Raising the National Centre for Truth and Reconiliation's Survivor flag to commemorate the signing anniversary of Treaty 7 with words of recognition from Elder Alvin Manitopyes, Dr. Tim Rahilly, President and Vice-Chancellor, and Dr. Chad London, Provost and Vice-President Academic.

Sober Crew will drum the raising of the flag.

This event is rain or shine.

 Register

 Fri., Sept. 22

 1:30 – 2 p.m.

TransAlta Amphitheatre at flag poles

MRU will light up the campus in orange to commemorate Orange Shirt Day.

 Fri. Sept. 22 – Wed. Oct. 4

 Dusk

Charlton Pond, recreation pool, various lights around campus, East Gate and T-wing Courtyard tipis

Every Child Matters orange t-shirts are available for purchase at the Cougars Campus Store.

Launched in 2013, Orange Shirt Day was inspired by Phyllis's Story. Its goal is to educate people about residential schools in Canada, learn the truth from survivors and honour the loss of First Nation, Inuit and Métis children who never made it home.

 Thurs. Sept. 28 – Sat. Sept. 30

 All day

Orange t-shirts will be displayed around campus to visually represent MRU's commitment to reconciliation.

 Thurs. Sept. 28 – Mon. Oct. 2

 All day

Ani to pisi is a creation story that came from the late Elder, Clement Bear Chief, from Siksika Nation. It has been shared and utilized at the leadership, macro and micro levels to create awareness and understanding that Indigenous creation stories are relevant in institutions such as MRU. 

Join Elder Roy Bear Chief, Elder Miiksika'am and Sorrel Rider in creating a human spider web and bringing ani to pisi’s vibrations to life. You will leave the exercise with an increased understanding of reconciliation and your commitment to indigenization and decolonization.

Light refreshments will be available.

 I'm interested participating. Please send me more information.

 Thurs. Sept. 28

 Noon – 12:45 p.m.

Soccer Field 3 (Across from the TransAlta Amphitheatre by Parking Lot A)

Everyone is encouraged to wear red clothes showing support to the families of murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit.

 Wed. Oct. 4

 All day

Inspired by Métis artist Jaime Black's ReDress Project, MRU will display red dresses around campus to show support for the lives of murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit.

 Wed. Oct. 4

 All day

All are welcome to participate in Awo Taan Healing Lodge Society's 20th Annual Sisters in Spirit Vigil and March.*

*This is a community-led initiative; MRU has no direct affiliation with this initiative. 

 Wed. Oct. 4

 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Downtown Calgary

Presenter: Amanda Williams

The primary objective of this presentation is to highlight a site of potential exclusion within the Canadian visual landscape: the representation of Indigenous women entrepreneurs. Through a social semiotic analysis of popular stock photography sites the core research question guiding this investigation is: What is the current status of stock imagery sites and their representations of Indigenous women entrepreneurs? This impetus for this study emerged out of a noticed absence of images when promoting an event that brought together Indigenous women entrepreneurs in a roundtable format to discuss local ecosystem dynamics.

 Register

 Mon. Sept. 25

 10 – 11 a.m.

 Ideas Lounge (EL1270)

Presenters: Dixie Cole, Robyn Stewart, Elder Roy Bear Chief (Siksika Nation), Khethwen Woo

The Bridge to Canadian Nursing Program at Mount Royal University is responsive to institutional strategic plans including Mount Royal University (MRU, 2021), the Faculty of Health Community and Education (2019), and the School of Nursing and Midwifery (in progress). It is guided by the College of Registered Nurses of Alberta (2019). As a bridging program focused on supporting IENs to reclaim their title of RN in Canada, our philosophy reflects the uniqueness and diversity of our program and students. Our philosophy also reflects a commitment to decolonization, reconciliation, and equity. Our work reflects A Tso Tsi I Ka Kiman and A Tsot Spoom Tani (Combined Effort and Combined Help) as we work together to integrate the perspectives of nurses bringing forth an academic worldview and as an Elder bringing forth a Blackfoot (Siksika) worldview to create a program philosophy that embodies Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk) (Bartlett et al., 2012). The program also prioritizes shifting the colonial narrative to one that values diverse knowledge and humanity. As shared by Willie Ermine (September 28, 2021, personal communication), ethical space is about affirming the space (intentions trigger events that happen), focusing on relationships, dialoguing as equals, speaking in the language of possibilities, and working as catalysts for higher humanity. The program philosophy created will guide our program and curricular development as we respond to opportunities and challenges facing healthcare in Canada today. Our presentation will share our program philosophy and engage the audience in discourse regarding collaborative efforts to create more ethical spaces in academia.

