Summer Institute

Summer Institute for Interdisciplinary Indigenous Graduate Studies

The Summer Institute is an intensive Graduate program that is geared to Indigenous students and taught from an Indigenous perspecitve. The Institute is the main focus for Indigenous Graduate Studies at UBC Okanagan and is the pivotal program of the Indigenous Studies Theme for the IGS MA degree. The instructors are leading national and international scholars whose work crosses a multitude of disciplines.

The Summer Institute is designed in modular form to allow a cohort of learners to spend two –three months during the spring/summer period in an intensive residential program. Each one credit module is four days long with students taking as many modules as they need to fulfill their degree requirements. The modules are organized together in three credit groups that are cross listed with other undergraduate programs to facilitate upper year undergraduate students looking for electives or core courses for their programs.

Masters Degrees

Requirements for a Masters of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies include the completion of a minimum of 18 credits of graduate courses (six credits must be in methodology coures) and a 12 credit thesis course (with a total of 30 credits required for the degree). In a typical Masters program a student would take some eight to 12 months in order to complete their course work and prepare a thesis proposal. The second year of such a program would be spent completing research and writing up the thesis, with timely completion coming at the end of the second year.

The Interdisciplinary Masters program requires that students complete six credits in “method and analysis” and 12 credits in “special topics”. In the Summer Institute students could complete two courses (six credits) in their first Summer but may take up to seven credits. These credits can fulfill IGS 501/503 – Research Methods and Analysis (six credits) requirements or be used to fulfill six credits of Indigenous Studies Theory and Practice (taught as IGS 523/530- Special topics). All these courses will be taught in modular format through a series of intensive, week long seminars. Students participate in these as part of a cohort, with some additional opportunity to pursue more focused coursework on related interests as appropriate. It is not necessary that students complete seven credits in their first Summer Institute session. Directed Studies courses can be offered in the semesters preceding and following the Summer Institute, or a student might choose to spread their course work over two summers. Students will be expected to develop a research proposal and begin their research by the end of their second Summer Institute, and complete all required course work, and defend their Masters thesis by the end of their third Summer Institute.

After a student’s first Summer Institute, they can return in subsequent summers to complete required courses, develop a research proposal, do further research, or work with their committee to complete and defend their thesis work. Depending on the student’s program, some portion of the research can also be completed during the fall and winter. Working with the Supporting Aboriginal Graduate Education (SAGE) program (for information regarding SAGE contact greg.young@ubc.ca) general support in the form of periodic workshops and meetings will also be available throughout the rest of the year. (Note: PhD students can also participate in the Summer Institute in ways crafted to meet the requirements of the PhD program). Begun in 2007, the Summer Institute included a “pro-seminar” (again offered as IGS 520 - Special topics) where students at various points in their programs will come together and share experience and support. Presentations in the pro-seminar are directed towards: developing a thesis proposal; presenting a completed proposal; reporting on completed thesis research. The pro-seminar includes guest presentations from resident and visiting scholars.

PhD Degree

Requirements for a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies include the completion of a minimum of four (three credits) graduate courses, comprehensive exams, and a doctoral dissertation. In a typical PhD program a student would take some two years in order to complete their course work, comprehensives, and dissertation proposal, and then two or more years to complete their research and defend a dissertation, with timely completion being between four and six years, depending on the discipline. Within the Summer Institute a PhD student could expect to complete their course work during two Summer Institute sessions, their comprehensive exams in the next, and complete final preparations for their dissertation research in a third session. Completion of the dissertation research may or may not involve further participation in the Summer Institute programming. Exact timing of the student’s progression will depend on both their capacity to participate in the Summer Institute and the degree to which they can work toward their degree requirements in the rest of the year.

Other Graduate Student Participation

Graduate students enrolled in regularly structured programs may wish to participate in a Summer Institute offering. Such students may enrol in a minimum of three and a maximum of six credits with permission of the Institute conveners.

