IEN/OISE Truth and Reconciliation Commission Panel February 18, 2016

2pm to 4pm | OISE Room 5-210/220 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada released its Final Report in December 2015. Within the report are 94 Calls to Action, or recommendations; many of these recommendations are directly related to higher education, education, and research. The purpose of this panel is to articulate and disseminate the TRC’s Final Report, and more specifically, its recommendations as they pertain to education and research at OISE. The rationale for this panel is that all members of the OISE community should have knowledge and information regarding the TRC Report and what it means for all levels of scholarly and community activity at OISE. Panelists will share their understandings and perspectives on the TRC Report and its recommendations as it pertains to their own research and professional work. This panel is an initial step in OISE’s commitment to making the TRC Report’s recommendations relevant to pedagogy, curriculum, policy, research, and more. Please join us for this informative and interactive panel discussion with leading OISE Indigenous faculty and community partners. An overarching outcome for the panel is to begin a conversation on implementing the recommendations and creating genuine and dynamic change for all students, faculty, and staff at OISE.

PANELISTS

Tanya Senk, PhD (candidate)

Tanya Senk is a Métis/Cree/Saulteaux educator/artist/writer and an activist. She has been the Program Coordinator in Aboriginal Education for the past four years and has been working in the field of education and community for over twenty years. Throughout her teaching career, she has been a classroom teacher, Instructional Leader in Aboriginal Education, a Secondee at York University, Faculty of Education, as a Course Director in both the Regent Park and Urban Diversity Consecutive Teacher Education Programs. Tanya holds a B.F.A., Specialized Honours Degree in Visual Arts, a B.Ed., a M.Ed., and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at York University, in Urban Aboriginal Education. Her work and research interests include Professional Learning, and Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education.
 

Professor Jean-Paul Restoule, LHAE, OISE

Jean-Paul Restoule is a member of the Dokis First Nation. He is associate professor of Aboriginal Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. He has been a member of OISE’s Indigenous Education Network since 1998 and was a co-chair of the network for 7 years. He co-founded SAGE Ontario, a peer support group for graduate students whose research involves Aboriginal communities, and is an original member of the OISE working group to infuse teacher education with Aboriginal perspectives called Deepening Knowledge, Enhancing Instruction. He’s contributed to research on urban Aboriginal identity, HIV prevention messaging in Aboriginal communities, access to post-secondary education for Aboriginal people, and curriculum development with Aboriginal perspectives.

Professor Sandra Styres, CTL, OISE

Sandra Styres is of Mohawk, English and French descent, and resides on Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario. She is actively involved in her community facilitating research and working with language councils and various community and scholarly experts in the field of language and Aboriginal education. Sandra joined OISE in January 2014 and teaches Language, Literacy and Curriculum in Aboriginal Education in several programs and is Chair of the IEN. Her research interests include: teaching and learning in Indigenous contexts; Land-centered approaches to language, literacy, and curriculum; as well as, integration of Indigenous teaching and learning in higher education with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

Professor Eve Tuck, SJE, OISE

Eve Tuck is a faculty member in SJE at OISE and earned her Ph.D.in Urban Education at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York in 2008.  She has conducted participatory action research with New York City youth on the uses and abuses of the GED option, the impacts of mayoral control, and school non-completion.  Her current research is with migrant youth in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her publications are concerned with the ethics of social science research and educational research, Indigenous social and political thought, decolonizing research methodologies and theories of change, and the consequences of neoliberal accountability policies on school completion.  She is the author of Urban Youth and School Push-Out: Gateways, Get-aways, and the GED (Routledge, 2012) and co-editor (with K. Wayne Yang) of Youth Resistance Research and Theories of Change (Routledge, 2014).  Tuck’s book with Marcia McKenzie, Place in Research: Theory, Methodology, and Methods (Routledge, 2015) discusses the often overlooked significance of place in social science research.

Urban Youth and School Pushout has been awarded the 2013 Outstanding Book of the Year Award from the Qualitative Research SIG of the American Educational Research Association, and was named a 2013 Critics Choice by the American Educational Studies Association. In 2014, Tuck  received an early career award from the Committee of Scholars of Color on Education, of the American Educational Research Association. Tuck’s writings have appeared in Harvard Educational Review, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Journal for the International Society on Teacher Education, Urban Review, and several edited volumes.  With K. Wayne Yang she is co-editor of a special issue of International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (September, 2011) on youth resistance, and she is co-editor 2014 special issue of Environmental Education Research on land education with Kate McCoy and Marcia McKenzie. Tuck is an enrolled member of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, Alaska.

Jane Griffith

Jane Griffith is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Social Justice Education. Her project, under the mentorship of Professor Martin Cannon, traces settler-colonial narratives of place, time, and language in the newspapers of nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools. She currently teaches a course on Cultures of Redress, which locates Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission alongside other state apologies both in Canada and internationally.

PANEL CHAIR

Professor Suzanne L. Stewart

Dr. Suzanne L. Stewart is a leading scholar in the field of counseling psychology, whose work is among the first to address Aboriginal social problems within the field of psychology using an Aboriginal knowledges perspective. Dr. Stewart is a member of the Yellowknife Dene First Nation of Canada. She is a registered psychologist and Associate Professor in Counselling Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, where she is also Special Advisor to the Dean on Aboriginal Education. Dr. Stewart's research and teaching interest includes Indigenous mental health and healing in psychology (homelessness, youth mental health, identity, and work-life development) and Indigenous pedagogies in teacher education, higher education, and psychotherapy practice/training. She currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Homelessness and Life Transitions and is committed to advancing Indigenous healing through the discipline of psychology and through influencing policy change at all levels.