 Hello everybody that's online joining us today. I'd like to thank Lynn and Divinia from UBC Learning Circles for kindly providing the webcast support for this session today. It's a popular session and so I'm very happy that more people could participate in it. My name is Amy Perot. I'm the Strategist for Indigenous Initiatives here at the Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology. Hi, I'm Janie Lujan. I'm an Educational Developer in Indigenous Initiatives here. Hi, my name is Annette Sadeff. I'm an Education Developer for a personal climate. Thank you for coming today. Elder Larry Grant is going to be a delayed arriving today. I would normally get him to welcome us to the session today, but I'm going to ask Lynn Kessler, the Director of the First Nations House of Learning to do an acknowledgement for us today. Well, I've been frequently working in tandem with, say, I was lucky on the last meeting to introduce the events, and it's often the case that one or both of us are delayed, so we have ways of collaborating on these things. And so I'm sure when he arrives he'll want to speak to you as well. But for now, and we'd just like to acknowledge that we are on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. And I myself, I come from the United States. My Indigenous family is over a lot of Lakota from high-enriched South Dakota, so I'm a long way from that territory for sure, but from every other place I've lived before coming here. But it's been a real pleasure to be here and to work here. When I first came to UBC, actually I did a little of my first academic paper in the basement of the Lester building at eight o'clock in the morning, but there are three other people in the room. One of them was probably a KGB agent. I came up into the dawn and looked out from the flag fall. I knew him better before. And I just had this very clear feeling that of course people had stood on that very spot for thousands of years because it had such a commanding view of the coastline. And if you were living in this area, that's where you would want to have somebody watching and see who was coming and going. And in fact, that isn't very much a place that Musqueam used for that exact purpose for many, many hundreds of years. It was a real delight to realize that that community was still here, that it hadn't been removed to some more distant place as had happened with every other university where I'd worked. And that there were people here to talk to and work with. So it's been a real pleasure to be in this particular place and to have the opportunity to work with Musqueam people and especially Sias like so. And I'll be real happy to see him when he gets there. But always important to acknowledge the territory and that's one of the things I think that we're here to talk about. I just want to say maybe one thing in beginning to think about this issue of how we do that and why we do it. And there are two things I would just say about the why we do it. One of them is that to some extent when we do this acknowledgement, we do the many other things we do on campus that we can talk about as time permits, we have a way of bringing into our own consciousness and into the consciousness of others. There's an awareness of a long history that's here that for 100 years has been very hard to see. I think most people when they come to UBC what they've seen is UBC. That's why they've come. And you know it's a great imposing place and we're still all the time as we've built new buildings. And it's pretty easy to think of it as this marvelous place which has arrived here fairly recently and that's what's important. And in reality that obscures a far longer history that's been here for thousands of years. And not here in a kind of general and nonspecific way, but really right here. This was a place that was used by Musqueam until it became the university. The second, so in some respects when we do this acknowledgement now it's become more common and we have other aids to our memories such as the Silsquake and the new post by the Alumni Center. It's just a way of acknowledging that longer history and giving it visibility. And with that the opportunity to think about our relationship with that community, but with indigenous communities more generally like UBC and worldwide. The second thing I would say is that sometimes when we do this I think people are a little confused by it and think of it as kind of exceptional or perhaps kind of a political thing I guess for a university to do. But what I would encourage people to think about who have that concern is that we tend to think, some people, some among us tend to think of universities as these very neutral places that are sort of not political spaces. And in some respects there is some truth to that and the use of the university as a kind of socially neutral space I think is really important. There's a lot we can do with that. But if you think about the last 100 years of UBC and the fact that the university took over the use of the land from Musqueam with no compensation that for at least the first 50, probably more like the first 70 years of the operation of the university, very few Aboriginal people had any access to the education that happened here. Then I think it's very hard to see the university as neutral in those respects and not political. From the experience of that community and the other Aboriginal communities in Canada it's always been political in those ways. And all we are I think doing with this acknowledgement is beginning to restore a bit more of a balance in which the functional space of the university as a place where we can have discussions based in a kind of mutuality of respect is something that we can be striving to rebuild and maintain. So there's a lot in these simple words of acknowledgement to think about and that's like a couple of things we may want to pursue for a bit but there's more so I hope whatever it is. And there's more people sitting here too. So just like to take a minute to thank and acknowledge Dr. Dan and Keith Justice who's also going to be speaking today on the panel. So I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and talk about this issue. It comes up a lot. I teach our intro course at Indigenous Foundations in First Nations and Indigenous Studies and this is an issue that always comes up with students and it also comes up in other contexts as well. By way of introduction of myself I'm a citizen of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. I was raised out community in Colorado in traditional youth territory. So every place I have gone for my education I've been in other people's territory. Every place I've worked and now here in Muscovy territory and I actually live on the Sunshine Coast in Seachaw territory. So these territorial acknowledgments have a lot of different functions both educationally but I think also personally. In a lot of traditions when you come into another people's territory there are invitations, there are welcomes. Sometimes those invitations and welcomes don't happen. Sometimes there's a realization that you are not a guest but an invader. And a lot of those traditional protocols I think have been upended as a result of kind of the naturalized or presumably naturalized sense that we can just go anywhere we want to and be a visitor or a guest. But that's not always the case. Oftentimes our presence is one that comes as a result of really problematic and oppressive histories and we inherit all of that and so we also have to grapple with what that means. And so those are some of the conversations we have in our classes but I think in indigenous studies as a discipline these are conversations that we have as well. What are the protocols of the territories we're going to? How do we behave as a visitor? What are the expectations of guesthood? What are our obligations as people who are part of a globalized social, political and economic system but who are also attentive to those much older, much deeper and I think much more substantive understandings of place and belonging. So these are foundational I think to the ethics of the relationships that we have. They're not easy. They're not supposed to be easy. Belonging has never been an easy thing. But I think one of the things that we have as an important task as educators is to make visible those histories and those ongoing relationships and where it gets difficult to actually sit with that difficulty. So I think that's probably all for me for my introductory remarks but I also am looking forward to the conversation. And I forgot one housekeeping duty. I'm terrible at housekeeping. So my colleague Emmy is going to be taking some photographs of the session today. If you do not want to be a photograph, can you please let Emmy know and we will ensure that your wish is granted in that area. So we wanted to also maybe frame a little bit and talk about why we decided