of Vancouver as we retraced the steps of her and her ancestors. We were taken to historically significant locations like Stanley Park and Spanish Banks. At each stop Debra would tell us stories of her grandfather and the Musqueam history relevant to the site. When collecting our footage, many of us decided to return to these locations. It was our intention to celebrate the themes pertinent to Debra’s poem by retelling the story in a way that facilitates positive transformation while also preserving the original context.
The adaptation of oral histories into digitized forms is one of our most daunting tasks as students in this realm of study. Still, we recognize that carrying on Indigenous traditions in spaces that may not be familiar or comfortable to us is necessary for their survival, as is representative of Debra’s own work and that of which we attempt to honour with our own.
Everything considered, it must be disclosed that each student in FNIS 454 comes from a unique academic background, with many of us having no prior experience in the realm of Indigenous new media. Having anticipated this, Professor Gaertner split us into three groups based on our self-perceived strengths in either creativity, editing, or task management. From there, we formed small groups of three to six with each member taking on a role best suited to their talents and previous experiences. Nevertheless, many of us did step out of our comfort zones in order to learn new skills, which in some cases, led to the discovery of new passions.
Looking back on this time, I believe we have all walked away from the experience having acquired new collaborative and technical skills that we are sure to take with us into the future. And so, on behalf of FNIS 454, we thank Professor David Gaertner, Fiona Lam, and Debra Sparrow for this transfer of knowledge, and moreover, we express our gratitude to Debra Sparrow for allowing us to become part of her story, and her, a part of ours.
ALWAYS ITALICISE: HOW TO WRITE WHILE COLONISED
Alice Te Punga Somerville
In September 2022, a few months after I arrived at UBC, my first book of poetry was published. I have written poems for years, and had published individual poems in various places, and had been part of writing groups and poetry readings, and had ‘publish a book of poetry’ in my lineup of new year’s resolutions forever… and then finally it was in the world! Always Italicise: how to write while colonised has already had a busy life –it won an award in New Zealand in May 2023 and since December 2023 it has been accessible in North America from University of Hawai’i Press.
The title of the collection feels like a bit of an inside nerd joke: those of us who hang around universities (yes, including in Indigenous Studies) learn all kinds of writing conventions like when to use, or not use, italics. If we use italics to show a language is foreign, what does it mean to italicise my own Indigenous language when I am writing on my own land? For this reason, I decided to write the entire collection in italics and only the Māori language is in plain type.
When Always Italicise came out, I published a short piece about the collection, called ‘Writing while colonised,’ in an online Māori/Pacific weekly magazine, e-tangata. It starts:
This is not a book about someone’s life. This poetry does not describe all that I am as a person. And yet, and yet. So much of me is in here: this is partly because colonialism insidiously inserts itself into every part of one’s life – and partly because writing does this too. I am here, on every page. I am here, struggling against structures of power that are represented and metaphorized in conventions of writing. I am here, in every decision about footnotes, about the language in which a thing is written; I am here, knowing the world is shaped by the decisions we make (and unmake) about when to italicize.
The book is in four parts: ‘reo’ is about language,’ ‘invisible ink’ is about racism, ‘mahi’ is about my work as an academic, and ‘aroha’ contains tributes to people I admire who have passed away. I’d unsuccessfully sent poetry manuscripts to presses and poetry competitions for years and those included poems that connected with all areas of my life. One day I decided to pull together the poems that connected to a more focussed range of topics: writing, colonialism, language loss and revitalization, racism, and my work as an academic. I feared it would make things too specific – maybe even too niche – but it turned out that the tighter focus was what worked. Even the poems about academia have found a connection with readers who work in other kinds of organisations: someone who works in government policy translated the poem ‘An Indigenous woman scholar’s prayer’ into Māori and it only took a couple of tweaks to make it speak directly into the work that Māori do in that context. I guess what I say to my students all the time is true: when we go deeper and more specific in our writing and thinking, there is where we find breadth and wider connection.
Teaching and working in Critical Indigenous Studies for many years, I have often found myself coming back to the politics of writing… and how this connects to issues like sovereignty but also how it connects to who I am. We know in Indigenous Studies that position (where you are) is crucial but it’s only part of the story; another part is positionality (who you are/ where you speak or write from).
When I was a student (at the University of Auckland, and then at Cornell University), and during my academic life ever since, I have loved reading Indigenous writers who walk a fine and inspiring line between critical and creative work: poetry that speaks of politics; fiction that is more ‘true’ than history textbooks I was forced to read at school; essays made of paragraphs that are lyrical or poetic, essays that weave together anecdote and reflection and humour and footnotes and critical arguments, and essays that move between paragraphs and poetry as if that is a totally normal thing to do.
