Tag Archives: ideafest

UVic Author Celebration Feature: The Right Relationship

The annual UVic Author Celebration is happening TODAY as part of Ideafest. Join us as we celebrate books written by UVic authors, including an engaging panel discussion on issues facing First Nations communities.

When: (Today) March 8, 2018
Where: University Bookstore
Time: 3:00-4:30pm

The author panel includes: John Borrows (Law), Michele Tanaka (Education), Paul Whitinui (Education), and Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams (Education). Rebecca Johnson (Indigenous Law Research Unit) will moderate.

This week, we will highlight the books written by members of the author panel.

The Right Relationship by edited by John Borrows and Michael Coyle was released last year by University of Toronto Press.

About the Book

In The Right Relationship, John Borrows and Michael Coyle bring together a group of renowned scholars, both indigenous and non-indigenous, to cast light on the magnitude of the challenges Canadians face in seeking a consensus on the nature of treaty partnership in the twenty-first century. The diverse perspectives offered in this volume examine how Indigenous people’s own legal and policy frameworks can be used to develop healthier attitudes between First Peoples and settler governments in Canada. While considering the existing law of Aboriginal and treaty rights, the contributors imagine what these relationships might look like if those involved pursued our highest aspirations as Canadians and Indigenous peoples. This timely and authoritative volume provides answers that will help pave the way toward good governance for all.

About the Editors

John Borrows is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria. He teaches in the area of Constitutional Law, Indigenous Law, and Environmental Law. In addition to teaching generations of students at his home base in UVic’s law school, he has served as visiting professor in the US, Australia and New Zealand. As a global leader in Indigenous law, Borrows’ ideas helped shape the recommendations of both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. He has led engagement with Indigenous legal traditions in Canada and internationally, bringing to light some of the injustices, inequalities and conditions of Indigenous people. His scholarship has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada. Recently, he was named the 2017 Killam Prize winner in Social Sciences by the Canada Council for the Arts. Borrows is Anishinabe/Ojibway and a member of the Chippewa of the Nawash First Nation in Ontario, Canada.

Michael Coyle is an associate professor and Director of Graduate Programs in the Faculty of Law at Western University. He has over twenty-five years of experience in mediating disputes between the Crown and First Nations.

Praise for the Book

“This book presents an innovative argument on understanding and implementing treaties… Contributors are innovative in the way they conceive of alternatives that respect traditions and legal structures of Indigenous nations and government.” (E. Acevedo, Choice Magazine vol 55:04:2017)

“The Right Relationship, goes well beyond a capsule summary of the issues related to the interpretation and implementation of historical treaties. This wide-reaching collection of essays represents leading-edge scholarship on the central issue of how we, in modern Canada, can give life and voice to historical treaties in a manner that can be justified by law, philosophy, and moral reasoning. This volume is a serious contribution to the study of Indigenous–settler relations.” (Douglas Sanderson, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto)

Also by John Borrows

Freedom and Indigenous Constitutionalism (2016, University of Toronto Press) celebrates the emancipatory potential of Indigenous traditions, considers their value as the basis for good laws and good lives, and critiques the failure of Canadian constitutional traditions to recognize their significance.

UVic Author Celebration Feature: Promising Practices in Indigenous Teacher Education

The annual UVic Author Celebration is coming up as part of Ideafest. Join us as we celebrate books written by UVic authors, including an engaging panel discussion on issues facing First Nations communities.

When: March 8, 2018
Where: University Bookstore
Time: 3:00-4:30pm

The author panel includes: John Borrows (Law), Michele Tanaka (Education), Paul Whitinui (Education), and Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams (Education). Rebecca Johnson (Indigenous Law Research Unit) will moderate.

This week, we will highlight the books written by members of the author panel.

Promising Practices in Indigenous Teacher Education edited by Paul Whitinui, Maria del Carmen Rodriguez de France, and Onowa McIvor is a recent release from Springer.

About the Book

This book provides a comprehensive overview of navigating the on-going systemic challenges, hardships, and problems facing many indigenous teacher education programs today, helping to foster a commitment to developing quality indigenous teacher education programs that are sustainable, distinctive and excellent. However, despite a growing cadre of indigenous peoples working in teacher education, there is still a noticeable gap between the uptake of what is being taught in conventional teacher education programs, and how this translates to what we see student teachers doing in the classroom. The often tricky and complex nature of indigenous teacher education programming also means that there are multiple realities, approaches and pathways that require greater communication, collaboration, and cooperation. The very nature of this complexity, the book suggests, requires a strength-based and future-focused approach built on trust, integrity, courage and respect for indigeneity, as well as an understanding of what it means to be indigenous. The examples and experiences presented identify a number of promising practices that work well in current indigenous teacher education programs and beyond. By promoting a greater appreciation for the inclusion of culturally relevant practices in teacher education, the book aims to breathe new life into the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of indigenous teacher education programs moving forward.

