Building Connections: Mobilizing Indigenous Histories for Social Change

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

Speaker : Dale Saddleback, University of Alberta

Date: November 10, 2021, from 3:00-4:30 p.m.

Register here: 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.

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

Speakers: Dr. Alan Corbiere, Dr. Brenda Macdougall et Dr. Pierrot Ross-Tremblay

Date: November 10, 2021, from 7:00-8:30 p.m. 

Register herehttps://uottawa-ca.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GJB8SyxrSfavslR7IviZ2A

  • Dr. Alan Corbiere (Citizen M’Chigeeng First Nation), professor @ York University and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous History of North America, Department of History, York University.
  • Dr. Brenda Macdougall, University Research Chair in Metis Family and Community Traditions and Director, Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies, University of Ottawa. 
  • Dr. 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.

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.