to have a session like this at the Center for Teaching Learning Technology and Jamie can talk a little bit about that now. Sure. Thank you. Well I'm very grateful to offer these framing remarks and to have been a student here and instructor here and both the staff here on the traditional ancestral and primary territories of the Hong Kong community students. For a long time now I see quite a few familiar faces here and I feel very buoyed up by that. I have a professor here from my undergrad years. I have former supervisors and colleagues. So it's a real treat for me to have a role for this session. And also it's a consistent learning process I think for me as a second generation Chinese Canadian to learn about the anti-territory where our work takes place. And it's part of my journey to engage in these questions. And one of the things that's been interesting, I've worked in this job for about a year and one of the themes that I noticed quite a bit in our sessions on in the classroom climate series has been around territory acknowledgments. And we have had lots of questions about this topic. Everything from what is this statement? I've never heard this before and I came to an event and someone said this and I really really like to unpack what that is. I want to make an acknowledgement like this but how do I do that and is it my place? Can I do this? Can I have permission to do this? So we get lots of questions that we felt we couldn't answer in a very clear direct FAQ way although maybe an FAQ would be good. But what we thought we would do was work with senior leaders at the university and also our partners at Musqueam Foundation to bring you this session. And particularly we wanted to open up our classroom climate series this fall with this session because it also showcases the relationship that Amy and Kanai have been working on developing with Musqueam with the university and STLT for some time. We have an advisory, the Musqueam advisory that we work with on our resources and our program in our services that really guides us and we're very grateful for that relationship and we want to honor that relationship by working together with them to bring sessions that are reflective of that relationship. We also wanted to bring Link and Daniel here because they've provided so much experience and leadership at the university around engaging the institution with First Nations communities and so thank you both for being here. We always do a lot of planning and then once we are in the session it just is what it is. We're just here. So we will go with the flow. Daniel and me will start us off with some remarks maybe about 15 minutes each and then Larry will be present in a while and I think we're all excited to be here. We'll listen to Larry's speak as well and then we'll regroup for some questions. We will also in the question and answer period hope to try to engage the webinar audience and just a few more housekeeping things. There's a bit of food at the back so please feel free to nourish yourselves and then the washrooms are up the doors on your way out through the front doors that you came in. If you didn't get a chance to sign in when you came, please take a picture before you leave and maybe are we given all the tech ones? Could I just, sorry to interrupt your proceedings. I'm just going to move the mic up a little closer because it's warping in and out and I know that we can hear beautifully but I want to make sure that our audience can. So I'm just going to move this up to the table. This is me and the nation's large audience that's very interested in this topic. This microphone is great. It has this kind of nice naming for it. And Flash from Europe. Old school. You just have to start singing now. It's very old-time. Oh yeah, I don't think you want it. Yeah, well actually it's kind of really interesting. How are we now, Turner? I think the sound is so much better. People are very appreciative. Thank you, Lea. And hello to everybody who's watching online. It's really great to be able to bring our users to you and also to hear what your questions made to your thoughts and dance. Yeah, you know, she said that we were going to know, you know, give these 15 minutes today. I thought we just did that. But there's always a little bit more. Yeah, I think that, you know, my starting point in doing all of this is just the different ways in which we can create opportunities for a little broader awareness of the set of issues. And really to invite people, yourselves and others to just to have a way to think about our history and the potential for relationships that's surrounding us all the time. I think it's often the case that I've been teaching curriculum in this area for a very long time both here and in the U.S. And it's often been the case that I brought people from a local community into class. You know, that might be Muscovam people or other people who are in the downtown, in the area, in the Lower Mainland. And when I was in the States, it was people from the communities there. And they talk about things that have happened that have been part of their experience. And, you know, students come up afterwards wanting to talk further with them. And sometimes students have come up and they've just been in tears because they've said, you know, all of this happened and it happened. You know, what you've just described happened ten miles from where I grew up and I had no idea that it was there. And any of that, it happened. And I think it's a really common experience that many people have. And certainly here in Vancouver where so many people come from other places, people come here without knowing what the history is, but without necessarily a way of thinking about what that might mean. And it's a great opportunity to think about, first about the actual history that's transpired here, but also the opportunity to connect with other people and learn things which are really interesting and share some experiences. But unless people know that that opportunity is there, you know, how would they recognize it and find a way to connect to it. So I think there's real opportunities for that here. And for that kind of connection between people, Vancouver is a really exceptional place because the history is still here. The communities are very much alive and active here. But indigenous people from all over BC come to Vancouver and all over Canada and many international visitors as well. So there are all kinds of people around to connect with and to learn from. And I think in many of the discussions that have happened here, both at the university but also in the city, the reverse is also true. I think people from indigenous communities have really appreciated the chance to talk with other people about their experiences. The City of Vancouver project a couple of years ago, called the City Dialogues Project, that it was designed to bring people who had recently arrived in the Vancouver area from other countries and to contact with people from indigenous communities locally. And those discussions were really interesting. And I think they were absolutely interesting in both directions. And everybody who was part of that project was really happy with the ability to do that. So I think there's a lot here to do. And doing something like a territorial acknowledgement is in a way flagging that for people. There is a history here. There is something there to understand. And there's a possibility of following up on that with further kinds of connections. The other thing I would say in connection with that is we're in the process. We've been working for several years to establish a new center at UBC. It's the Indian Reservation School History and Dialogues Center. And it's now that big hole in the ground which is that way between here and the Coroner Library. And that is a center which has been constructed for a set of purposes. Some of them are to give access to the records of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission around the Indian Reservation School records. And that's for community members in particular or for our students to have access to their home records or the records of their family. But it's also to provide public information about that history. And that was one of the mandated aspects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's mandate as established by the court order settlement of the largest section of law suit in Canadian history brought by former students against the churches and governments who ran the schools. And part of that mandate was to ensure that there is an ongoing memory and recognition of this history in Canadian society that people don't just forget that it ever happened now that the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is over. And of course a lot of people, this is not without some differences of opinion because some people say well this was such a dark history it was so