Ahenakew, Cash PhD

Research Interests

Individual research Interests

Bio

Dr. Cash Ahenakew (Ph.D.) holds a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples’ Well-being.  He is also an associate professor in the Department of Education at the University of British Columbia. Cash is Plains Cree and is a member of the Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation. His research is based in a commitment to the development of Indigenous theories, curriculum, pedagogies and mixed methodologies. His work addresses the complexities at the interface between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges, education, methodology and ceremony.

For more information, please refer to this UBC blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/ahenakewcrc/

CRC video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwMKw1NtC8o

Education

Awards

Killam Faculty Teaching 2017-2018, UBC

Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Award 2011, University of Calgary 

Towards Eldering – Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures: https://decolonialfutures.net/portfolio/towards-eldering/

Research Projects

Selected Funded Research

Selected Publications

Significant publications and career contributions

1. Ahenakew, C., (2020). Canada Research Chair in Indigenous People’s Wellbeing (2020-Present). My recent appointment as CRC in Indigenous People’s Wellbeing and $120,000 in funding acknowledges my leadership and achievements in the development of Indigenous curriculum, pedagogies, mixed-methodologies as well as involvement traditional knowledges and land-based practices. My work addresses complexities at the interface between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges, education, methodology and ceremony. For my CRC program, I am collaborating with researchers and Elders on new research initiatives, including: aging and Eldership during COVID-19, the ethics of engaging Indigenous medicines and practices, decolonizing STEM professions, food security, and land-based wellbeing exercises.

CRC website: https://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/chairholders-titulaires/profile-eng.aspx?profileId=4780

2. Ahenakew, C. (2019). Towards Scarring our Collective Soul Wound. Musagetes. This book was published open access to improve access for Indigenous readers. It summarizes the last decade of my work on sacred pain and wellbeing. Using auto-ethnography, it presents examples of Indigenous practices of ceremony and healing that operate beyond modern-colonial paradigms. The book problematizes superficial and depoliticized efforts of inclusion and reconciliation that instrumentalize Indigenous knowledges and peoples for non-Indigenous self-actualization. It also presents guidelines for ethical relationships with Indigenous communities.
3. Ahenakew, C. (2016). Grafting indigenous ways of knowing onto non-indigenous ways of being: The (under-estimated) challenges of a decolonial imagination. Int. Rev of Qual Res, 9(3), 323-340. This widely cited article (157+ citations & 1018 downloads) offers a critical understanding of Indigenous educational pedagogies and research paradigms. While appreciating the need for advancing the use of Indigenous methodologies in academic settings, it calls for a careful consideration of the paradoxes and limitations of translating insights between Indigenous and non-Indigenous spaces, such as ‘grafting’ Indigenous knowledges onto western curriculum.
4. Ahenakew, C. (2018). Sacred pain in indigenous metaphysics dancing towards cosmological reconciliations. Special Issue of the Canadian Journal of Native Education, 38(2), 176-188. This article is an autoethnography that critiques modern-colonial ways of knowing and being and revitalizes Indigenous forms of education, health and well-being. This article asked: Why are western institutions harmful to Indigenous people’s wellbeing? What traditional practices can change our relationship to the inter-generational pain of colonialism and contribute to well-being? And how can an autoethnography of institutional experiences and ceremonial practices contribute to a different understanding and experience of pain, suffering, healing and wellbeing?
5. Andreotti, V., Stein, S., Ahenakew, C., & Hunt, D. (2015). Mapping interpretations of decolonization in the context of higher education. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 4(1), 21-40. Written with colleagues, this article presents a social cartography of different meanings and practices of decolonization in the context of higher education. The article, which has received 380 citations, mapped tensions, paradoxes and contradictions that were observed in different institutional and scholarly responses to addressing colonialism in Higher Education. This article offers a synthesis of the issues faced by those trying to decolonize education in order to be more responsive to marginalized knowledges and students.  
6. Ahenakew, C. (2012). Historical Trauma, Residential Schools, Community Capacity and Healing within and Across Indigenous. Communities. This multilevel study examines social determinants of health impacting geographic variations in health conditions across Indigenous communities in Canada, using a Generalized Hierarchical Linear Model (GHLM) strategy and factorial analysis. Community-level determinants are operationalized through a community capacity (social capital, cultural continuity) and a historical trauma index. Individual-level indicators include income, educational achievement, indigenous identity, cultural participation. Indices are deployed to test hypotheses relating to historical trauma and cultural continuity, drawing on evidence of language competency, participation in traditional activities, residential school attendance, and social problems connected to historical trauma. Dissertation submitted to Graduate Studies, at the University of Calgary. Ph.D. 

Towards Eldering – Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures: https://decolonialfutures.net/portfolio/towards-eldering/

Students Supervised

Courses taught

EDUC 440: Aboriginal Education In Canda

EDUC 500. 01: Research Methodologies in Education

EDST 501: Research Traditions (Indigenous focused)

EDST 508A: Indigenous Inquiry and Methodology

EDST 545. 3: Indigenous Inquiry and Research

EDST 565B. 96A: Indigenous Existential Resistance: The Sundance Practice

LLED 565F: Indigenous Intergenerational Learning.

EDST 591: Indigenous Epistemology and Curriculum

EDST 553: Group Inquiry (Indigenous focus)

EDST 532: Educational Leadership with an Indigenous Focus

(At other university)
SOWK 302: Indigenous Research Methods
SOWK 304: Colonization & De-colonization
INDG: Research Methods in Indigenous American Contexts
INDG: Aboriginal Health Issues: Traditional Indian Medicine and Critical Analysis of the Biomedical Model.