Admission into the Summer Institute

Summer Institute Pic 2 Entry into the Summer Institute requires your acceptance into Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies (IGS) as a MA, MFA, MSC, or PhD student. General admission criterion for IGS includes your record of academic and professional achievements; letters of recommendation; the quality and feasibility of the proposed study and research plan; your supervisor’s ability to support the program of study; and availability of financial and operational support. The weighting of these criteria varies, but as the Summer Institute is focused on mid-career professionals, professional experience is a very important element of a potential student’s application.

As with all IGS students, the availability of a suitable supervisory committee and the feasibility of the program of study is also a very important element in a successful application to IGS through the Summer Institute. Students seeking entry into the UBC Okanagan Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program are required to develop a program plan in consultation with a potential supervisor. This plan will include both a program of study and research compatible with the research program and expertise of the supervisor.

Notes on the Operation of the Program

Normally, tuition for the Summer Institute students is charged at the normal UBC part-time Graduate Studies rate (consult the College of Graduate Studies for additional information). With the exception of the Summer Institute time period itself, there are no restrictions on work in this program. Students are not, however, permitted to work during their participation in the Summer Institute itself.

Participation of the En’owkin Centre

En'owkin Centre is a post-secondary institution of the Okanagan Nation, the traditional territory holders of the lands on which UBC Okanagan is located. En’owkin Centre has an international reputation for excellence, and it is the key partner in the development of the undergraduate program in Indigenous Studies at UBC Okanagan. Though the Summer Institute does not specifically focus on Okanagan Nation interests, and while we anticipate that many students in the program will come from other Nations, the principle of respect for traditional territory holders is a key element of the emerging praxis of Indigenous Studies generally.

Dr. Jeannette Armstrong, the well known Okanagan intellectual, writer, and educator has agreed to participate in the Institute.

Next Steps for Potential Participants

If you are interested in pursing the opportunities offered through UBC Okanagan’s Summer Institute in Interdisciplinary Indigenous Studies you can contact us at stephen.foster@ubc.ca

Further information on the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program and application materials and instructions.

The Summer Institute for Interdisciplinary Indigenous Graduate Studies
Module Descriptions Summer 2011

IGS 503A/IGS 523A/INDG 495K
July 5th – 8th

Indigenous Environmental Ethics-A Philosophy of Indigeneity
The course will examine concepts of Indigenous environmental ethics through the example of the Syilx Okanagan. The Syilx Okanagan environmental ethic is a philosophy expressed through Indigeneity as a social paradigm. Indigeneity as a social paradigm is identified by an inter-reliant experience in the land as demonstrated in land-use practice shaped in the way its realities are observed, learned and communicated to succeeding generations. Indigeneity from that perspective is not a delineation of human ethnicity but an attainment of knowledge and wisdom as a part of the scheme of perfect self-perpetuation that nature is. Syilx Okanagan Indigeneity reflects an epistemology that optimum human self-perpetuation is not human centered but must be consistent with the optimum ability for the environment to regenerate itself.

Instructor: Jeanette Armstrong

Jeanette Armstrong is an Assistant Professor at UBC Okanagan in the Indigenous Studies Program. She has a BFA from University of Victoria and is currently a Doctoral Candidate at University of Greifswald, Germany. Her research interests include Indigenous philosophies; Okanagan Syilx thought and environmental ethics coded into Syilx literatures. Armstrong teaches indigenous perspectives and traditional ecological methodologies at UBC Okanagan and at the En’owkin Centre in Penticton.

IGS 503B/IGS 523B/INDG 495K
July 11th - 14th

The Art of Healing and Reconciliation
The course will explore recent literature exploring the role of the creative arts in healing and reconciliation in response to the legacy of Indian residential schools, as well as examples of how artists are using various media to critically explore concepts of healing, truth, and reconciliation.

Instructor: Jonathan Dewar

Jonathan Dewar is Director of Research at the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. He is a past director of the Métis Centre at the National Aboriginal Health Organization and was the founding executive director of the Qaggiq Theatre Company in Iqaluit, Nunavut. He has government and non-government research and policy experience in a variety of First Nations, Inuit and Métis issues, including arts and wellness, language legislation and promotion, justice and crime prevention, youth social issues and land claims. He is of mixed heritage, descended from Scottish, French and Huron–Wendat Canadian ancestors.