terrible what happened in those schools why do we need to commemorate it? Why do we need to remember it? And in some respects it's the same kind of question that people ask around other very traumatic national histories say the Holocaust history, something like that. They're important to remember because they happened. But they're also really I think important to acknowledge because they are the history that forms are present. And if we are ignorant of that history we have a much more challenging task in front of us in understanding our presence and figuring out what we want to do and what directions we want to go in. I think it's our experience and Daniel and I have talked about this before and maybe something that you would want to comment further on. So many people arrive at the university with really no information about indigenous history or the experiences of people who are in their classes with them. It's just there hasn't been a way until very recently for people to have access to that information. And that has not been accidental. That's been the accumulated results of many policy decisions about the structure of our institutions and what it has done to make it very difficult to have that kind of information. So the consequence of that is one consequence for many people is that there's no context for thinking about current events or the present. There's just no information. And I think it's for a lot of people it's a kind of a source of anxiety because they know that current events or something that's happening in a class that they're attending or some interaction is something they need to understand and yet they don't feel they have any material, any basis on which to make an evaluation. And that's not the case in most things that people study at universities. In most cases people come here with some kind of a background in pretty much any subject that they enter into. But in this one they often come with nothing. And a second result can follow from that which is having no information, never having seen any information, people kind of assume that there isn't any information. And that kind of coincides with this notion that well they know that there are aboriginal people and they live out in remote communities and that's what they do and that's what there is to know. And of course this is far from the truth and those are people that are living in societies that are complex in the way that all human societies are and have traditions and have experiences and ways of thinking about things that are no different than what they're different but they're not different in that respect from anyone else's. And there's certainly a long history of what has happened in this country that is there to know. And in the residential school center when it is constructed one of the things people will be able to see is just a really significant amount of documentation around the experience of people in the residential school system. And encountering that information I think will make it very difficult for people to come even for a few minutes and leave thinking there's no information. Of course there's information. We're just at a point in history where people are going to have access to it and ways to think about it and it's a really great opportunity to think about everything that's brought us to this moment in a more realistic and complete way and to think about what we want to do and the history that leads to them doing it. And so I think these are really good things and something like the territorial acknowledgement can suggest a pointer in some ways. It's important to do for all the reasons we were already talking about. But it's also a pointer to all of the kind of things that we can be thinking about and what it can do for us all to think about. So I think that's the other reason. I agree completely with everything I said on this. I think territorial developments give us a context but it's not an uncomplicated context. It's a context that's a start, not an end to a conversation. On the sheet that they have with additional resources there's a blog by a Métis scholar named Chelsea Vowell called Beyond Territorial Acknowledgements and I would really encourage you to read that. It's a somewhat critical analysis of the way in which territorial acknowledgements are employed to really improve the local circles. But I think it's an important one, some really good questions and some good complexities that she takes up. But I wanted to address a few similar issues and kind of why we do what we do in our classes. But we really take the acknowledgement as a starting point because it shifts the ground from a presumption of UBC as this given to UBC as a part of a history and part of a history that has not been equitably excluded. Part of a history that has actually been engaged with a larger process of weaponized education against indigenous people which has only been recently reversed or not even reversed but pushed to a different direction. Primarily education as we know it for indigenous peoples in Canada has been one of assimilation. So for many, many years, if people got a university degree they lost Indian status. Residential school we many of us already know about the horrors of residential school but what's less immediately discussed is that that education was never intended to give indigenous people an equal playing field. It was always intended to create a certain class. It was never intended to liberate indigenous people but to provide labor for white Canadians. And so we have all these ways in which education has functioned to naturalize Canadian nation state and to erase indigenous presence. So when we start with the acknowledgement it is immediately saying that there is a history here and there is a contested history here and there is a deeper history here that goes well beyond UBC. It's also a way to acknowledge our relationships not just our relationships as academics with indigenous communities but our larger relationships and the responsibilities that we have in engaging with one another in more ethical, more responsible and more respectful ways. Part of that is to take up the fact that these are conflicted histories and these are complicated relationships. In some places territorial acknowledgements are pretty straightforward but in a lot of places they're contested. A lot of communities have overmapping territorial boundaries. Some have more recent claims. You also have some of the issues around governmental policies that have put communities in a relationship with one another. Maybe traditionally they were enemies and now they're kind of in a shared territory. There are all kinds of ways in which territorial acknowledgements speak to complex realities. And I think that's a good thing. One thing people are often looking for is just kind of what's the acknowledgement? Let's get a really simple one sentence saying let's do this. We did it, we're done. Let's move on to everything else we want to do. And I think that's a huge mistake. First it doesn't take into account what the acknowledgement makes possible but I think it also shifts us back to normalizing a settler colonial presence that isn't normal or natural. So I think acknowledgements should be challenging. I think they should challenge everybody to think differently about the relationships we have and those ongoing relationships. We're not only talking about a history of the past, we're talking about an ongoing relationship and we're talking about a future. So how do acknowledgements make that future a more just or help us move toward a more just future? Acknowledgements themselves don't do a lot. Acknowledgements can help ground us in better ways where we can do better. And I would say with the question about are territorial acknowledgements political? Absolutely. So is the lack of acknowledgement? So is silence. And I would actually say that silence is probably a more dangerous thing than a messy presence. I would rather deal with the complexities and some of the questions and challenges of the acknowledgement than have to explain why do we ignore it at all. I don't think we're in that place anymore as a country. I don't think we're in that place anymore. I don't think we can afford to be in that place anymore as a people. I think we're getting a lot of, just a lot of the backlash not just in the states but in Canada and in Europe. A lot of the push against acknowledging cultural difference. Part of that is a desire to return to a place of enforced silences. And I don't think we can afford to go back there. So I think in thinking about acknowledgements also grounding those in ongoing struggles. So it's one thing to say we're on unceded Muslim territory. The unceded speaks to a particular relationship with the crown. We're on traditional ancestral territory which speaks to a relationship much deeper. But it also, to acknowledge that and to acknowledge that Musqueam