News

Jean Becker is the University of Waterloo’s first Senior Director of Indigenous initiatives. On January 29, 2020, the Indigenous Speakers Series presented Jean in conversation with Lori Campbell, Director of the Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre.

Students in a fall 2019 Digital Arts Communication course on digital storytelling produced beautiful and compelling short documentaries around the theme of Truth and Reconciliation on Turtle Island.

Since 2016, Bridge: Honouring the Lives of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit People has become an annual installation for 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence at the University of Waterloo.

Jean Becker will join the University of Waterloo on January 13, 2020 in the newly-created Senior Director, Indigenous Initiatives position in which she will provide strategic leadership to articulate a University of Waterloo-specific response to the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action, and identify systemic and systematic changes that move beyond the Calls to Action by creating a long-term vision for the University.

Tomson Highway's Songs in the Key of Cree is a collection of Cree and English songs that are part of a collaborative research project on Indigenous languages revitalization. On November 19, 2019, the Waterloo community was delighted by a Songs in the key of Cree integrated performance-speaker event, with captivating vocalist Patricia Cano, guitarist Kevin Barrett, saxophonist Marcus Ali, and fiddler/guitarist Nathan Halcrow, joined by artist and History MA candidate Emma Rain Smith.

For Applied Health Sciences alumnus Cornelia (Nel) Wieman (MSc Kinesiology ’91), there is no question that Canada's healthcare system results in Indigenous peoples being poorly served and discriminated against. A desire to transform the system by intregrating culturally appropriate approaches for Indigenous peoples has been a focus of Wieman’s career as Canada’s first female Indigenous psychiatrist.

On September 18 the 2019-20 Indigenous Speakers Series opened with Jesse Thistle, a Métis-Cree-Scot from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. His bestselling memoir, From the Ashes (Simon and Schuster Canada), chronicles his life on the streets and how he overcame trauma and addiction to discover the truth about who he is. His scholarship is focused on intergenerational and historic trauma of the Métis people, and also reflects on his own past struggles with homelessness.

As an activist and historian vocal on Indigenous rights, History PhD student Lucy Vorobej works to raise consciousness of how historical negative stereotypes and injustices were created and how they can be redressed within Canadian society. Lucy co-leads a website centred on missing and murdered Indigenous women. Her goal? Diving into the history from the 1970s to the 2000s and assessing how missing and murdered Indigenous women’s narratives were misreported and misstated to understand how different stereotypes of Indigenous women formed.

Si'Yam Lee Maracle’s unflinching look at life on Turtle Island under settler colonialism has propelled a generation of storytellers. In a recent interview with the CBC, the author of path-breaking books such as Bobbi- Lee: Indian Rebel, and Ravensong talked of the bigotry she faced trying to tell Indigenous stories as a young woman growing up in 1970s Vancouver.

The Indigenous Speakers Series presented award-winning graphic novelist and writer David A. Robertson on Wednesday, March 13. He spoke about how he uses his work to educate and entertain, and how reconcilation begins with conversations, with asking questions, listening and learning. “We need to do better. I'm using the word 'we' here because we are in this together. Reconciliation is an all hands on deck thing."