Global Indigenous Stakeholders in Internationalization

Description: A panel discussion that incorporates the omitted and silenced voices of both Indigenous and Global Indigenous stakeholders (Students, Faculty, Administrators and Researchers) within internationalization of higher education. This panel considers the implications of high education institutions acknowledging or the lack thereof of global Indigenous stakeholders while also considering the possibilities and opportunities engaging with Indigenous knowledge systems and their ways of knowing.

This panel will raise salient issues on how historically contextualized systems and socioeconomic conditions continue to create systemic barriers when participating in higher education. Such conversations will allow us to reflect on the role of the settler-colonial institution while considering ethical and sustainable mechanisms to internationalize and transform into an inclusive space.

During this panel, topics including global Indigenous identities within Canadian higher education and how they are re-contextualized through mobility at the local and global sites and illuminates the contemporary conditions will be deliberated. Speakers of the panel will include multiple stakeholders with varies perspectives on global Indigenous resilience and resistance.

Registration link for Global Indigenous Stakeholders in Internationalization

Date: Monday, November 7th, 2022
Time: 12 - 1:30 p.m. EST
Location: Online

Panel Speakers

Moderator: S. Victoria Herrera, M.Ed., Educational Development Consultant - Indigenous Learning, Centre for Teaching and Learning, Sheridan College

Committed to social justice and meaningful inclusion of all peoples, S. Victoria Herrera spends much of her time dreaming collective freedom dreams. Born in Houston, Texas of layered Mvskoke, Mestiza (Salvadorian) and Settler heritages, she is passionate about decolonizing (which is definitely not a metaphor) and indigenizing all the things (which is not free from tension). She’s worked extensively with urban Indigenous communities across Ontario in the areas of education, employment, health and social services.

Victoria holds a Master of Education in Adult Education and Community Development and an Honors Bachelor of Arts in Indigenous Studies and Islamic Studies from the University of Toronto. Currently she is supporting the Sheridan College community as a Professor and Educational Development Consultant with SPARK: The Sheridan Centre for Academic Excellence.

Speaker: Erica Neeganagwedgin - Associate Professor at Western University

Erica Neeganagwedgin (Taino) is an Associate Professor in Critical Policy, Equity and Leadership Studies at Western University’s Faculty of Education. She graduated from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto where she earned a Ph.D. in Sociology and Equity Studies in Education. Her areas of teaching and research interests include Indigenous knowledge systems and Intellectual Traditions; Indigenous epistemologies; Indigenous history and educational policies; history of Indigenous Education in North American contexts and Indigenous Research Methodologies.

Speaker: Michele Sam - Course Director at College of the Rockies

Michele A Sam is Ktunaxa ʔaqⱡsmaknik—a Ktunaxa human being. Her father’s heritage is Haudenosaunee and Italian with no claims to community, however she honours her fathers’ people by following her mothers’ lineage as is custom. Michele has familial ties across all current Ktunaxa/Ksanka bands and is an “official state identified band member” of ʔaq̓am along her mothers’ line. Michele is a first generation home owner, and a small business owner, returning to the Ktunaxa homelands, by way of the 60s scoop, having been adopted and raised in Southern Ontario, by a Dutch Catholic immigrant family to Canada.

Michele’s lifework is guided by principles of: Nation Rebuilding, Good Governance, Restoration of Peoplehood, Cultural Continuity, (Re) Attachment to Lands and Waterscapes, Intellectual Sovereignty and Cognitive Justice, according to place based Indigenous Peoples’ ways of being, doing and knowing.

Michele is first generation in both her adoptive family and Ktunaxa family to have earned university degrees. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in Social Work, English Literature and Indigenous Learning. Michele completed course work, comprehensive exams and proposal defense for her PhD before leaving studies to return to her homelands in support of her children.

Michele has published on the role of research in Indigenous Peoples’ Self-development; Intractable Conflict and Strategic Regional Competition. Through her faculty position at the College of the Rockies, where she currently leads the Indigenous Studies program, Michele has been focused upon the role Indigenous Peoples knowledges play in sustainable peace sought through Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.

Speaker: Michael O'Sullivan - Associate Professor at Brock University

Dr. Michael O’Sullivan, Ed. D., is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Brock University, St. Catharines, Canada. He researches and publishes in International and Comparative Education specializing most recently in study abroad. His current research focuses on building partnerships and relationships between global northern student visitors and Indigenous organizations in the global south and specifically in Guatemala.