is also here is also to acknowledge that we are also part of a region that is still contested. As we can see from the pipeline debates we can see from concerns about the health of our waterways as we can see from the concerns about just the general health of the land the shores and the water all around. These are not things that are a bygone reality. Acknowledging territory also asks us if we take it seriously to acknowledge our responsibilities in this relationship. And how do we make sure that we are helping Musqueam and other communities uphold their responsibilities that they have struggled to maintain since time immemorial. Is our work assisting them or is our presence here making it harder for them to be the protectors of the land that they've been called upon to be. So I think these are all ways that acknowledgement can get us thinking but they don't do the job. They might start us on a path but we have to take the next step. And I think this is applicable no matter what our discipline is no matter whether we're students, staff, faculty, community members to ground ourselves in a different starting context makes possible a different future. And it doesn't do the work for us but it does call upon us to do better work going forward. So I think that's kind of where we all leave it and we can open the conversation. So maybe we'll open up the floor to questions maybe one or two questions in the room here and then we'll also open up online for some questions. Does anyone have some questions for Daniel? Or even just thoughts that percolated during the opening remarks and discussions? I'm just curious how long these kind of acknowledgements have been happening in UBC and kind of the history of when that really started because I need to be able to promise as well as to UBC Can you repeat the question? The question was how long have these kinds of kind of acknowledgements been happening in UBC? I think they've been going on in various ways probably for a very, quite a long time. And the building that I work in the First Nations Lying House was opened in 1993. So that's been a building in which relationships with communities has been foregrounded. I mean it's really a lot of what goes out in there. And I think among the people who come there there's been a lot of acknowledgement communities and traditions. I should add and this is just because I think it's so interesting people who are not haven't had much exposure to indigenous communities and their relationships often seem to think that it's a raw kind of one thing. And I remember when I arrived at UBC being told in fairly clear terms that I should not presume that my prairie proclivities were appropriate to enact a muscular territory. I should understand that muscular traditions were quite different from those where my family comes from and that my understanding of them would be important and of course I was that I knew that and I was happy to hear it. I was also asked why was I hired when I knew nothing about them and I blamed that on the hiring committee. And I said that of course I didn't I was not knowledgeable about them but I was looking forward to learning more and I think that I was hired to do something specific in the university which I haven't been able to do. But that opened a dialogue that was very important to me because it was very important to me to indicate that I understood that every community has their way of doing things and that's part of what's there to understand and I think if you're coming into relationship with us without knowing that at another time it's part of what makes it really interesting to get an opportunity to find out about all the different ways in which people think about things and enact their sense of their own culture. However you asked a more specific question and I just beg your ask. I think on the university when I got here 14 years ago one of the things we I asked my students what they thought was missing from that curriculum that was available to them and one of the things they said was the land issues are so important and they are for these historic reasons having to do for instance with unseated territory which the relationship between incoming primarily European people and indigenous people were formalized in any way and the land was just sort of taken by less formalized processes. We did a series that we webcast similar to today's session but it was on the land issues and we wanted the university we wanted the president to open that series which she did she did not for instance say unseated territory because at that point UBC was imparted to a law case over the disposition of some lands that were that were university golf course they were provincial lands they are now Musqueam lands and that was settled but these were very sensitive topics the status of the land was so I think things like the university acknowledging that the territory is unseated have developed since that time and that's been a set of decisions which have been arisen both through practice and administrative level they've arisen from some decisions about what to do and of course there have been consultations with lawyers and so forth about the impact of stating those things publicly but I think there was a commitment to recognize the history and to acknowledge the territory that way so it's evolving and it has changed even in that time it's also become much more common and much more frequent particularly at more public university level events including things like graduation and so forth or the inauguration of the president post-mains of events but now I think it's becoming increasingly common when people open lecture series for conferences it's very common when a conference comes to Vancouver even if it's not at the university people are involved we'll get a call from a conference organizer saying that they would like to include a territorial acknowledgement perhaps they'd welcome if the community wishes to extend one and we've talked to them about that and we say if there's a bit of time in your program to do the acknowledgement or the welcome but also allow people from the community or one of us if that's not available to talk a little bit about the history that we'd be happy to do that most of the time they do want to include that and we had a conference, it was an international conference of engineers there a couple of years ago and they actually on the first day it was like a 4D conference on the first day they set aside about 40 minutes of their opening session to happen so Psiastok came and did a territorial welcome instead of a few things so I talked a little bit about the building and added in some more history and I went 4 days later to the closing and reception which was held at the Museum of Anthropology and people coming up to me the whole time saying that they really thought that was quite interesting that they'd never been anywhere or anything like that had happened before and that as they went around for the rest of the conference they were noticing the things that are here the visible indication of indigenous presence and they were reading little descriptions and so forth and they really appreciated it it gave them a way to think about where they were that was very different than what they had experienced in other places so they were really happy that their organizers had taken the time to improve that so it's become a lot more common it's now got that kind of dimension that gets part of way what makes Dan Hoover in this area of what it is and people kind of get that because they see the public art but I think if they understand what the public art points to and the culture and the people who are here and interacting with them it's something much deeper than that and again they're taking advantage of the possibility that the acknowledgement brings with it so working on them and going out to the world those assurance maybe we'll take that question from the online audience yeah I've got actually a couple of comments that bring forward more questions we've got people from Newfoundland Sequetnik Territory from all kinds of places and I just didn't say the name because I didn't know how to say it properly so one person said I recently wrote a local business requesting donations for an event we were having in the letter I stated that this business was on the unceded Sequetnik Territory one business owner asked me to come speak with him because he felt I was trying to shame him so I struggle with how to help people acknowledge reality without feeling threatened by it and she goes on to say I guess part of the issue is that if you don't know your history the statement comes across as a political challenge rather than just an acknowledgement of what it is but it's actually is that isn't it I guess if you would like to respond to those points well I would say yeah but it doesn't have to be a political confrontation but yes it is a political