The IEC is working on planing workshop and activities with the aims to provide tools to increase the connection and partnership between Indigenous communities and academia, specifically in the field of Astronomy. Suggestions are welcome, contact-us with your ideas.
On February 13, the CASCA Indigenous Engagement Committee held its first workshop: How to invite a local Indigenous knowledge-keeper to your astronomy class. We discussed what documents were available for helping employees to fruitfully engage with local Indigenous groups, and compiled a list of these. A couple of institutions did not have a document at all, and several have really fantastic, comprehensive documents. The workshop attracted around 30 participants.
Many resources were highlighted during the workshop, but the committee wanted to specifically share a very complete document provided by the Calgary Board of Education that can be found here. This document is a complete elder protocol developed in partnership with many community members, the Native Counseling Services of Alberta and the Human Rights Education and Multiculturalism Fund.
The main take-aways from the workshop are summarized in the bullet points below:
– Seek the help of a Cultural Mediator provided (or not) by your institution
– Be aware of the burden of requests Indigenous people sometimes receive
– Clearly communicate the “shared purpose” of a meeting with the elder/knowledge-keeper
– Build a relationship before your event/activity
– Story telling takes time, has a purpose to help you, and it is up to you to extract the tools you need from it. Structured agendas may not be useful.
– Elders have to be accompanied with respect over their whole visit to your institution.
– Gifts and honoraria must be given with care and respect.
– Ask what is the best way to reach out, it might not be emails.
– Prepare your participants in advance. Develop and use a code of conduct.
A list of Indigenous engagement documents from individual Canadian institutions was collected is available here. Feel free to update the document if new information as come.
The IEC 2024 census was sent to the CASCA community in order to measure the current level of Indigenous engagement in our institutions and departments, as well as the accessibility to relevant resources. This will be used to present the current status of Indigenous engagement at the upcoming annual meeting and target specific areas for improvement. 91 responses were collected.
The complete results from the census are presented at the CASCA Toronto 2024 event in June 2024 along with future plan for the IEC. The future focus of the committee will be:
– planning additional activities using feedback for the community and the results from the census.
– continuing to build on the content offered on the website with respect to our terms of reference.
– developing a newsletter that will include new resources available, activity plan, highlight initiatives from the members regarding engagement with communities and the creation of culturally sensitive content for teaching astronomy.
– initiating contact with project leaders in order to fulfill the term of reference 8, and offer our support for the creation of IEC committees for Canadian facilities and projects that require such an advisory council.
– supporting programs focusing on large initiatives that could have a large impact nationwide.
More information coming soon…