At UVic

On April 28th, I attended an all-day workshop at UVic on Indigenous post-secondary education. The official title on the agenda: Reconstructing an Indigenous Post-secondary Education Framework: Implications for UVic. The special guest was Dr. Graham Smith, from New Zealand. I was really happy to see Graham again. I met with him early in January this year at his school in Whakatane on the North Island.

The day was put on by the Indigenous Affairs Office and was really well done. Lots of people from UVic were there, including several deans department heads and other faculty, staff and students from various departments:Child & Youth Care, Social Work, Education, Public Admin., Law, Business, the Library, Anthropology, and the Native Student Union. Other members of the Aboriginal Services Plan were there -- student representatives, folks from the community, including Camosun College, and people from around the province. It was a wonderfully diverse group of people and the energy was high. I met new people and saw others I haven't seen for a few months. I was happy to meet two elders who were there and to hear their thoughts and ideas about education and about the house in particular.

The morning included introductions, our reason for being there, and a presentation by Graham Smith, who talked about the house and told us about a saying from where he comes from -- "the house is the people -- the people are the house". There was a great emphasis on remembering that the focus must be on students' academic success. I recently saw a t-shirt with a notice that read "the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing". To me that kind of sums up what we were talking about -- remember why we are there (for the students), and to keep that our main thing.

During lunch I had a chance to catch up with friends and colleagues. The afternoon was spent in small groups to talk about where we needed to go from here with respect to Indigenous post-secondary education. The group I was in had good ideas and there was a lot of discussion. I learned a lot which is what I feel I'm doing each time I attend one of these sessions. One good thing I found out is that the First Peoples House will open in September.

I took some pictures of the house under construction in December before leaving for New Zealand, and I took some pictures the day of this all-day session.

December, 2008

April, 2009

I have to do a bit of follow up with some people when I get back. The library needs to make a connection with the SAGE (Supporting Aboriginal Graduate Education) programme on campus. I think I talked about this in a previous post, and will explore when I'm back. I also need to be in touch with the library at Camosun as they are doing a lot of work right now for their Indigenous students, so I'm keen to find out what's happening.

This all-day session was the first of several, so I'm really looking forward to those. The day was productive, enlightening and a lot of fun.