About the Editors

L-R: Rodriguez de France, McIvor, and Whitinui. Credit: Julie Rémy, UVic

Dr. Paul Whitinui is an indigenous Māori scholar from Aotearoa New Zealand and an assistant professor at the School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education (EPHE) based at the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Education in BC, Canada. His research is interdisciplinary by nature and broadly linked by relationships between indigenous education, Indigenous sociology, Indigenous community health, Indigenous wellbeing, and indigenous autoethnography. Over the past 10 years, Dr. Whitinui has published and presented extensively on culturally responsive teaching and learning, indigenous educational leadership in higher education, treaty-relational health, the benefits of indigenous performing arts (i.e., kapa haka) in public high schools, and the application of indigenous autoethnography in teaching and learning, and health. Presently, he is the co-chair of the World Indigenous Research Alliance under the auspices of the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC), as well as a reviewer for the online WINHEC journal.

Dr Maria del Carmen Rodriguez de France is an assistant professor in the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Education. She facilitates graduate and undergraduate courses on indigenous knowledge, pedagogy, and education. The focus of her research is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, weaving together fields of education that influence her work in preparing students to work within a diverse society. Dr. Rodriguez de France has published books and journal articles nationally and internationally, and contributes to the field of indigenous education as member of national and international journal editorial boards.

Dr. Onowa McIvor is an assistant professor and the director of Indigenous Education at the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Education. Her research interests center on indigenous language revitalization and indigenous teacher education. Dr. McIvor has been a contributing author to several edited book projects and has provided peer-review editing for several international academic journals such as AlterNative, Educational Research, the Canadian Journal of Education, and Curriculum Inquiry.

For More Information

See the UVic news item for a Q&A with the editors on Indigenizing education.

UVic Author Celebration Feature: Learning and Teaching Together

The annual UVic Author Celebration is coming up as part of Ideafest. Join us as we celebrate books written by UVic authors, including an engaging panel discussion on issues facing First Nations communities.

When: March 8, 2018
Where: University Bookstore
Time: 3:00-4:30pm

The author panel includes: John Borrows (Law), Michele Tanaka (Education), Paul Whitinui (Education), and Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams (Education). Rebecca Johnson (Indigenous Law Research Unit) will moderate.

This week, we will highlight the books written by members of the author panel.

Learning and Teaching Together: Weaving Indigenous Ways of Knowing into Education by Michele Tanaka was released by UBC Press in 2016.

About the Book

Far more than a how-to book, Learning and Teaching Together introduces teachers of all levels to an indigenist approach to education. Tanaka recounts how pre-service teachers enrolled in a cross-cultural course in British Columbia immersed themselves in indigenous ways of learning and teaching by working alongside indigenous wisdom keepers. Together, they transformed cedar bark, buckskin, and wool into a mural that tells stories about the land upon which the course took place. In the process, they discovered new ways of learning that support not only intellectual but also tactile, emotional, and spiritual forms of knowledge. The teachers-in-training then carried their new-found knowledge into their practicums, where they faced challenges and opportunities as they worked to apply the indigenist values they had learned within a system structured around Western values, beliefs, and attitudes.

About the Author Michele T.D. Tanaka is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. Her research and teaching interests have been shaped by 20 years in the classroom, in a variety of educational settings including early childhood, kindergarten, Grade 5 reading, and adult education.

Dr. Tanaka teaches courses in Transformative Inquiry, Community & Culture, EL TELNIWT & Aboriginal Education, and Elementary Field Experiences. She currently serves on the Indigenous Education Advisory Board, the Diversity, Belonging & Equity Committee, and the Faculty of Education Social Committee.

