If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
Lilla Watson is a Murri (Indigenous Australian), academic visual artist, and activist
When we released our new Strategic Plan last November, our goals included increased collaboration with local Indigenous communities and partners and the implementation of changes to our departmental policies to support Truth and Reconciliation. On April 25th, we took an important step toward these goals when we held the OSOT UBC Indigenous Strategic Plan Self-Assessment and Action Planning Retreat.
Led by Student Services Officer Greice Pimmel, Department Head Dr. Ben Mortenson, MOT/MPT North Indigenous Coordinator Abby Lodge, and Associate Professor of Teaching Katie Lee Bunting and facilitated by Maï Yasué and Madison Tardif of the Office of Respectful Environments, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) at UBC, the retreat gave us a full day to reflect upon the values embedded in the UBC Indigenous Strategic Plan (ISP), recognize our department’s ongoing work in this area, and identify opportunities for further progress as we continue our work to integrate/implement the ISP across our departmental activities.
The day started with a welcome by Christie Lee Charles of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam) First Nation and an introduction to the day. Maï and Madison led us through several activities, including sharing our tensions and excitement about this work. One tension that arose was that decolonization and Indigenization do not fit the academic paradigm of “publish or perish,” in which individuals and departments are encouraged to pursue traditional measures of success, such as grants and publications. On the other hand, a point of excitement was that UBC’s, the Faculty of Medicine’s, and our department’s work towards decolonization and Indigenization were yielding increasing number of opportunities for research, education, and service in partnership with Indigenous Peoples.
The next step in the retreat was a discussion of work that we have already started, which served both to celebrate our progress and to remind us of the people, communities, and structures in place that will advance the ISP within our department. For example, we have begun to embed Indigenous ways of knowing and being into our coursework, some of our faculty are collaborating with Indigenous collaborators, and our monthly Scholar Rounds periodically feature Indigenous scholars and scholarship. Furthermore, our ongoing curricular renewal and internal committees present ready opportunities for systemic change, and bodies within the Faculty of Medicine, such as REDI and the Centre for Excellence in Indigenous Health, give us access to a variety of relevant resources.
Much of the second half of the day was dedicated to mapping the ISP to our work as a department and to setting a timeline for distinct, measurable actions to advance the ISP. We brainstormed a range of ideas, including building relationships with First Nations at each site and potentially creating an Indigenous advisory board for the program. A common theme across our discussions was the need to think in terms of systems: ultimately, we would like to embed Indigenous cultural safety (see UBC 23 24) into all of our work and to integrate decolonization and Indigenization into our orientation of staff and faculty, teaching, scholarship, clinical placements, and policies and governance. In the past, our newsletters and annual reports focussed on more traditional measures of academic success, but we are excited to include more of a focus on building relationships and on steps toward Truth and Reconciliation.
When we described our feelings about the retreat at the end of the day, one participant shared that this work was full of promise and opportunity. Keep an eye out for updates as we put these ideas into action over the coming months.