IGS 503C/IGS 523C/INDG 495K
July 18th – 21st

(De)Colonization of Traditional Knowledge

Prior to the era of colonization, Traditional Knowledge (TK) systems were developed and regulated over millennia by Indigenous Peoples in various parts of the world. The scope of TK ranges from areas such as taxonomy, genetics, pharmacology, arts, architecture, social welfare, governance, conflict management and ecology. Over the past 5 centuries, TK was been subjected to varying degrees and methods of colonization including, appropriation, misuse, misrepresentation, controlled or lack of access, and impositions of foreign institutions including Intellectual Property Rights law. This course will examine the current state of TK, and efforts by certain Indigenous groups, nation states and the United Nations mechanisms (such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples the World Intellectual Property Organization) to place IK back under the control of its originators; meanwhile, as certain sectors of civil society begin to realize TK's potential to inform the changes needed to turn around destructive trends occurring around the planet.

Instructor: Greg Younging

Greg Younging is an Assistant Professor at UBC Okanagan in the Indigenous Studies Program. He has MA from Carleton University and a PhD from the University of British Columbia. His research interests include traditional knowledge, Indigenous rights, United Nations intellectual property rights, Indigenous literatures and Indigenous arts. He teaches courses at UBC Okanagan on Indigenous rights and traditional knowledge as it relates to issues in Canada and at the United Nations.

IGS 503D/IGS 523D/INDG 495L
July 25th – 28th

Documentary Film and the Energy of Indigenous Land-Memories

We will be focusing on the genre of the documentary from the viewpoint of many Indigenous/Aboriginal filmmakers becomes an opportunity to give voice to many histories, testimonies, and traditions that are not given full voice in our world dominated by linear, western viewpoints and ideas. We will critically examine many issues that intersect with the effects/affects of colonization, assimilation, relocation, destruction, and biological chemical warfare described as environmental experiments or waste disposal on Indigenous/Aboriginal bodies and stories of strength, survival, resistance, and action in the readings and film(s) texts. In order for us to begin to understand where these filmmakers are coming from we need to delve head on into the subject matter and critically work to understand to the best of our ability their points of view, arguments, and the visual interpretations they are presenting to us. Using a tool of empowerment: Indigenous Land-Memories, we will investigate previous Indigenous documentary films, and envision our own project ideas to encounter. The first part of our course will be to understand our film(s) texts, and the second part of the course will be to envision an individual project of interest using the strategies learned in our course.

Instructor: Dr. Michelle Jack

An Okanagan imagemaker/scholar from the communities of (Sn Pint'ktn) Penticton, BC and (nisɬpícaʔ) Omak, WA. A recent graduate in “American” Studies from Washington State University with a PhD in 2010. She approaches this field of study

in a hemispheric way. In her dissertation inca səәnqsilxw (I AM ALL MY RELATIONS) she concentrated on studying the impacts of the 49th parallel on the Okanagan traditional homelands she belongs to and how it affects identity, family relationships, shared traditional culture, and the influence of globalization on these processes. Her approach is a very interdisciplinary one involving Intercultural Communication, Indigenous/First Nations Studies, Effects of Globalization from various Liberal Arts perspectives and methods, and Film/Art Studies. She created a website and film that accompanied her written work as a multi-°©‐media dissertation project. She has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and a BFA from the University of New Mexico. She has very diverse teaching experience from young children to multi-age college and post secondary students in many subject areas from art to elementary education.

IGS 503E/IGS 523E/INDG 495L
August 2nd – 5th

Indigenous Participatory Action Research: Mapping Crisis, Memory, Conflict, Ethics and Rights in Land, Place and Cyber-Space(s).

Participatory Action Research (PAR) has been defined as “at once, social movement, social science, and a radical challenge to the traditions of science” (Fine, Tuck, Zeller-Berkman, Indigenous Methodologies, 2008:160). What changes in our research perspectives and practices when Indigenous peoples are the researchers, the impacted communities, the research partners, the Graduate Supervisor, Graduate Committee Member, and the ethics review board? While foregrounding the important influence of Indigenous rights struggles upon current-day academic research, we will take into deep consideration and bear in mind the ongoing challenges and barriers to producing research that is relevant to Indigenous peoples’ current-day conflicts and crisis with knowledge, information and rights divides.