In 2000, the year I started my PhD, Steven Winduo (an Indigenous academic and writer from Papua New Guinea) published an essay about the idea of the ‘Pacific writer-scholar:’ people who work in the creative and the critical spheres. Perhaps some examples from this part of the world would be Lee Maracle, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and our very own FNIS professor Daniel Heath Justice.
In FNIS 300 we talk a lot about the politics, risks, violence and possibilities of writing. I think scholarship and poetry – and Indigenous work in the academy – can attend to the limits of colonialism but also to exceed them. I finished the piece I wrote about Always Italicise, by refusing that idea that writing is only a colonial act:
…writing while colonised is not the limit of what is going on here. We also write while anticolonial, we write while intersectional, we write while revolutionary, we write while sitting with the breadths and depths and gaps and possibilities of who we are. We write while Indigenous.
CULTIVATING CONNECTION:
A YEAR OF COMMUNITY-FOSTERING EVENTS AT CIS
Mariana
Mota
This year, CIS spent the 2022/23 winter and summer terms orchestrating community building activities centering Indigenous cultures. From creative, to educational, to plain fun, CIS went out of its way to reach out and bring our community closer together.
The year started with AISA and CIS organizing beading events which encouraged participants to engage in traditional beading practices. Students were welcome to both learn and teach the skill as a way of breaking down the barriers between “teacher” and “student” while letting their creativity flow.
This idea followed into culinary explorations, showcased in the NDN Taco-Making workshop and the Dumpling and Flags events which once more looked to marry culture and community in an intimate way. Participants were invited to learn and share the ways in which traditions have survived through food while also bonding through its communion.
CIS also demonstrated interdepartmental collaboration, uniting with various programs to highlight different Indigenous-related issues. One such event was the workshop on Biodegradable Prayer flags hosted at the Asian Center. This concept was also echoed through the Climate and Biodiversity Luncheon which looked to connect participants with guests from the Pacific Islands. Here, knowledge keepers from a multitude of areas were able to share their experiences and stories, once again fostering an interconnected and global perspective of Indigenous issues, highlighting continued learning away from the classroom.
On Indigenous Peoples Day, CIS hosted the Decolonizing Cartography event which took place in the Irving K. Barber Learning Center and encouraged people to clarify their understanding of Canadian Indigeneity through the interactive “Indigenous Atlas of Canada” map. The interactive experience opened
doors for immersion into Canadian Indigeneity in a new, fun way in order to demonstrate a more profound grip of the legacy of the land we live and learn on.
In line with this sentiment, the CIS community was also invited to embark on a Decolonization Tour created in collaboration with the Belkin Art Gallery. The partnership set the stage for participants to learn, unravel, and explore the meanings and history behind Vancouver site-specific Indigenous artworks. Each artwork was selected selected to highlight the narratives of the people, land, and culture within the landscape around us while also bringing forward the ongoing process of decolonization.
The academic year reached its zenith with the Global Indigenous Leadership on Climate Action Conference, where Indigenous leaders, scholars, and activists gathered at UBC to discuss the diverse
Indigenous perspectives surrounding climate change. This conference brought together communities on a global scale, underscoring the pivotal role of Indigeneity in working toward a more sustainable future.
Through this kaleidoscope of events, CIS demonstrated its unwavering commitment to cultivating connection – to culture, community, and the critical issues that shape our world. These events were a way to celebrate resilience and foster intellectual exploration through community. As CIS continues to weave this tapestry of Indigenous engagement, it leaves an indelible mark on UBC, inspiring a deeper understanding of Indigenous knowledge and creating a safe space where this diversity is not only celebrated but embraced.
Image from Decolonizing Cartography Event
Image from NDN Taco-making Event
CIS GRADUATE PROFILE
SUMMER TYANCE
Aniin, hello! Anongkwe nindizhnikaaz, Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek nindoonjiba migizi miniiwaa awuse nindoodem. I am a Two-Spirit, Anishinaabekwe from Gull Bay First Nation, ON. I was offered early acceptance to UBC in 2018, and was hesitant to moving out West so far from home. I decided to attend the Indigenous Destination UBC Program which was designed to aid First Nations, Métis, and Inuit high school attendees learn more about transitioning to university. This is where I met friends whom I still call close friends today. Initially, the program I was thinking of majoring in was Political Science then minoring in Indigenous Studies, but after taking a few courses offered by CIS I changed my mind quite quickly and decided to swap and minor in Poli Sci. Being surrounded by other Indigenous alumni, taught by Indigenous professors, and learning decolonization methodologies became a passion. I was keen to find solutions in ways to support Indigenous peoples and in particular, in the justice and legal sectors.
