Kloshe Tillicum co-sponsors IGSS

Dr. Richard Vedan delivers congratulatory address at Indigenous Graduate Students Symposium 

Congratulations to the Indigenous Graduate Students’ Symposium on its successful 10th Anniversary gathering: Indigenous Intellectual Traditions: Re/stor(y)ing Time and Space! Dr. Richard Atleo’s opening keynote demonstrated how Indigenous cosmologies can practically inform intellectual and ethical practices in daily life.  By locating his ideas in the stories of the Nuu chah nulth People he spoke of the dynamic nature of reality, elucidating the need for multi-faceted rather than essentialist analyses.  His discussion on self-discovery through various cultural practices allied with feminist theory and called on researchers/scholars to identify their positions as central to their intellectual constructs.  He spoke of protocols as agreements instructing humans on conduct between each other and with Creation.  His message that education is inseparable from life and lived experience rather than a discrete reified activity, set the stage for the thoughtful student papers that followed.
 
These presentations, overall, highlighted real tensions with academic practice as “Indigenous” researchers.  Francine Burning spoke of the “traditional” versus “contemporary” dichotomy which leaves no space for the organic evolution of Indigenous culture while Marissa Munoz explored the complexity of multiple identities based on her Peoples’ diaspora in the borderlands of Mexico and the USA.  Michele Sam explored research based in the cosmology of the Ktunaxa Peoples showing that Indigenous research processes have existed in an interweaving series of relations and relationships that inform each other and are inherent in Creation.  Verna Billy-Minnabarriet’s examination of the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology’s Indigenous education program demonstrated the non-essentialist matrix approach needed for holistic education while Todd Ormiston’s integration of three research methodologies based on his own life experiences offered an operationalization of this principle.  The many other papers presented, explored these issues from performance, visual and international perspectives.

Over the past 10 years, Kloshe Tillicum and its investigators in maintaining a commitment to student mentoring and training have sponsored the IGSS several times.  Therefore, it was with pleasure that Dr. Richard Vedan gave a congratulatory address and Sharon Thira stood as witness.  We acknowledge Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald’s tireless on-going efforts to deliver upcoming Indigenous scholars whose academic rigour is coupled with thoughtful, compassionate practice that is striving to present Indigenous experiences and knowledges in this time and place.

Based on the traditional practices of the Coast Salish Peoples, witnesses were called to note the work being done at the IGSS.  This article was developed to honour this role that was given to Kloshe Tillicum.

For outness is but the feeling of otherness (alterity) rendered intuitive, or alterity visually represented. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

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