Thank you for your participation in the storytelling series. What will your next steps be? You may wish to consider bringing together faculty, staff and students at your institutions to continue the dialogue.
The following event has been organized at TRU:
Next Steps in Indigenizing TRU
Monday, April 3, 2017
12:00-2:30 PM
Room OL127
This session follows up on the “Towards Indigenizing Higher Ed” online storytelling series that was held via livestream on February 2 & 15, and March 1 & 15.
The goal of this face-to-face session is to bring members of the storytelling panels and the TRU community together to discuss how to put the principles and themes brought up in the discussions into practice across all areas of TRU.
A light lunch will be served from 12:00-12:30 PM. RSVP to learning@tru.ca by Friday, March 31st.
This session is brought to you by Open Learning, the Aboriginal Education Office, and the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT). This event is also supported by the TRUFA Equity Committee
April 3, 2017 at 9:48 pm
There are three issues that need addressing:
1. The training and consequent hiring of indigenous faculty is vital to the success of indigenizing any curriculum, program, or campus.
2. The teaching of First Nations students must be according to the needs expressed by the communities themselves. We must learn to listen to the requests coming from the bands and nations.To learn how to listen, the university administration and faculty must become familiar with the vision for education First Nations people in Canada have carved out for themselves. This vision can be found on their website: http://www.afn.ca/en/policy-areas/education. I wrote a paper addressing the gulf separating the government’s vision of FN education and the vision of the nations themselves, and I would be happy to share it with you.
3. The training of first Nations people needs to be funded with an attitude of investment rather than the current cost-recovery or business model that creates barriers rather than opportunities.