Praise for the Book

“Teachers in British Columbia and throughout Canada who struggle with how to enact curriculum changes that incorporate Indigenous knowledge, history, and identity will find this book illuminating … in spite of the seemingly overwhelming challenges in making a space for Indigenous thought and experience, it can and must be done. The transformation has been happening and is continuing.” – Michael Marker, BC Studies, no. 196, Winter 2017/18

“Too often, in educational contexts, we get caught up in theorizing and intellectualizing rather than expressing other ways of knowing and understanding. As Michele Tanaka shows, there is much powerful holistic learning that can emerge when we make and do things together in accordance with the guidance of sacred ecology wisdom. This provocative and engaging book provides excellent examples of holistic engagement processes and inspires us to reimagine the purposes and processes of public education today. Learning and Teaching Together provides valuable guidance to educators, teacher-educators, and policy makers.” – Dwayne Donald, associate professor, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta

UVic Author Celebration Feature: Knowing Home, Book 1

The annual UVic Author Celebration is coming up as part of Ideafest. Join us as we celebrate books written by UVic authors, including an engaging panel discussion on issues facing First Nations communities.

When: March 8, 2018
Where: University Bookstore
Time: 3:00-4:30pm

The author panel includes: John Borrows (Law), Michele Tanaka (Education), Paul Whitinui (Education), and Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams (Education). Rebecca Johnson (Indigenous Law Research Unit) will moderate.

This week, we will highlight the books written by members of the author panel.

Knowing Home: Braiding Indigenous Science with Western Science, Book 1 edited by Gloria Snively and Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams is a recently released open textbook published by the University of Victoria.

About the Book

Knowing Home attempts to describe the creative vision of Indigenous scientific knowledge and technology that is derived from an ecology of a home place. The traditional wisdom component of Indigenous Science—the values and ways of decision-making—assists humans in their relationship with each other, the land and water, and all of creation. Knowing Home weaves Indigenous perspectives, worldviews, and wisdom practices into the science curriculum. It provides a window into the scientific knowledge and technological innovations of the Indigenous peoples of Northwestern North America, providing numerous examples and cases for developing science lessons and curricula. Knowing Home shows how Indigenous perspectives have the potential to give insight and guidance as we attempt to solve the complex environmental problems of the 21st century.

Knowing Home is available online or you can order a hard copy through the UVic Bookstore.
PDF versions are available at: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8443/handle/1828/7821

About the Editors

Dr. Gloria Snively is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria where she taught science methods, environmental/marine education, and culture courses. She was Director of the Graduate Program in Environmental Education. For 12 years, she was involved with the Asia Pacific Network whose purpose is to strengthen links between the research community and school-based environmental education in the Asia-Pacific region. Her work with Indigenous education spans 4 decades and has always been inspired by Indigenous leaders. She enjoyed giving natural history talks and walks to students, teachers, park interpreters, First Nations and community groups for 50 years; she prefers to explore forest, ponds and seashores first-hand.

Dr. Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams OBC walking in peace is Lil’wat of the St’at’yem’c First Nation. Her life has been devoted to promoting and restoring Indigenous culture and language. She worked as an Indigenous educator and language specialist for more than 50 years in diverse settings, including Indigenous communities, public schools, and adult education settings. Dr. Williams recently retired from the University of Victoria as Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Knowledge and Learning (co-appointment with Faculty of Education and Department of Linguistics) and an associate professor, where she developed and delivered an innovative series of courses on learning and teaching in an Indigenous world.

Praise for the Book

“It is a thrill for me to see this book and to know that it will be a readily available reference for learners and educators alike. At a time when Canadians are finally embarking on a journey of Truth and Reconciliation with Aboriginal Peoples, this insightful edited volume is both timely and critically important…. Knowing Home will be a wonderful resource that will bring all Canadians to a higher level of understanding…” – Nancy Turner, Professor Emeritus and P. E. Trudeau Fellow, School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria

“This book is both timely and critical, coming during the era of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, and during British Columbia’s implementation of its New Curriculum, where educators have the opportunity to weave Indigenous perspectives into all parts of the curriculum in a meaningful and authentic manner. Knowing Home acknowledges and validates Indigenous Knowledges and brings it together with Western Science in a way that will be invaluable for educators.” – Nick X̱EMŦOLTW̱ Claxton, WSÁNEĆ (Saanich), PhD, Indigenous Education, University of Victoria

“The attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 will require transformative new approaches to the creation and use of knowledge.  This book Knowing Home provides a brilliant example of how new ways of knowing can be combined with Western knowledge for the betterment of our communities and indeed our planet. Knowing Home places Indigenous Science on an equal footing with Western Science and in the process illustrates how innovative research with Indigenous Elders and students can dramatically enhance our understanding of home/earth/land.  And while the focus of this work is on the Indigenous Science of Northwestern North America, the research methods involved in the creation of this project, the focus on how to use Indigenous Science in classrooms, and the support of emerging Indigenous scholars can and should be carried out in many other parts of the world. Knowing Home is a defiant, provocative and hopeful intellectual contribution to the world we want.” – Budd Hall, Co-Chair UNESCO Chair in Community-based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education