challenge but it's also a challenge it's an educational challenge because it's speaking of material truths there will always be people who feel that any amount of indigenous disability is a shame to them or is an attempt to make them feel guilty and to some degree there's not a lot you can do with that when it's internalized in that way but I think there's a lot you can do and I think part of this is just a conversation well why do you feel shame this is actually a legal reality if it's unceded territory it has not been surrendered by treaty but it's brought up in Chelsea Bell's piece there are other ways in which territory matters significantly beyond whether or not the state claims that it's unceded or not so I think it's a good starting place for a conversation but a lot of people get really freaked out about these conversations the underlying questions is are you saying that I shouldn't be here or are you saying that we have to go someplace and that's not for me to decide this isn't my territory but I think generally the conversation isn't go away the question is what responsibilities are you going to take up by being here how are you going to make the situation better for the people who have been here since time immemorial who have been here for hundreds of thousands of years what are you going to do to make this a better relationship but people do get freaked out that's just the reality but you can either kind of take that on or you can say well that's one way of looking at it how else might we look at it how else might we engage it in a thoughtful way that's about better relationships and justice as well can I add something to that yes please there's a similar kind of question that sometimes arises when we get into discussions about the history and people say well I don't what am I supposed to do about this I didn't do this, this happened years ago and I think I've been talking with people in the Indian residential school survivors society for years and one of the things recently we were talking about kind of approaches to working with people in public information and they said that they really don't go trying to make anyone feel bad about the history they just want to go and invite people to think about the history and one that truth and reconciliation commission was going to be having a national event here a few years ago we UBC actually was the only major university in Canada to suspend classes so people could go to the event and we went around a group of us went around everyone we went around to all kinds of meetings of faculty and meetings of heads and directors to talk about this and inform people a little bit about and encourage them to talk about faculty members and you know we usually would start by asking people if they knew what the Indian residential schools were and most of these departments still didn't know and even though they've been in an apology and parliament and you know the two part consideration commission had been operating for three years at that point and they still didn't know and I think the position that we always took with them is that's not surprising it's not your fault there actually hasn't been much of a way for you to know because the information has been suppressed but this is an opportunity to actually find out about what this was and then there's the ability to make a decision about how you feel about that and what you might want to do to think about it and more recently talking with people again and it's sort of in a similar way and I think one of the things that's really worth recognizing is that we are not and told very recently we haven't begun doing what we're doing today which is talking with people about these issues and getting a sense of you know working with you to find out how you want to think about it or what you might want to do have some kind of further discussion and that's really important because without that what people carry around is the assumptions that have been there for the last 100 years because we've done nothing to create another way to think about it and the assumptions that have been there for 100 years are for instance the assumptions that produce the residential school so the schools are over the last one closed in 1996 so you know that's 20 years in the past but the way of thinking that allowed for the schools is still there because we haven't created an alternative to it that's what we're doing here today we're thinking about that issue and that's what some of us of course have been doing more deliberately for quite a while but as a nation and as a group of 50,000 people at ABC we're getting into it but that's pretty important because otherwise at that point we are perpetuating a system which was very damaging and very unequal for people and we have the ability not to do that and I think one way to approach a challenge such as the one that this person encountered was just to say okay well I'm just asking you about it it's not our intention to make anyone feel bad about it certainly not about what has led to this moment because if they didn't participate in the structure of that then they shouldn't feel bad about it we really like people to think about what goes on from this conversation forward and if you know when you take actions they won't feel bad about it and I know I've been in lots of conversations at various points in my life that I wish I could go back and redo because I didn't feel like I did them the right way and I like this like that but we do have a chance in raising the issue just to say this is something to think about and if you're not comfortable okay but think it over it's worth it maybe we'll take one more question from the audience here and then we will take a brief break just to get some air and keep on stretching and if you could repeat the question yeah well I just moved here from New Zealand to work with the Nari communities and they come as we say here very common to have to say a traditional introduction in Nari before the Nari audience and what we notice is that and it's so common that people were raising through it without any implication of any of the words and there's you know there's weight into the words and there's meaning behind the words and people were just sort of raising through it off I go back into English and it was a real danger and in particular it was very noticed by the communities that it was just sort of yaktik the box and off I go and do you feel like there's a danger with this acknowledgement and is that noticed by the communities? the question was are there ways in which the acknowledgement becomes kind of a pro forma expectation that's just quickly done and then we get onto different business that's always a danger and that's actually something that students have brought up so every once in a while there's a piece in the UEC about why we questioning this very aspect and it's usually from really well intentioned students who are talking about the fact they feel like it has become just a formulaic opening and nothing deeper I think it can absolutely become that if it's left to exist on its own I think I have been in events where it was that and I've been in many events where it's much more than that so I think everything depends on the will of the people who are doing the acknowledgement and do they see it as just the conventional opening and then we have real business to attend to? or is it the grounding of our business to make our business better? that to me seems a huge difference so I for my students or any students I talk with when they bring that up, I say it's not up to you to decide whether or not to do an acknowledgement that as I understand it has been a request from Muscovite to acknowledge that we are on Muscovite territory to be good visitors in this territory we do an acknowledgement how we do it there are there's kind of an existing protocol that I've seen that works but I think beyond that how you make that a reality is up to you but if you treat it as just a formulaic expectation it becomes that so how do we make it more significant? one thing I sometimes see is at an event where there's an opening there's a land acknowledgement and then the next person does exactly the same thing and the next person does exactly the same thing because they feel like if they don't they're being disrespectful I mean UBC has a protocol office and there's a whole discussion about this specifically in on the website about what has come from Musqueam about a good the way that they recommend doing the acknowledgement but with that we got it through the UBC protocol office but also just treat it sincerely think about why are you doing it what is the reason you're doing it and what does it do for us going forward I try never to do an acknowledgement in a way that just kind of imagines that that's we have to do it and let's get on with it we can only do good things if we acknowledge where we are