Author Archives: dloti

POST 5 – Classroom Climate: Territory Acknowledgment – David Loti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LApHrjFPFp4

Visited 21 November 2018

 

Drs. Lisa Nathan and Liisa Holsti, UBC faculty members, discuss land acknowledgement practices as a way to understand the place and history of the UBC community. Nathan indicates that professions rooted in knowledge management have been complicit in colonization and that the land acknowledgement can be a piece in changing that trajectory. She also recognizes that by itself a territory acknowledgement does little, but it can be the start of a meaningful conversation.

Post 4 – Regions differ in Indigenous acknowledgement at Canadian universities – David Loti

https://news.ubc.ca/2017/03/01/regions-differ-in-indigenous-acknowledgement-at-canadian-universities/

Visited 20 November 2018

 

This article summarizes Linc Kesler, Rima Wilkes, Aaron Duong, and Howard Ramos’s academic study, a first of its kind, “Canadian University Acknowledgement of Indigenous Lands, Treaties and Peoples”, published in Canadian Review of Sociology in February 2017. The study investigates land acknowledgements at Canadian universities. The article quotes UBC Professor Linc Kesler, “Acknowledgements indicate respect for Indigenous communities and bring attention to an often ignored history.” He continues, “It sets a context for present relationships among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples that can be thought of in a more deliberate way.” The summary also indicates that, “The researchers also question whether or not acknowledgement helps promote reconciliation or merely acts as a ‘tokenistic practice of checking the box.’”

Post 3 – The Four Parts of (Meeting) Speech – David Loti

https://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/the-four-parts-of-meeting-speech.php

Visited 13 November 2018

 

American University Professor Andrew Taylor summarizes Bill Torbert, Dalmar Fisher, and David Rooke’s four primary types of speech: framing, advocating, illustrating, and inquiring. This is a potentially useful categorization as it pertains to navigating conflict between Indigenous and non-Indigenous parties. Taylor writes, “If everyone in a meeting brought more intent and craft to the way they speak and the way they listen (don’t advocate a particular strategy in the form of a question, for example), and if every meeting began with a clear framing of what it was for and what assumptions it is built upon, the world would be vastly improved.”

Post 2 – Indigenous Literatures Matter: A Talk With Daniel Heath Justice – David Loti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AttZD8LVqA

Visited 9 November 2018

Responding to the observation that non-Indigenous people often view Indigenous people as insignificant and lacking, UBC Professor of First Nations & Indigenous Studies and Director of the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies Daniel Heath Justice speaks about the hardest book he has ever written: Why Indigenous Literatures Matter and why he agrees with Craig Womack’s important statement that the American canon is part of the Indigenous canon as opposed to the reverse. Justice maintains a posture of hope in the midst and history of conflict, misunderstanding, and oppression in Indigenous communities.

Post 1 – UNESCO – Intercultural Dialogue – David Loti

https://en.unesco.org/themes/intercultural-dialogue

Visited 31 October 2018

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization presents its philosophical approach towards world peace: “Today, peace requires ever more active investments, enlightened leadership, powerful educational values, extensive research in social innovation and a progressive media world.” The goal of UNESCO’s vision for intercultural dialogue is to promote ways in which different sexes, races, religions, and cultures can coexist, furthering human rights and justice.

Post 5 – The Hard Truth about Reconciliation – David Loti

https://canadianart.ca/features/the-hard-truth-about-reconciliation/

Visited 29 October 2018

 

This article presents a perspective of how the arts struggles to represent Indigenous voices and how colonization is still happening, stating that “most curators, arts administrators, funders, policy makers and decision makers are non-Indigenous gatekeepers to the institutions.” Curator and Aboriginal Curatorial Collective executive director Clayton Windatt states, “It’s called truth and reconciliation—and we still haven’t really finished the truth part yet.”

Post 4 – Unceded territory – Megaphone – David Loti

http://www.megaphonemagazine.com/unceded_territory

Visited 24 October 2018

 

This 2016 article provides a helpful overview of some of the history and varying perspectives of land acknowledgements in Vancouver and Victoria. Okanagan Grand Chief Stewart Phillip offers a hopeful perspective saying, “Its [sic] encouraging to know we have made that kind of progress [to hear official acknowledgements . . . from Vancouver city council]. We’ve come a long way from the dark days of racist denial that existed when I first got involved” while Musqueam First Nations activist Audrey Siegl (sχɬemtəna:t) says these sorts of acknowledgements are “just tokenism, pretty but empty words, spoken so we will be pacified for at least a little bit longer.” Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps states, “It’s simple, really—it is their territory,” referring to the Songhees and Esquimalt people. However beyond a political platitude I wonder what it actually means to say that the city of Victoria “is their territory.”

POST 3 – Indigenous Foundations – Land & Rights – David Loti

https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/land__rights/

Visited 23 October 2018

 

The leading paragraph following the quote from Okanagan author and educator Jeanette Armstrong is informative and convicting:

 

“For many Aboriginal cultures, land means more than property– it encompasses culture, relationships, ecosystems, social systems, spirituality, and law. For many, land means the earth, the water, the air, and all that live within these ecosystems. As scholars Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua point out using historical examples, ‘to separate Indigenous peoples from their land’ is to ‘preempt Indigenous sovereignty.’ Land and Aboriginal rights are inextricably linked.”

 

This page also provides expositions on Aboriginal rights and Aboriginal title and summaries of landmark Canadian court cases around these issues.

POST 2 – PBS – Independent Lens – March Point The Film – David Loti

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/marchpoint/film.html

Visited 9 October 2018

 

This site offers contextual background to March Point: three Swinomish youth “in trouble with drugs and alcohol . . . are asked to make a documentary about the impact of two oil refineries on their tribal community.” The film “follows the boys’ journey on their path from childhood to adulthood as they come to understand themselves, their tribe and the environmental threat to their people.” This site also links to the Longhouse Media site, https://www.longhousemedia.org/.

POST 1 – Justin Trudeau on Indigenous Issues in Canada: The VICE News Interview – David Loti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9zDYXqJusk

Visited 17 October 2018

 

Justin Trudeau declares that Canadians have discriminated against Indigenous persons for centuries and that in 2016 Canada designated $8.6 billion to aid Canadian First Nations. In his discussions with Indigenous youth in Shoal Lake 40, a community that itself has unclean drinking water while the lake on which it sits supplies water to Winnipeg, Trudeau reports that youth want more counselors and people who will talk with them and listen and more after school programs. Trudeau sees “consultations,” “capacity building,” and “respectful partnership” as First Nations’ way forward from the oppressive legacy of the Indian Act.