 Register

 Mon. Sept. 25

 noon — 1 p.m.

Ideas Lounge (EL1270)

Presenters: Christopher Grignard, Elder Joe Eagle Tail Feathers (Iitsooahp’potah) (Kainai Nation)

This co-presentation will showcase the recent MRU Indigenization activities on which Dr. Christopher Grignard is working with his Blackfoot (Kainai) Elder, Joe Eagle Tail Feathers (Iitsooahp’potah). Over the last year, the two have been active in sharing their collaborative work, presenting together for Grignard’s Indigenous film and literature classes, the Celebrate! Teaching and Learning Event at MRU, the International Blackfoot Research Conference in Browning, Montana, and the D2L Fusion Conference in Anaheim, California. This past summer, the two and MRU’s Academic Media Group visited six sacred sites chosen by Eagle Tail Feathers, who served as the guide and shared his knowledge. These places are all situated within the traditional territory of the Niitsitapi people (five of which are located just across the Canada/US border in Montana). At these places, Iitsooahp’potah was taught traditional protocol to perform the ceremony. A selection from these recorded visits, approved by Joe, will be digitized and featured in Chris’ ENGL 3353: North American Indigenous Literatures, a course in which a ceremonial approach is taken. You are invited to learn about their desire to indigenize MRU (D2L, literature, and T-shirts), their presentation experiences and travels, their process and protocol, and their longstanding relationship of respect & trust. For Chris and Joe, the journey to Indigenization is best experienced when the steps forward are taken together harmoniously. They hope to inspire others by illustrating what Indigenization can look like.

 Register

 Mon. Sept. 25

 1 – 2 p.m.

Ideas Lounge (EL1270)

Presenters: Kevin O'Connor, Joshua Hill, Jessica Lee Wah

Committee members from the Department of Education's Indigenization Committee in Education will share some of the department's experiences in their journey to Indigenization. First, they will give an overview of research about Combating Racism Towards Indigenous Peoples by Seeking to Include Indigenous Perspectives in the department. The presenters will share their involvement working with a government-funded grant to support Indigenization of the curriculum. The committee members will share experience working with elders and community members while navigating university systems.

 Register

 Mon. Sept. 25

 2 – 3 p.m.

Ideas Lounge (EL1270)

Presenter: Jaime Waucaush-Warn

Please join me on a tour of Indigenous Art on campus for 1 hour. Limited participants, so please don't hesitate to sign up. Please bring good walking shoes and dress appropriately to go outside. MRU hosts 61 works by Indigenous Artists, many of which are completed by trailblazers to Contemporary Indigenous Art.

 Register

Presenter: Jebunnessa Chapola

Today’s world is aware of climate change issues. My SSHRC postdoctoral research findings are relevant to share. Climate change and global warming have disproportionately impacted Indigenous and racialized communities. As a settler of colour researcher, I have learnt and observed how Indigenous communities in Canada remain on the frontline of environmental injustice. Indigenous people live on the land; therefore, they face directly climate change-related struggles. In this presentation, I will share my learning reflection on how Indigenous women take the lead in teaching land-based education to resist regular climate change challenges. This summer, I got to attend an Indigenous cultural camp with my children and summer students. The Water Gathering kâniyâsihk Culture Camp in Northern Saskatchewan enriched my knowledge about traditional Indigenous knowledge and allowed me to observe the traditional ways of life. We learnt from medicine walks, berry picking, hide tanning, and processing fish and beaver firsthand.

My postdoctoral research title is Women-led Climate Change Solutions: Developing A Policy Guide from Indigenous and Immigrants’ Perspectives. As a climate change researcher, I focus on Indigenous, transnational immigrant, and refugee women and provide concrete recommendations to policymakers for creating socially inclusive climate adaptation policies and practices at local, provincial, and federal levels. I am interested in talking about What does it mean to engage in women leading climate change solutions?

 Register

 Mon. Sept. 25

 3 – 4 p.m.

Ideas Lounge (EL1270)

Presenters: Khatija Westbrook & Vicki Bouvier

The Indigenous Ecological Restoration Tour will take participants on a journey to numerous areas on campus where there has been natural and purposeful reclamation of native plants to these lands. The tour will highlight work done and plans for the future.

It will run rain or shine, so come for a walk, bring appropriate clothing and/or an umbrella and your questions.