and with whom we're in relation always going with that that's an ongoing conversation but it's absolutely something that can become a formulaic people treat it that way but I think also in the classroom again with your students and maybe with conference attendees it's not just enough to well this is our acknowledgement boom we're done this is why we do it and then bring that through but yeah I think it's it happens a lot one of the things that we we get phone calls quite often from people wanting to know what to what to say and you know it's a very busy day we send them to several news websites but generally you know on some respects we do want people to pay attention to the wording and to not to not do it in a way which is not going to work as an actual acknowledgement at least from the Muscovy perspective and you know it's different if it's downtown because of work communities involved there's a few things people need to know about that depending on what part of the city they're in but in general I think you know what we always try to encourage people to do is just what Daniel's been saying which is please do not think of it as something you write a note card and stand up and read and then go do what you're going to do you know think about why why you're doing it what is it you actually want people to know who have come to your event what's the relationship that you're trying to establish between them and this idea and your position as the person convening the event what's the purpose and people I've thought that through a little bit generally speaking I think they do a pretty good job and it's more convincing to their audiences that they're doing something serious but just to get the wording right and think that that's what there is to do I think that just encourages what you're describing which is a kind of normalization that really viscerates the whole purpose and of course I mean we're humans we can do that with absolutely anything it's just important to get a little more mindful and take the time to think about it I would also think just very briefly when you come into somebody's home and you're a guest in someone's home a good guesthood and visitorhood and very different things when we're talking about this but just kind of as an example when you're in someone's home and they have they've opened their home to you in whatever way you acknowledge that in gratitude you don't just kind of breeze through that I got a thanks permission to go on you actually show the gratitude for being and I think most of us are not invited guests we are visitors maybe we're invaders but a lot of times people they want to do the acknowledgement because they are grateful because they do have gratitude because they do want to be respectful let that respect and gratitude shape the acknowledgement let it live in the acknowledgement if you're grateful for being here the efforts that Musqueam and other communities have done in various lands across the country, across the world if you appreciate their efforts to keep the lands and waters healthy, safe and continuing show that bring that into the acknowledgement nobody ever goes wrong with gratitude we're coming up on Canadian Thanksgiving next Monday actually I had to say as someone who grew up in the United States I'm very grateful for the fact that this isn't not such a frenetic holiday as it is celebrated in the United States in the United States if you go when I was young children one of the most disturbing things was going into their little preschool and seeing them all cutting out pilgrim hats and then had bands with feathers sticking up so they could be pilgrims and Indians and I kind of pulled the teacher aside and said excuse me but we need to rethink this a little bit at least different kids are going to be here but it's a very strange it's a strange holiday to celebrate in that way in the United States with this kind of pilgrim Indian motif and then to not acknowledge the fact that there are still indigenous people living in the United States and they're still struggling with various conditions in many places and you know that's not there and it's kind of a real conceptual violation of what Daniel has just said it's kind of like you invited a few people over for dinner next thing you know they're in your house and you're living on the street I mean where's the justice in that and if that's it we celebrate that with a national holiday and we're kind of in that scraping things up too well so I think in a way however one thing we're doing the simplest thing we're doing with that acknowledgement was just acknowledging that history is here and happened and that there are still people here and that we have a relationship with them and that we're not going to erase that and be silent about it we're just acknowledging that people exist and that a history happened and that's a pretty good starting point compared to where we've been so okay this sounds like a good time for a break maybe we'll take five minutes just so people can stretch their legs and grab some more refreshments so welcome back everybody I've just asked two faculty members here at UBC to join this people and join their conversation as I mentioned before the break we asked Reema and Lisa and also Lisa and Lisa from the school of library information studies to share their thoughts on territory acknowledgement in a video that we produced as a way to start and continue conversations so welcome Reema and Lisa did you want to share a little bit of your thoughts that you had on either that you shared in the video or things you've been thinking about since or some of the research and initiatives in the department sure my name's Lisa I'm an associate professor in the department of occupational science and occupational therapy and the faculty of medicine and in my my mother's side of the family we have Arapaho from the United States in my lineage and I've spent a lot of time kayaking actually around the BC coast and feel a sort of I don't know a personal connection to the forest and the land I also grew up in the neighborhood of UBC and my family was on faculty and we did not routinely acknowledge the territory in any of our lectures or any of the documentation in our department and I felt personally that it was an important thing to do and so took the question to the people in my my department at a regular monthly meeting and asked if they too would be willing to produce some more formalized way of providing an acknowledgement and the suggestion was that in fact we add the acknowledgement to all the course syllabi and there was zero moments of hesitation and in my group now I have a small group of people so it's not like hurting cats or anything but there was literally no resistance to it at all enthusiastic agreement and it was mostly a question of ensuring that we document the acknowledgement properly and where to put it we really got down to sort of logistical practical things as opposed to any resistance at all to doing the activity and so we have done that all of the syllabi that went out to the incoming students this year in September we have two years of graduate students in our program both in the first year program and in the second year program all course syllabi have acknowledgement now and we decided to put it in the section where we talk about respectful classroom behavior which is right on the front page and of importance and we actually review it with the students so it is we're trying to address this issue of lip service that I think was raised in a previous session I use the acknowledgement in my talks and our introductory session this fall with the new students we also used it and in fact sitting here I was thinking that one of the things we want to do as a way of further integrating this would be actually to have an official opening when the new students come every year because we have an introductory week and it's a perfect platform that that would be something we might be able to add to the program so I'm taking that away from today to see how we might do that but I feel incredibly grateful that my colleagues were happy to support this and 10 days ago or so I suppose Leah and Walker agreed to come to our staff meeting to help us answer questions that we might have if students raise the issue in class and so that we could be kind of on equal footing in terms of providing the historical context for it and it was a great session much appreciated the support so my first foray into this was contacting Jane when we were thinking about this about a year ago and I would have to say really I have had unwavering support that this has been a pleasurable experience because there's been no resistance it must have been the right thing at the right time but that has been a great experience has been one of great support and ease actually and so we will carry on and see how we can further develop our own knowledge and ensure