https://edst.educ.ubc.ca/events/event/regenerative-and-restorative-pedagogy/
The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation 2025 / Journée nationale de la vérité et de la réconciliation 2025
Dear EDST Members:
Tomorrow, Tuesday, September 30th, 2025, we commemorate The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation / Journée nationale de la vérité et de la réconciliation. On that day we are called to reflect on the lasting devastating impacts residential schools have had, and continue to have, on Indigenous communities, their families and the inter-generational wounds of suffering, pain and dislocation. The stories that capture this colonial history of dispossession through schools represent a vivid reminder of this suffering. Dean Jane Hare’s message encourages us all to “to explore, reflect, and consider how these stories may guide your own learning and actions”. She further exhorts us to “continue to walk this path with respect, accountability, and hope.”
As a Department focused on studying the impacts of education, schools and schooling on society, let this commemorative Day remind us of two major points:
First, let us acknowledge the vulnerability and destructive nature of any educational project when it lacks a critical decolonial consideration of its impacts on social groups marked by difference, plurality and differentials of power. Keeping present in our reflections the dangers we all run when thinking of education and schooling generically, as a “modernizing” or “enlightening” project, represents one safeguard against becoming accomplice in the violence embedded in this institution when deployed thoughtlessly.
Secondly, on this commemoration Day, let us renew our commitment and recognize the roles schools and education play in the colonization of the space we refer to as Canada and beyond, internationally. Let us endeavour to think the school as an institution and organization that should be Indigenized – in its epistemic and pedagogical attributes – before it can lay claim to a capacity to heal and offer a venue of justice and reconciliation.
As we reconvene on campus this week, let us explore further how we can come together and work towards the fostering of an education worth wanting, one that heals, promotes justice and builds rather than destroy and dispossess.
Thank you for your attention & engagement.
Wishing us all a significant commemoration and reflection,
André
Congratulations to Robert Mahikwa who successfully defended his PhD Dissertation
Please join us in congratulating Robert Mahikwa who successfully defended his PhD Dissertation on September 15 of 2025.
Title:
Mentoring Indigenous Graduate Students into Indigenous Scholars
Abstract:
This study provides an in-depth and comprehensive review of Indigenous worldviews (theories), knowledges (perspectives), traditions (approaches), and protocols (ethics) that inform culturally attuned Indigenous graduate mentorship. Many Indigenous graduate students seeking to become Indigenous scholars are needing faculty who can provide culturally attuned mentorship as their supervisor and mentor. However, far too few Indigenous (or non-Indigenous faculty) carry the appropriate expertise to meet these needs. In turn, most Indigenous graduate students complete their programs with little (if any) cultural connections or integration along the way. The overarching inquiry of this study is “What is culturally attuned Indigenous graduate mentorship?”. To achieve its research aims, this study utilized the conversational method as part of its own culturally attuned Indigenous research methodological paradigm. Per its methods, 13 full-tenured Indigenous faculty who have experience with mentoring Indigenous graduate students in culturally attuned ways as their thesis or dissertation supervisor in British Columbia, where this study was conducted, were interviewed. Data analysis in this study was also culturally attuned to help ensure that the subsequent findings would themselves be culturally attuned. In the end, nine thematic bundles where identified from these finding, as follows: terminology and meanings; general distinctions; conceptual frameworks; mentor archetypes; five R’s; pragmatic approaches; barriers and obstacles; role of non-Indigenous faculty Allies; and online technologies. Thereafter, a series of in-depth discussions and recommendations are also provided, followed by an acknowledgement of the limitations of this study, and areas for future research opportunities. Finally, in the spirit of reciprocity, a cultural gift was offered to each of the research participant, as well as the Elders who helped informed this work, for their invaluable contributions to this study.
Chair of Examination Committee:
Dr. Nicol Cynthia, Curriculum Studies
University Examiners:
Dr. Daniel Heath Justice, Department of English
Dr. Janice Forsyth, Kinesiology
External Examiner:
Dr. Graham Hingangaroa Smith, Massey University (New Zealand)
Supervisory Committee:
Dr. Margaret Kovach, Supervisor
Dr. Dustin Louie, Member
Dr. Jan Hare, Member
Congratulations Robert!