My practicum with the BC First Nations Justice Council was incredibly eye-opening, and the research project is still a source I look to. This degree has proven to provide foundational knowledge that continues to aid my understanding and research. Some of the most engaging and memorable courses being; FNIS 310: Theory Seminar with Dr. Dory Nason, FNEL 480: Endangered Language Documentation & Revitalization with Dr. Mark Turin, FNIS 456: Queer, Indigiqueer, and TwoSpirit Indigenous Studies with Dr. Daniel Heath Justice, and FNIS 452: Indigenous Social Movements – “Red Power and its Interlocutors” with Dr. Glen Coulthard. These were courses that reinvigorated my desire to continue my studies. I am now currently in my 1L in the Juris Doctor (JD) and a Juris Indigenarum Doctor (JID) joint degree law program at the University of Victoria.
Bernard Perley presenting at the 2022/23 Practicum
CIS GRADUATES 2022/23
We at the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies would like to extend a huge congratulations to our Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 graduates! We are incredibly proud of all that you have achieved while being students at UBC and look forward to seeing your continued success in the future.
ANNA EVERETT | Geography Major, First Nations Endangered Languages Minor
CELINA MEDRANO-MILLER | Linguistics Honours, First Nations Endangered Languages Major
GRANT BIRD | First Nations and Indigenous Studies Major
TENAYAH SCHAUFLER | First Nations and Indigenous Studies Major, Psychology Major
LAUREN SOLMES | Political Science Major, First Nations and Indigenous Studies Minor
HANNAH DOYLE | First Nations and Indigenous Studies Major, Integrated Sciences Major
DELANIE AUSTIN | First Nations and Indigenous Studies Major, Integrated Science Major
CHER VEZINA | Bachelor of International Economics, First Nations and Indigenous Studies Minor
CASEY COOPER | Psychology Major, First Nations and Indigenous Studies Minor
BILLIE DAUMLER | Psychology Major, First Nations and Indigenous Studies Minor
TYRA JONES | Sociology Major, First Nations and Indigenous Studies Minor
SUMMER TYANCE | First Nations and Indigenous Studies Major, Political Science Minor
DECLAN TAYLOR | Environmental Sciences Honours, First Nations and Indigenous Studies Minor
FNIS
Term 1
• FNIS 100 - Indigenous Foundations
• FNIS 220 - Representation and Indigenous Cultural Politics
• FNIS 300 - Writing First Nations
• FNIS 310 - Critical Indigenous Theory Seminar
• FNIS 400 - Practicum/ Advanced Research
FNEL Term 1
• FNEL 180 - Introduction to Endangered Language Documentation and Revitalization
• FNEL 282 - Structures of Endangered Languages: Conservation and Revitalization
• FNEL 381 - Biocultural Diversity: Language, Community, and Environment
COMMUNITY-BASED
Term 1
• FNEL 101 - Introduction to a Salish Language I
• FNEL 201 - Introduction to a Salish Language II
• INLB 201D/401D - Indigenous Arts and Storytelling
• INLB 201F/401F - Dene Internationalism
• INLB 210 - Land and Indigenous SelfDetermination: Introduction to Methods and Application
Term 2
• FNIS 210 - Indigenous Politics and Self-Determination
• FNIS 320 - Critical Indigenous Methodologies and Ethics
• FNIS 400 - Practicum/Advanced Research Seminar
• FNIS 452 - Indigenous Social Movements
• FNIS 454 - Indigenous New Media
Term 2
• FNEL 380 - Technologies for Endangered Language Documentation and Revitalization
• FNEL 481 - Heritage Resources in Endangered First Nations Language Revitalization
Term 2
• FNEL 102 - Introduction to a Salish Language I
• FNEL 202 - Introduction to a Salish Language II
• INLB 201G - Fishing and Collage: Indigenous Asethetic Practice
• INLB 201H - Living Dene Laws
• INLB 210 - Land and Indigenous Self-Determination: Introduction to Theoretical Perspectives
• INLB 220 - Land and Indigenous Self-Determination: Introduction to Methods and Application
• FNEL 191A - Introduction to an Indigenous Language I
• FNEL 480A - Endangered Language Documentation and Revitalization