that we are providing the context respectfully for our students going forward so I guess the background for me is I have been coming to TAG workshops CTLT workshops for quite a while and at many of the workshops there would everyone to go around and acknowledge Muscle and Territory so I would acknowledge Muscle and Territory and I just felt like I was just copying everyone else and I didn't really understand it and I didn't know if I should be doing it or not and so I wanted to know more about it and I also wanted to know about whether it was happening if you went somewhere else how might you do it and there really wasn't very much out there I think in terms of information and so about two years ago I started to work with a student and we decided to document how universities across Canada the acknowledgement practices and originally so we're starting from the UBC framework and so we were really thinking about unceded Territory Insert First Nation name here which is I mean where it started from it could just be a template and you could just change the name so that's where it started and then it just grew and grew and we realized so even today we're talking about Territory acknowledgement so our research shows like that would not be what you would even call it if you go to you know in the prayer it's a treaty it's more a treaty acknowledgement so you wouldn't even call it that and as you go further east like the nature of the acknowledgement changes one of the things that's really interesting and so what happened was I had this idea and then I so it's motivated by two so I would also like to credit Amy and Lake for this because Amy always says it's not my job to teach like teach you how to do everything so and so welcome to C.T.L.T. yes when Joe says you have to think for yourself right so that was quite and I really don't like that message because but I thought about you know but it's true right and then and then I proposed it to Lake and Lake was very helpful and he said as well you know if you contact different universities if they don't do it it might prompt them to do it and it was really interesting because a lot of the universities in the last two years so Lincoln and I and two other people we've co-authored this it's going to be published as a paper now a lot of the universities like I just heard back yesterday from the president of McMaster like they are taking this really really seriously so in a way I think that's quite exciting of course you can critique it but to me this is really exciting that it's being taken so seriously and I do hope that the critique it's not just to take the box that you know but to me the fact that presidents of universities are willing to even respond on this is I think that says something about that where we are in a way and I'm happy anyone who wants the table I'm happy to share it thank you thank you Lisa and Rima maybe we'll ask another question Leah are there questions or comments there's a couple of questions and comments here so Larry asks I wonder if Daniel and or Lake have any suggestions on how a speaker might acknowledge and this maybe go to what you were speaking about the territory they are on when they might not have any prior knowledge where could you find this information if there isn't someone around you can ask I think they could go to Rima's article I would add like one of the things we found about this was it's actually really it took us a lot of work so it's not this look up five minutes and you can find it and even the universities need to do a better job in making it front and center so you shouldn't you know we had to dig around on university it seems to me that should be on your front page and most universities that's not where it is so one thing I've seen and it's it's not ideal but it does people say I'd like to acknowledge the indigenous people of this territory and that's fun too I always want to be more specific but again once you get to the specific you can get especially if there are overlapping claims or contested claims that's where things come from I was at an event two weeks ago and I didn't know whose territory I was on so I contacted a friend of mine who does work in the area and he actually broke down the problems with the standard acknowledgement in that it included some folks who were very recent in the area like late 19th century and kind of gave some nuance and so the organizers of the event gave an introduction that actually included that group and in mine was a little bit more distant well not distant but a little bit more nuanced in that way still very respectful but also acknowledging different kinds of relationships in no way displacing communities but gave a slightly different context and I think that's also that's also good for us is to see that these are because these are living relationships we're going to be grappling with that but I think just in general if you don't have that information if your research hasn't brought you if you don't have people to talk with acknowledge that there there is an indigenous population who calls this place home I think there's also power in social media too like even just posting it within your networks is sometimes a way I'm going to University of Toronto and these are things that these are questions that as a researcher I think about when I visit different spaces and present my work is where am I going are there questions from the office yes yeah so this is just connected a bit to the earlier conversation about access to information and the university's role in that and maybe all of you can comment on this or just a verbal argument before events and I'm trying to get people to think about these issues that we're discussing here for example at the university having a mandatory course for everyone at UBC to learn at least the basic information so they can have ground to start asking the right questions where are we with that and is that something that the university is considering doing well actually I'm on that committee not a committee to decide that there should or should not be a mandatory course but how do we respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions finding that we need substantive Indigenous content at the university so we actually have a working group that is taking up that looking at all the available research to see what is actually going to be the most effective response here obviously we want more and better whether a mandatory course would do that is still a question very much up in the air because in some places mandatory courses have actually been done opposite of that and have actually created much more division than was anticipated that can actually be counterproductive but there are it might work here it might not there might be other ways of making sure that every student who graduates has robust and significant engagement with Indigenous content so we have a working group with folks from all over the university who have experience in Indigenous curriculum to kind of see what makes sense here and we also have to make sure that maybe what works at the University of Winnipeg would not work here we have different relationships we have a different history we have different obligations we also want to make sure that whatever we do upholds the relationships with communities that we have now and so we also have to ask them what would you like to see happen so it's an ongoing conversation and it's we're actually going to be having our first meeting very soon so so it's a recent formation? it is, yeah, but those curriculum have been shaping a lot of what the university has done for well over a decade yeah, if I could add something to that a couple of things one of them is there's a recent article and it was in Globe and Mail and it was reflecting it was a student's reflection on the way a mandatory course requirement was working at Baker University and I think I worked previously at a university where we did institute requirements and it took a lot of work to make sure that the courses were actually substantive and that they came close to doing what we all hope they would do and not the reverse and so I think it's just something that has to be thought about quite carefully the other thing I would just notice that UBC is a really big institution and it's a lot of people doing things in a lot of different areas and the story that you told about your department I think is a really interesting one there have been places where different units have introduced curriculum and they have found ways of trying to introduce in a way that's meaningful in the context of the discipline that they're working in and I think those are very promising and they're one of the things we wouldn't want to do and the work that we began to do more centrally is to damage those initiatives when they're being successful and I think one of the things if we for instance announce that there must be