We will examine these considerations through the lenses of “land, place, and cyber-space” as dynamic sites for re-thinking the multi-plural indigeneities as sites for thinking, voicing and writing about ‘making real’ the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ human rights. Participants will be encouraged to create new work across multi-media and genres, and/or will re-examine ongoing work in a manner which confronts borders of language, binaries, bodies, territorialization, urban/rural, race-ethnicity, class-caste, gender, sex, sexuality, age, nationality, citizenship, labor, and creed. A core organizing framework of the course will be to elevate Indigenous Graduate Research at UBCO, and a rigorous interrogation of the role of Indigenous “Researchers from the bottom of social hierarchies, the traditional objects of research, reposition[ed] as the subjects and architects of critical inquiry, contesting hierarchy and the distribution of resources, opportunities, and the right to produce knowledge”(Fine et al.:161).

Instructor: Dr. Margo Tamez

Margo Tamez is a Lipan Apache and Jumano Apache scholar and poet. Her creative and critical writing, and ethnographic work in rural, Indigenous communities along the U.S.-Mexico border, elevates Indigenous perspectives and histories of communities in South Texas, southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Her collections of poetry include Alleys and Allies (1992), Naked Wanting (2003), and Raven Eye (2007). Her research interests include Indigenous Studies, Critical Legal Studies, Gender; Łepaiye Ndé (Graylight People), Kónitsąąhįį gokíyaa ('Lipan country'); Indigenous Women, Governance, Self-Determination, Borders, Human Rights; Sovereignty; Settler Societies; Genocide; Indigenous Anti-colonial Alliance; Witness & Memory; Indigenous Decolonial Mapping. Tamez teaches at UBC Okanagan in the Indigenous Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies programs.

IGS 503F/IGS 523F/INDG 495L
August 8th – 11th

Re-Mediating Curtis

In the Land of the Head Hunters, 1914 (later titled In the Land of the War Canoe) is an early ethnographic film by Edward S. Curtis that has had major impact on Ethnographic film in general and on the imagining of Indigenous Northwest culture specifically. In the Royal British Columbia Museum there is a significant presentation of Curtis’ work in relation to Northwest Coast Culture as part of the First Peoples Gallery. The Gallery presents segments of Curtis’ film as well as large-scale versions of his portraiture. While Curtis’ images are dramatic and compelling the exhibit fails to acknowledge or reflect on Curtis’ film and his images as being largely a romanticized and imaginary construction.

In the Land of the Head Hunters and Curtis photographic work has been referenced and discussed in both Anthropology and Contemporary Art discourses. The critical discourse around the role of salvage ethnography and the critique of indigenous representation in ethnography and anthropology will be examined in this course. We will explore the debate around ethnography through the critical art practice of contemporary indigenous artists.

Instructor: Stephen Foster

Stephen Foster is a video and electronic media artist of mixed Haida and European background. His work tends to deal with issues of indigenous representation in popular culture through personal narrative. He has exhibited in solo as well as group exhibitions both internationally and nationally. He has also participated in various festivals with video installations and single channel works. In addition to his exhibition record, Stephen is a published author, presented lectures and has participated on panels for new media, video art and contemporary indigenous art at national and international venues. He has taken part in residencies at the Banff Centre For The Arts, Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, Oboro in Montreal and more recently at La Chambre Blanche in Quebec City. In 2009 he was nominated for the Best New Media Project at the ImagineNative Film and Media Arts Festival for his interactive DVD titled The Prince George Métis Elders’ Documentary Project and his flash website Kiss and Tell was nominated for the same award in 2010. Stephen is currently an Associate Professor in the Creative Studies Dept. and is the Director of the Summer Institute for Interdisciplinary Indigenous Graduate Studies at the University of British Columbia – Okanagan. He is also the coordinator of the CanWest Global Centre for Artists’ Video and instructs courses dedicated to video production, digital media and visual and cultural theory.

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Last reviewed 4/5/2011 3:12:46 PM

UBC Okanagan

Summer Institute