 Register

Presenters: Ranjan Datta, Daniel Craig Mistaken, Teena Starlight

The study is responding to reconciling Indigenous climate change resiliency and Land-based Indigenous communities in Bangladesh and Canada. We (as an interdisciplinary research team of Indigenous Elders, knowledge-keepers, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars) explore how recent climate change (and interpretation) is challenging Indigenous food and water sources and what reformed processes can build Indigenous community capacity and support robust decisions.

Following the relational research framework, we focused on the Indigenous land-based understanding of climate change, the connectivity between climate change and water management and sustainability related to the interactions and interdependencies with Indigenous self-determination, land rights, language rights, and Indigenous environmental and cultural value protection. Our relational theoretical framework for land-based climate change research acknowledges the complex interactions and interdependencies between various components of climate justice, including the cultural, social, economic, and political dimensions of human-created climate crisis in Indigenous communities. This framework emphasizes the interconnectedness of these elements and seeks to understand how changes in one aspect can affect and be affected by changes in others.

 Register

 Tues. Sept. 26

 11 – noon

Ideas Lounge (EL1270)

Presenter: Allan Dwyer

The Specific Claims Tribunal of Canada (SCT) is a legal body which adjudicates over specific, usually historic claims on the part of Canadian First Nations. The body was formed to address the large volume of smaller claims that often emerge from the failure of the Crown (ie. the federal Canadian government) to fulfill elements of the treaty arrangements it has entered into with Canadian First Nations. The claims often arise when elders in Indigenous communities across Canada recall or relate stories which recall mistreatment at the hands of federal Indian agents or treaty administrators across Canada. The SCT accepts oral testimony, oral histories, stories, and community memory to formulate opinions on the liability owed to First Nations claimants in SCT cases. The financial settlements can be quite large. The process can be problematic, however. It is a Eurocentric judicial system operated by the dominant culture and funded by the Canadian government. This presentation will review the history of the SCT and will highlight criticisms, as well as strengths, of the SCT process.

 Register

 Tues. Sept. 26

 noon – 1 p.m.

Ideas Lounge (EL1270)

Presenters: Elder Roy Bear Chief (Siksika Nation), Elder Hayden Melting Tallow (Siksika Nation), Stephen Price

The group will present a project that will tell a story of the Blackfoot Traditional Territory and the partnership with Blackfoot Crossing and Historic Park to develop a blanket exercise to explain in a larger narrative the land that holds many stories, ceremonies, important sites, and many other important facts attached to the territory. We want to demonstrate that the land is more than just an acknowledgement that we often hear at events within the territory. Two Blackfoot Elders that were born and raised on the territory will talk about the journey to raise awareness of the importance of land and its connection to the people who have lived on it since time immemorial.

 Register

 Tues. Sept. 26

 1 – 2 p.m.

Ideas Lounge (EL1270)

Presenter: Cultural Inclusion Centre, SAMRU

Elder Alvin Manitopyes (Plains Cree) will discuss Universities Canada's commitment to truth and reconciliation. Mount Royal is a member of Universities Canada.

Check out student-focused Indigenous events on the Cultural Inclusion Centre event calendar.

 Wed. Sept. 27

 Noon – 1 p.m.

 Wykham House

Presenter: Travis Hay

This talk covers the history of the residential school system by focusing on its architects. It also looks at Canadian academics who have engaged in genocide denialism with respect to the Indian Residential Schooling system.

 Register

 Wed. Sept. 27

 noon – 2 p.m.

Ideas Lounge (EL1270)

Presenter: Lori Kearney

We are at a very exciting juncture. Everywhere there are signs of constructive long-term change. Cities are renaming streets with Indigenous names, and the names of parks are being returned to their original Indigenous names. A surge of people, institutions, corporations and governments are keen to learn the history that was denied us all in school and to work on reconciliation strategies.

My work at Career Services is to identify and support the needs and achievements of Indigenous learners. This includes identifying and eliminating systemic barriers to equity and recognizing and responding to the diversity of First Nations, Inuit and Métis learners in ways that honour who they are and where they come from.

At Career Services, we are learning to overcome barriers by implementing a cultural immersion approach to student career development. In this session, I will share how this method is implemented and the challenges and successes. In return, I would like to hear your thoughts, get feedback and also learn about the institutional initiatives are taking to support Truth and Reconciliation. You can expect to be engaged in learning, sharing, gaining feedback and receiving information that can benefit you in your practice on the road to reconciliation.

This session aims to enlighten, prepare and support Indigenous students' transition into the workforce and ultimately increase the number of Indigenous professionals in the workforce.

 Register

 Wed. Sept. 27

 2 – 3 p.m.

