Workshop Content Summary
Focus
Focus
The primary focus of the 2022 workshop was IDSov in practice.
Following the structure of our 2021 event/gathering, we opened the workshop with guest knowledge keeper Amy Desjarlais (For more information on Amy as well as the other participants, see [1] and the other numbers below in the “Biographies” section.).
Following Amy’s opening, the Listen to the Land team discussed each member’s role in the collection, management, and circulation/access to the research materials collected for Celia Haig-Brown’s film, Listen to the Land [2], which formed the impetus for her IDSov project.
Celia Haig-Brown [3] is the principal researcher/filmmaker, Loretta Robinson [4] is a team member and Naskapi Cree educator who is deeply committed to ensuring that the recordings can be accessed in perpetuity by the Naskapi people, Anna St.Onge [5] is the team’s archivist, and Heather Bergen [6] is a graduate student research assistant to the project.
Members of the Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute, based in Oujé-Bougoumou, Quebec, followed with a discussion of the current archiving practices at the Institute and some of their challenges. Speakers included Annie Bosum [7], Chanelle Fabbri [8], Rob Imrie [9], and Kory Saganash [10].
Biographies
[1] Amy Desjarlais is Ojibway/Potowotomi from Wasauksing First Nation. She currently works at York University as an intuitive/spiritual counsellor for Aboriginal Student Services and as knowledge keeper. Amy is also the founder of the EarthTALKER Anishinaabemowin Gabeshi, an annual language camp hosted at Wasauksing First Nation.
[2] Listen to the Land is a lyrical look at the complexities of the Naskapi Nation’s commitment to the land and their culture in the contemporary economic reality of their involvement with open pit mining.
[3] Professor Celia Haig-Brown is a Euro-Canadian ethnographer with a commitment to decolonizing approaches to research. Her first book (1988), a retrospective ethnography of the Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS), was based on interviews with former students, as well as church and government documents. She has published three other books, numerous articles and reports, and co-directed three films including, Pelq’ilc (Coming Home), based on interviews with the children and grandchildren of the original participants from the Kamloops residential school. Her latest documentary film is Listen to the Land.
[4] Loretta Robinson is a Naskapi Cree educator from the Naskapi Nation of Kawawachikamach of Quebec and member of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation of Manitoba. Loretta works with a variety of school boards and universities on integrating Indigenous ways of knowing in learning settings, Indigenizing the curriculum, and preserving Indigenous languages in the early years. Loretta is currently the Naskapi Curriculum Coordinator at Jimmy Sandy Memorial School.
[5] Anna St.Onge is an archivist at York University who most recently served as Director of Digital Scholarship Infrastructure. Her current research focuses on archival praxis and reminiscence therapy for PLWD (people living with dementia) and a collaborative archives project with the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation on Manitoulin Island.
[6] Heather Bergen is a Ph.D. student in social work at York University and a Vanier scholar. Her research interests center on safety for children and families beyond the current child protection system. She has been involved as a research assistant on various parts of the Living on the Land archiving project.
[7] Annie Bosum is a member of Oujé-Bougoumou Cree Nation in Eeyou Istchee. She has worked at the Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute since 1997, when it was developing as an institution prior to opening in 2011. Annie manages the library collections and her work involves adapting library procedures to center Eeyou values and world views.
[8] Chanelle Fabbri, who grew on up the territories of the Haudenosaunee, Ojibway/Chippewa, and Anishinabek (Barrie, ON), is the Acting Collection Registrar and Archival Cataloguer at Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute. Chanelle arranges new collections, maintains catalog records, organizes digitized records, and updates policies. She handles research requests, both internal and external and she is working with Community Webs via Archive-IT to persevere web content pertaining to ACCI and Eeyou Istchee.
[9] Rob Imrie, originally from the Northwest Territories, is the Director of Programs at Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute. A mandate of the cultural institute is to educate younger generations about their culture and traditional practices. As a result, the classroom curriculum was developed for all school age students. Rob spearheaded the creation of a series of workshops, regular programming, and special events to meet the goals of the mandate. Much of Rob’s work involves planning, organizing, and developing strategic initiatives to fulfill the mandate of the organization.
[10] Kory Saganash is originally from the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi. As a research assistant, his primary tasks are to video document interviews of elders and gather archival imagery.