“Knowing Home: Braiding Indigenous Science with Western Science is an inspiring collection of knowledge, expertise and cultural intelligence that will help all educators in transforming the foundations of learning for all students. As we strive to change the narratives in BC and beyond through authentic voices, new curricular directions and Aboriginal worldviews and perspectives, this book defines a way forward for our relationships and understandings grounded in the sacred territories of our people. This rich and reflective resource of traditional and contemporary ways of knowing and being will truly engage each of us in a personal and professional journey of truth and reconciliation.” – MUSGAM’DZI, Kaleb Child, Kwakwaka‘wakw, Director of Instruction, First Nations – School District #85, Vancouver Island North

Sanctuary City: A Suspended State by Jennifer Bagelman

Each year UVic faculty, staff, students, alumni, and retirees produce an incredible amount of intellectual content reflecting their breadth and diversity of research, teaching, personal, and professional interests. A list of these works is available here.

Sanctuary City: A Suspended State is a recent title by UVic Geography Alumna Jennifer Bagelman.

About the Book

Sanctuary City: A Suspended State traces the ancient concept of sanctuary up to the present day, revealing how the contemporary and supposedly hospitable ‘sanctuary city’ inadvertently entrenches a hostile asylum regime. This book specifically explores the UK-based sanctuary movement with a focus on Glasgow, host to the largest population of asylum seekers in the UK. Based on ethnographic research, Sanctuary City examines how sanctuary renders intractable the serious problem of protracted waiting, indefinitely deferring the rights of asylum seekers. Whilst illuminating how sanctuary functions as a technology that suspends many lives, this book also explores a myriad of subversive practices that politically challenge this waiting state. It is a timely and critical contribution to the study of hospitality and asylum.

About the Author

Dr. Jen Bagelman is currently a lecturer in human geography at the University of Exeter. She grew up on Coast Salish territories (Vancouver Island) and completed both her BA and MA at UVic. After finishing her PhD at the Open University, she lectured at Durham University then completed a two-year SSHRC funded postdoctoral fellowship at UBC. Her research specialisms include: citizenship; migration and displacement; asylum and sanctuary; food security; participatory research methods and creative outputs. Her twitter feed is @bagel_woman.

Dr. Bagelman will be taking part in this year’s Author Celebration, March 9, 2017. Other members on this year’s panel include: Donald Galloway (Law), Simon Springer (Geography), and Serhy Yekelchyk (Germanic & Slavic Studies). For more information about this and other IdeaFest events, please check out the website.

The Conflict in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know by Serhy Yekelchyk

Each year UVic faculty, staff, students, alumni, and retirees produce an incredible amount of intellectual content reflecting their breadth and diversity of research, teaching, personal, and professional interests. A list of these works is available here.

The Conflict in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know is a recent title by UVic History and Germanic and Slavic Studies faculty member Serhy Yekelchyk.

About the Book

The Conflict in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know explores Ukraine’s contemporary conflict and complicated history of ethnic identity, and it does do so by weaving questions of the country’s fraught relations with its former imperial master, Russia, throughout the narrative. In denying Ukraine’s existence as a separate nation, Putin has adopted a stance similar to that of the last Russian tsars, who banned the Ukrainian language in print and on stage. Ukraine emerged as a nation-state as a result of the imperial collapse in 1917, but it was subsequently absorbed into the USSR. When the former Soviet republics became independent states in 1991, the Ukrainian authorities sought to assert their country’s national distinctiveness, but they failed to reform the economy or eradicate corruption. As Serhy Yekelchyk explains, for the last 150 years recognition of Ukraine as a separate nation has been a litmus test of Russian democracy, and the Russian threat to Ukraine will remain in place for as long as the Putinist regime is in power. In this concise and penetrating book, Yekelchyk describes the current crisis in Ukraine, the country’s ethnic composition, and the Ukrainian national identity. He takes readers through the history of Ukraine’s emergence as a sovereign nation, the after-effects of communism, the Orange Revolution, the EuroMaidan, the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, the war in the Donbas, and the West’s attempts at peace making. The Conflict in Ukraine is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the forces that have shaped contemporary politics in this increasingly important part of Europe.

