Suke Padam

Suke Padam is a Liu Scholar 2018/2019 at the Institute for Public Policy and Global Affairs UBC, PhD Program under the mentorship of Dr. Sam Rocha.  Suke is a PhD Candidate and was selected as a recipient of a 4-year departmental academic scholarship in EDST.  His doctoral research interest involves the critical examination of contemporary and historical colonial influences of power and control that have emanated through western-based educational policies, consequently disrupting and clashing with pre-existing Aboriginal/Indigenous philosophies and worldviews.  His focus is on the impact of digital technologies and their associated benefits and ramifications affecting First Nation communities – more specifically the effects upon culture, language, traditions, ceremonies, customs and values.  Rather than doing traditional ethnographic research with a single community, his theoretical framework and methodology involves an evocative analytical auto-ethnographic self-reflexive research approach which reveals his experiences and relationships with numerous First Nation communities – a pan-provincial perspective across British Columbia.

Prior Education:

• M.Ed. (UBC – Indigenous Knowledges and Pedagogies)
• MBA (Wash. – Management Information Systems)
• B.Ed. (UBC – Business Education/Computer Science)
• BA (UBC – Sociology/Anthropology)

As a doctoral graduate teaching assistant and sessional lecturer for teacher candidates, Suke has taught EPSE 311 – Cultivating Supportive School and Classroom Environments and EPSE 310 – Assessment and Learning in the Classroom in the Teacher Education Program at UBC (secondary, middle and K-3 levels), coordinated by Dr. Shawna Faber, Director of Undergraduate Programs.  He has taught EDUC 440 – First Nations in Canada under the guidance of Dr. Jan Hare, Associate Dean of Indigenous Education.  Also he has worked as a graduate academic assistant in the Native Indian Teacher Education Program (NITEP) EDUC 140 course.  Suke co-chaired the IGSS (Indigenous Graduate Student Symposium) UBC/SFU partnership conference in 2017 and also presented a paper on liberalism, neoliberal empowerment and reconciliation (unpublished).  In a subsequent research paper, he also explored commonalities between local Aboriginal and global Indigenous connections by weaving a philosophical relationship of resiliency in a presentation at IGSS 2018 (unpublished).  He has been on the SAGE (Supporting Aboriginal Graduate Enhancement) and IGSS planning committee since 2014.

Suke has been a faculty member at Douglas College, North Island College, Coquitlam College and is also an experienced high school teacher (SD43 Coquitlam). His very successful relationships with First Nation organizations led him into consulting and working with and alongside Indigenous teachers, administrators and band council members throughout approximately half of the 203 First Nation reserves throughout BC.  Over a seven-year period, his venture in sharing technical hardware and software knowledge was sanctioned by The First Nations Technology Council and The First Nations Education Steering Committee.  He quickly discovered serious concerns affecting remote Aboriginal communities such as lack of high-tech infrastructure, limited access to educational resources, restricted opportunities to communicate via the Internet and sporadic access through web-based computer technologies.  After experiencing the other side of the ‘last mile’ or the ‘digital divide’, it was essential to share and support the mutual concerns affecting many rural First Nation communities.  From the lens of an ally settler perspective, attending Aboriginal communities also became a learning experience for him since it evoked early colonial influences in how his upbringing was flavoured by Eurocentric ideologies primarily through western educational policies in curricula.  His mandate is to do research that will be in cohesion with First Nation communities, as all members are viewed as ‘co-researchers’, not participants or subjects.  At a national and global scope his examination of neoliberal policies and subsequent recent contemporary political movements, analyzes equity issues that challenge governmental attempts at the dissemination of fairness and equality.  His ontological view is that all Indigenous people share ‘relationality’ through a common epistemological ideology that culture is inherently connected to land, place and a spiritual third space.

Co-Supervisors: Dr. Margaret Kovach (Educational Studies) and Dr. Cash Ahenakew (Educational Studies)

Committee Member: Dr. Alison Taylor (Educational Studies)