Research and Resources

Indigenous Learning Pathways (ILP) is a multi-course online training program currently in development and is being led in collaboration between CTLT Indigenous Initiatives and the Orientations & Onboarding program in Central HR, and involves collaboration and support from numerous staff, faculty, and programs across UBC. Through carefully curated spotlights of in-person and online resources for Indigenous-focused learning already available at UBC, ILP supports new employees to meaningfully and respectfully engage with Indigenous histories, knowledges, perspectives, and realities, in their role at UBC. Courses are self-directed and can be taken by individual learners or by entire teams or cohorts as part of their collective professional development goals. 

What I Learned in Class Today: Indigenous Issues in the Classroom is a research project that explores difficult discussions of Aboriginal issues that take place in classrooms at the University of British Columbia. Students frequently report troubling and sometimes traumatic discussions of cultural issues in class.

in/relation contains facilitation tools and support for those choosing to initiate and lead these learning conversations as well as sample learning modules and a framework for organizing the learning. This website also contains the background and research that informed the development of in/relation and houses stories of how the resource has been applied.

Indigenous Foundations is an information resource on key topics relating to the histories, politics, and cultures of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. This website was developed to support students in their studies, and to provide instructors, researchers and the broader public with a place to begin exploring topics that relate to Aboriginal peoples, cultures, and histories. Indigenous Foundations was developed by the First Nations Studies Program at the University of British Columbia, located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people.

Time and Place at UBC: Our Histories and Relations is a UBC-Indigenous Timeline. The timeline documents UBC’s key historical moments with Indigenous peoples, while locating these moments in broader contexts at institutional, provincial, and national levels (i.e., UBC, BC, and Canada). 

The Berger Inquiry educational resource is an interactive new-media tool that offers learners hands-on experience examining the evidence to learn more about Indigenous rights, history, activism, consultation processes, economic development and resource management.

The Canadian Parliament established the Berger Inquiry on March 21, 1974 to review plans to build an oil and gas pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley. This inquiry was commissioned by the Government of Canada to investigate the social, environmental, and economic impact of a proposed gas pipeline that would run through the Yukon and the Mackenzie River Valley of the Northwest Territories. This proposed pipeline became known as the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline.

The Power of a Name is a film series that examines the contested history of naming practices at UBC’s first year student residence, Totem Park, and features stories of relationships between UBC and Indigenous communities. It encourages members of the university community to think critically about their relationships to the unceded lands of the Musqueam people on which we are privileged to study, work and live.

Where Are We in the World? is a series of short films developed to engage UBC students and the wider public with sites around the Lower Mainland shaped by histories of struggle and agency that are often ignored. The focus of this initiative is to provide a strong foundation to answer questions of “where” UBC and City of Vancouver are located. Two of the completed films in this series explore Vancouver’s Chinatown and the Komagata Maru Incident of 1914. The next piece, produced with the involvement of Musqueam youth, will explore Musqueam legal histories and relationships between Musqueam and UBC.