About the Author

Dr. Serhy Yekelchyk received his BA from Kyiv University and an MA from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Following a research fellowship in Australia in 1993–94, he came to Canada in 1995 to pursue a Ph.D. in Russian and Eastern European History at the University of Alberta. His dissertation analyzed representations of the past in Stalinist culture, with special emphasis on Soviet Ukraine. After graduating, he taught for a year at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) before coming to Victoria in 2001.

Dr. Yekelchyk’s research interests evolved since then to include the social and political history of the Stalin period, as well as the formation of a modern Ukrainian nation from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. His Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (Oxford University Press, 2007) was the first Western history of Ukraine to include the coverage of the Orange Revolution and was translated into five languages. His monograph on late-Stalinist political rituals appeared in 2014 and a book about the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict is coming out in 2015.

Dr. Yekelchyk is cross-appointed between the departments of Germanic and Slavic Studies and History and teaches a variety of courses on Russian history, Stalinism, Modern Ukraine, and Cold-War cinema. He supervises graduate and Honours students working on various aspects of Russian and Eastern European history and culture.

Praise for the Book

“Excellent… a succinct, lucid text that is ideal for newcomers to recent Ukrainian events.” – The Financial Times

“Yekelchyk masterfully presents the history, politics, culture, background, and motivations for the Ukrainian crisis.  It would take years of study to appreciate the intricacy of the Ukraine-Russia relationship from the time of Volodymyr the Saint (~ 988) to the present, and it would require dozen visits to Ukraine to understand the land and its people. Yet, in only 166 to-the-point but deeply researched pages, Professor Yekelchyk presents and discusses an incredible amount of detail and provides the reader with a clear, both-sides-of-the-story analysis of Ukraine, Russia, and the Black Sea region.” – Rudy L. Hightower II, Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective. 9 (7) Apr. 2016

Violent Neoliberalism by Simon Springer

Each year UVic faculty, staff, students, alumni, and retirees produce an incredible amount of intellectual content reflecting their breadth and diversity of research, teaching, personal, and professional interests. A list of these works is available here.

Violent Neoliberalism: Development, Discourse, and Dispossession in Cambodia is a recent title by UVic Geography Associate Professor Simon Springer.

About the Bookspringer-cover

Violent Neoliberalism explores the complex unfolding relationship between neoliberalism and violence. Employing a series of theoretical dialogues on development, discourse and dispossession in Cambodia, this study sheds significant empirical light on the vicious implications of free market ideology and practice. This book is a major contribution to the fields of peace and conflict studies and human geography studies. It may interest those who want to inquire more into how neoliberalism can be understood and how violence and economic development intersect in the era of neoliberal globalization, especially in the case of contemporary Cambodia.


About the Author

Simon Springer is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Victoria. He has been researching the political, social, and geographical exclusions that neoliberalization has engendered in post-transitional Cambodia for over a decade. He joined the Department of Geography at UVic in the summer of 2012, having previously spent time at the National University of Singapore and the University of Otago, New Zealand. Dr. Springer brings to UVic a very active, critical, and cutting-edge research program with an internationally-recognized publication record. Visit his website for more info or read his tweets here.

Praise for the Book

“Grounding his book on previously published scholarly articles and chapters, Springer (geography, Univ. of Victoria, BC) presents a full-throated critique of ‘Neoliberalism [which] has become the dominant political economic arrangement in our world today.’ … The volume is well written and contains a useful bibliography. Of interest principally to scholars and graduate students whose interests are in issues of ideology and social development and their interrelationship. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and up.” – A. Magid, Choice, Vol. 53 (10), June, 2016

“Empirically-grounded, and theoretically-rich, this revolutionary book constitutes the most provocative account of contemporary Cambodia yet written. It is, though, much more, in that Springer provides a radically new way of thinking about the complex intersection of violence and economic development. Violent Neoliberalism will challenge and transform how scholars must think through political economy.” – James Tyner, Kent State University

“If any doubt existed about the inherently violent nature of neoliberalising processes, then Simon Springer removes it with great aplomb. As a result, proclamations of ‘success stories’ of development in countries such as Cambodia should be taken for what they are: authoritarian, violent tales of dispossession. The book is required reading for all who take an interest in how neoliberalism and ultimately capitalism can be understood and overcome.” – Ian Bruff, University of Manchester

“Written from a critical perspective, Professor Springer’s provocative book is a major contribution to the academic literature on violence in general. Theoretically well informed, methodologically sophisticated and empirically rich, Violent Neoliberalism is also a powerful challenge to the conventional perspectives that tend to focus overwhelmingly their analytical attention on what Cambodians do and the impact of their cultural traditions on their violent behaviour.” – Sorpong Peou, Ryerson University