UBC announced the faculty-led project recipients of funding through the Indigenous Strategic Initiatives (ISI) Fund on September 14.
The ISI Fund is an initiative across both the UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan campuses that directly supports the implementation of the UBC Indigenous Strategic Plan (ISP), which was launched in September 2020. The three funding streams are Innovative (Stream One), Transformative (Stream Two) and Student-led (Stream Three), the latter of which was already announced last August.
This year’s ISI Fund provided a total of $4 million of funding to account for two years, and future funding cycles will offer $2 million per year.
The ISI Fund falls under the Office of Indigenous Strategic Initiatives (OISI) led by Dr. Sheryl Lightfoot, who is also a senior advisor to the president on Indigenous Affairs, a Canada Research Chair of Global Indigenous Rights and Politics and an associate professor in political science.
“For Streams One and Two, we had two cycles,” said Lightfoot in an interview with The Ubyssey. “We had a letter of intent phase … and that was to get down to the projects that we thought were ready to proceed to full application in a very short period of time.”
“The ones that went through the letter of intent phase were then invited to submit a full proposal.”
In Stream One, the Reciprocal Archeological and Anthropological Training Programs project will develop new university-accredited programs to build capacity in First Nations communities. The project, whose team consists of representatives from Musqueam Indian Band (MIB) and from the Laboratory of Archeology at UBC, aims to explore pathways for a land-based, co-op style accreditation program that combines cultural and experiential knowledge.
“The Laboratory of Archeology, or LOA, has a lot of resources and knowledge in terms of providing university-based training for archeology,” said Camilla Speller, associate professor in anthropological archeology and director of the project. “But the reality is that there are a lot of practicing Indigenous archeologists who have been working in archaeology for decades but they don’t have a traditional university degree and for many of them, university is an alienating place.”
Speller said the main actions of the project are to create an accreditation to recognize the skills of Indigenous archeologists and to provide training in areas of archeology that they may want to improve their skills in, such as identifying archeological animals and using ground-penetrating radars.
“I think that a super important part of the Indigenous Strategic Plan is making sure that Indigenous perspectives are highlighted and showcased in the ways that we teach, and I think that it’s really at the centre of this project,” said Speller, adding that any Indigenous people who provide knowledge for the project will be compensated.
“That, for me, is really gratifying.”
In Stream Two, the Indigenous Fisheries Action at UBC project translates the goals of the “UBC [Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries] Aboriginal Fisheries Unit (ARFU) Strategic Plan 2017” into actionable steps through which the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) can advance the goals of the ISP.
“We don’t just study the Western science of fish, we also study the Indigenous … community-based knowledge of fish and the cultural importance of fish,” said Dianne Newell, professor emerita in history and interim director at the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries (CIF). “There is a push to … decolonialize the structure of learning within the university and show the different ways of learning and different ways of … coproducing knowledge with communities.”
The current priorities of this project are to establish the CIF’s Indigenous Advisory Council, to appoint paid, short-term members of the CIFs new cultural experts program, and to organize a CIF Annual Partners’ Gathering.
“We feel that because we were able to even start a year and a half ago, we’re a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of effective centres that deal with Indigenous issues at UBC,” said Newell. “What we’re doing may be helping to provide a bit of a model for how people can start applying their ideas for … new programs and work attracting Indigenous students and attracting Indigenous faculty.”
According to Lightfoot, the OISI has recently opened a request for feedback about the ISI Fund. She said in the meantime, it will continue supporting the recipients of funding through regular check-ins to see if it can provide additional support to the ongoing projects.
“What I’m really happy about and encouraged by is the diversity of projects that came forward and how carefully they have thought about how to put the ISP goals and actions into place within their own corners of the university,” said Lightfoot.