Ideas Lounge (EL1270)

Presenter: Ademola Adesola

This paper examines the portrayal of the notion of loss in Michelle "Good’s Five Little Indians" (2020) and James Bartleman’s "As Long as the Rivers Flow" (2011). In analyzing the theme of loss in these two novels, I seek to assert that the subject of loss constitutes a leitmotif of Indigenous narratives, as well as stories recreating the horrors of colonial violence and racism in varied parts of the world. Home and family, identity and culture, land and community, and religion and spirituality stand out as prominent hallmarks of the tragic losses represented in most Indigenous literary works, which form a core part of the Canadian literary canon. Like others, Bartleman’s and Good’s individual novels locate the agent of this irrevocable loss as the settler colonial regime of violence and genocide, which abjures cultural and religious differences and otherize Aboriginal peoples as “a kind of constitutive horror[s]” worthy of either traumatic, loss-engendering assimilation, or annihilation (Achille Mbembe, 82, 2017). The narratives I examine depict settler colonialism as a nonbenevolent experiment powered by the pernicious illiberalism of its initiators. In my analysis of their novels, the different narrative styles Good and Bartleman adopt in their respective works signify that the wounding experience of loss occurs at both individual and communal levels. Through their sustained graphic depictions of a ruthless exclusionist and assimilationist Indian residential school system, both narratives invite readers to ponder what it means to suffer the loss of land, home, family, identity, and culture. Moreover, my paper will underscore the point that these novels are didactic in their forceful celebration of inclusion and difference – in opposition to the violent crusade for dispossessing homogeneity of colonization — as a lubricant for viable intercultural relations.

 Register

 Wed. Sept. 27

 3 – 4 p.m.

Ideas Lounge (EL1270)

Presenters: Elder Roy Bear Chief (Siksika Nation), Heather Pollard

To honour the children, Espoom tah (helper), Elder Roy Bear Chief, will read aloud the book The Invisible Web to a group of young children.

In the spirit of reconciliation, The Invisible Web is an age-appropriate story written by Patrice Karst. This story embodies the narrative of Ani to pisi, which relates to how we are all interconnected.

No registration is required. All are welcome to join.

liko to ta mapsi pokaiksi (children matter)

 Register

 Thurs. Sept. 28

 10:30 – 11:30 a.m.

 TransAlta Amphitheatre

Presenter: Zulobia Shivji, Amelia Crane Bear

Our medium has been the Canadian Library book-wrapping project for MMIWGC, and I would like to further this learning by facilitating one or two book-wrapping sessions. These sessions would be 45 minutes to 1 hour long. While wrapping books in indigenous fabrics (which will be dedicated to people we have lost), I will promote storytelling, sharing and dialogue. All members of the MRU community and their communities would be welcome.

 Register

 Thurs. Sept. 28

 Noon – 1 p.m.

 W330

Presenter: Moussa Magassa

Allies have a crucial role to play in the work of Indigenization, decolonization and EDI. In today's conversation, we explore what allyship looks like for non-Indigenous people — including tangible actions we can take to contribute to the work of truth & reconciliation.

The EDI Conversations that Matter attempt to create a welcoming space where people should feel empowered to exchange and speak courageously with their mind and heart. According to Maya Angelou, courage is the most important of all virtues because, without courage, we can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

The goals of the Conversations that Matter Series are: 

• To provide space for monthly EDI conversations that matter to our community members 
• To facilitate respectful and inclusive dialogues about EDI that center the voices and experiences of BIPOC and all equity-deserving individuals, groups, and their allies 
• To educate our campus communities about EDI principles and values 
• To adapt a common language to strengthen our understanding and commitment to EDI 
• To learn about EDI best practices and tools to support our EDI work and engagement 
• To introduce the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and how you can contribute as part of this work

 Register

 Thurs. Sept. 28

 1 – 2 p.m.

W330 

Presenter: Helena Myllykoski

Using the blanket exercise, nursing students learned about the historical impacts of the policy on Canadian First Nation communities. While there was evidence of transformative learning on behalf of the student participants, they were left with questions as to how to incorporate this experience into their developing professional roles. The transformative nature of their learning experiences suggests that contact may have encouraged further exploration, reduced stigmatizing perspectives and invited self-reflection, supporting culturally sensitive and informed practice. However, the research results suggest that structured and deliberate action toward ongoing exposure to and learning about First Nation communities is needed to effectively meet the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action in regard to the education of healthcare providers.

 Register

 Thurs. Sept. 28

 2 – 3 p.m.

W330