Aboriginal Initiatives – Classroom Climate Series

Uncovering Indigenous Stories at this “Place of Mind”: Bridging the Digital World and Place at UBC

9:30am – 11:30am
Irving K Barber Learning Centre, CTLT, Seminar Room 2.22 A/B
Classroom Climate Series, CTLT Aboriginal Initiatives

UBC’s rich history in relation to local Indigenous peoples is often hidden or overlooked. Knowing and sharing aspects of this history as members of the UBC community learning and working on unceded Musqueam territory is crucial. In this session, we will introduce some of the new digital resources that we have developed to revitalize local histories on campus and integrate them into teaching and learning practices. Using technologies to help foster stronger connections to place is a core component of our work at CTLT Aboriginal Initiatives. The resources that we will explore in this session include:

Oral Histories As Told by Larry Grant – a set of interviews that reflect the knowledge, memories, and views of Musqueam Elder Larry Grant as an individual in 2010 and 2011 using an innovative research tool called the Interactive Video/Transcript Viewer

Totem Park Residence Educational Film Series – a film series regarding the historical context of the site known today as Totem Park Residence, the contested history of its building naming processes, and stories of UBC-Indigenous relations

Time and Place at UBC: Our Histories and Relations – a website and timeline that document UBC’s key historical moments with Aboriginal peoples while locating these moments in broader contexts at UBC, BC, and Canada

We will discuss how these resources can be embedded in your classes, programs, or services, and invite you to share your feedback and ideas as well. We will also share stories regarding the creation processes behind the resources, including what motivated us to create them and what we have learned throughout the collaborative processes we’re engaged in.

Please feel free to bring your laptop to browse our resources during the session. We will also have some laptops available for participants to share.

About the facilitators:

Sarah Ling:

In collaboration with campus units and local First Nations peoples, Sarah develops multimedia resources and professional development opportunities that encourage students, faculty and staff to foster a better understanding of local Indigenous issues and UBC’s relations with First Nations communities. She is the co-founder of Decolonizing Knowledge, an initiative that serves to reconcile misrepresentations of Indigenous peoples on campus and facilitated the naming process for the həm̓ləsəm̓ and q̓ələχən Houses at Totem Park Residence. She’s a project co-lead for Knowing the Land Beneath Our Feet, which aims to facilitate ethical community engagement by providing a physical and virtual Indigenous walking tour of the UBC Vancouver campus. As a Master’s student in the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program, she works with the Musqueam Nation to revitalize the intercultural history of Chinese market gardening in their community.

Amy Perreault:

Amy Perreault is the Strategist for Aboriginal Initiatives at the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) at the University of British Columbia on the traditional and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. She works with staff, faculty groups, training programs for teaching assistants, new faculty, and administrators, to support the development of a higher standard of professionalism in conducting discussions of Indigenous and other contentious social issues in curricular settings. Amy is a co-developer and researcher for the educational resource What I Learned in Class Today: Aboriginal Issues in the Classroom and manages the development of Indigenous Foundations. Work on these projects as well as her own experience as an Indigenous student at UBC clearly identify the complexities and challenges of classroom conversations involving contentious cross-cultural discussions, and in specific discourse around Indigenous curriculum.

Hanae Tsukada:

Hanae develops resources and programs to create respectful and productive classroom environments, particularly in teaching and discussing Indigenous topics and other socially and politically sensitive issues. In collaboration with UBC community members, she has developed an online teaching and learning resource called Time and Place at UBC: Our Histories and Relations to foster awareness of historical layers of the time and place that we share at UBC on Musqueam territory today. She has a PhD in Educational Studies from UBC. Her doctoral research critically examined the intersection of the internationalization of universities and international students’ experiences in Japan.

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The Classroom Climate Series is a year-long program where faculty, teaching assistants, researchers, graduate students, and staff from all over the University have the opportunity to challenge their own assumptions about what they have learned about Aboriginal people, become more critically aware of their teaching and research practices, and learn more about how they engage with topics that challenge their own social location within the institution. It combines a series of mini-class lectures, interactive group activities, and one-on-one discussions, and as a result, participants gain skills to create a more clearly developed and informed approach to understanding and teaching about Aboriginal and other socially contentious issues in a curricular setting.

You can find out more about Classroom Climate via the wiki page at http://wiki.ubc.ca/Classroom_Climate