a required course then I think people in all of those places where they've been working to develop curriculum would be saying well what have we been doing all this time and does that mean that we need to abandon this because they have to be into required course and that would be kind of a perverse result you know it would be producing a less desirable result than we might get other ways thinking that we do want to increase the opportunity for students across the university to become knowledgeable in this area and have some way of approaching it and enter into something like a more useful conversation that is absolutely a desirable goal I think or many of us feel that way and I think the potential to work with people to find a way to do it that's meaningful in the context of their work is high but it's not simple and on the other hand we've got a lot of smart people here so I think we should be able to do something good and I think what sometimes happens is people think oh a requirement would do this right a course would do this but it all depends on who's teaching the course it all depends on what is taught in the course it depends on is this a course that has widespread support from across the university does it have the resources needed to actually do what it needs to do I have been in institutions where we had a required course and students this was in the states and in a 98% white institution in Nebraska students were really resentful and it was traumatic for students of color who were in the classes it was traumatic for the instructors of color who taught the courses almost always those required courses are taught by sessional or tenured faculty so they're also more vulnerable anyway in terms of the institutional power structures it sometimes to keep it from getting contentious content is watered down, that's not what we want we actually want really robust content and so how do we make sure that we're able to do what we need to do to get the familiarity for students without creating conditions where the really strong work gets enumerated that's the big challenge there are all kinds of ways we could do that and we've got smart people who can help us with that but it's never just as let's have a requirement all of those other things and resourcing is a huge thing universities all over this country are like yes, we'll decolonize the university we'll indigenize it we'll have a required class there you go look at the example that you began with what happened in your department what was so interesting to think about the story that we heard is that everybody in the department sort of got involved in the discussion of what to do and in that sense they all took some ownership over what was going to happen here in their syllabus and I think one of the problems with some of the schemes that Daniel and I have both seen because this was something that people tried more often in the states I think than here is that you get the course and it's like everybody says oh okay they're going to do that and of course as Daniel said it's not loaded to people with not a lot of teaching experience and they're teaching the most difficult thing in the curriculum it's a nightmare for them but everybody else then walks away and it's like well that's all taken care we've got the required course we don't have to think about it and I think what we want is we want everybody thinking about it and we want everybody engaged we do have all these smart people we like them all engaged in the process in their environment in their department in their discipline what's the approach today and we would assume it would be somewhat different in various different places but we'd like them to be thinking about it and not uploading it out to some for DA who's really what we're setting up for a visible experience and just one last point I think it's a really vital question and I'm really glad you brought it up and I see a lot of students actually the ones who are pushing for us to do this and I get it I was a student too and I understand the desire to see just better possibilities in the classroom so this is also part of the conversation has to be with students and the students who have the investment in that what would they like to see and how can this be meaningful for their experiences because our students are in these classes where they're either getting either having a good experience or a really wretched experience so how can we honor the work that they're doing and the struggles that they're undertaking in a way that actually does what they want it to and doesn't have the unintended consequences of making things more hostile in the class and that open mail piece was actually really heart breaking here about an indigenous students experience in one of those required classes and I think we have to take that really, really seriously but it's an important question I'm glad you asked it and I just want to note a little shout out for Amy here Amy and a colleague of hers when she was a student did a project where the students documented their experience of these kinds of situations in classrooms and that's still while it has been available online and I think it's about to be an online where we're dealing with the migration of our video platform one more time we'll just do that it'll all get sorted out but I think it was really eye-opening for many people because it alerted people to the reality that it's not enough just to open up a content area you open up a content area people are going to want to talk about it and most people go back to where we began today most people have never talked about this before in any kind of substantive way which means they have no language for it we don't have a way to talk we didn't arrive here if you arrived at the university you probably have a language to talk about mathematics because you probably had a few courses in mathematics by the time you got here or a way of talking about history in a general sense but when it comes to indigenous issues most people have not talked about it formally in their lives and so you open up that territory people are going to try to talk about it they haven't tried it they haven't figured out what works and doesn't work and people sometimes say things that surprise themselves in the 90s when I was working in the states we started this discussion about courses dealing with majority history in the states so that was everybody's history who wasn't majority culture and we would go into these discussions with department heads and people would just say totally outrageous things and these were not necessarily terrible people it's just that they thought they knew how to talk about this and they've never done it before they really had no idea how to talk about it when they opened their mouths they really thought they probably really felt bad about these and so we have to anticipate that and that's actually to do that is a good thing because it means that's a step on the way to developing the language we need to have culturally and socially and individually to actually be able to talk about these things in a useful way but it does mean that those classes are going to be places where discussions are challenging and people need to have skills and none of our faculty well I won't say that's probably being too absolute 98% of our faculty have had no training in this whatsoever they do not teach this in grad school in many places but yet we're asking them to begin to work on those conversations with their students and that's a really good thing but they need we need to have ways of thinking about it and that's part of why what came out of Amy and her colleagues work was the unit that has brought us together here today in CTLT which offers support to instructors in beginning to think about how to enter into those conversations and do well with them because it does provide ways for people to anticipate a little bit the difficulty of the conversation but also you know how to navigate it and retain its highest value and that's really important but when institutions think that by passing a mandatory requirement they've done the deed that's the easy part the hard part is figuring out how to do it and get to the conversations that everybody wants to see happening and create a community of people who are informed and able to talk about things and that's a bigger challenge and I'm glad that we're in a capacity to do that here in the world I think that unless there are any burning quick questions I think this might be a nice place to close our session today unless they're closing remarks from the panel can you find the thoughts any insights burning questions I'd like to thank everyone who have contributed their thoughts, knowledge and wisdom today both the online audience for their great questions and reflections and the folks here in the room as well as Link, Dando, Rima and Lisa thank you so much for your thoughts