Category: Aboriginal

  • “Everybody’s got a story worth sharing”: Uncle Randy and the power of story telling

    “Everybody’s got a story worth sharing”: Uncle Randy and the power of story telling

    In this podcast, recorded at the end of 2022, Kathleen and Anwen sit down with VIU Elder in Residence, Uncle Randy Fred and discover their shared respect and joy for story-telling. Uncle Randy tells parts of his story including his earliest days on the west coast of Vancouver Island and up until he successfully gets…

  • Open Education Resources and New Textbooks: Update from BCcampus

    Open Education Resources and New Textbooks: Update from BCcampus

    The latest from The BCcampus Open Education team, Lauri Aesoph, BSc, Manager, Open Education New textbooks Knowing Home: Braiding Indigenous Science with Western Science – Book 2 This new work (Book 2) joins Book 1, published in 2016. Knowing Home attempts to capture the creative vision of Indigenous scientific knowledge and technology that is derived from an…

  • Holding space: How VIU students are shaping the dialogue around Indigenous perspectives

    Holding space: How VIU students are shaping the dialogue around Indigenous perspectives

    by Kathleen Bortolin I step off the elevator onto the fifth floor of the library, hot coffee and security fob in hand. It’s June and quiet on campus, students and faculty retreating to other pursuits now that classes have ended. I don’t expect to see anyone on the fifth floor, especially students, so I’m surprised…

  • A global perspective on Indigenous teaching and learning: What can we learn from New Zealand

    A global perspective on Indigenous teaching and learning: What can we learn from New Zealand

    As part of our commitment to supporting professional development in incorporating Indigenous knowledge and perspectives into teaching and learning at VIU, the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning, together with the Office of Aboriginal Education and Engagement, recently hosted Ron Bull, senior Indigenous scholar from Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand. Ron spent the day…

  • Aboriginal Education: Humility Through Service

    By Sherryl Maglione (Miss Magz), Cowichan Campus, ABE English Instructor, Vancouver Island University As an Aboriginal educator, teaching Aboriginal students has, over time and very simply, become my focus, passion, and life’s work.  My life’s journey as an Aboriginal educator, through service to others, has been professionally and personally fulfilling, and is yet still evolving. …

  • Honoring Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women in the Classroom

    Honoring Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women in the Classroom

    By Sherryl Maglione (Miss Magz), Cowichan Campus, ABE English Instructor, Vancouver Island University February 2014 Conversation Teacher:    So, where do you ladies live? Students:    North of town about twenty minutes. Teacher:    Hey, me, too!  Do you have a vehicle to get to school? Students:    No, we take the bus, or hitch. Teacher:    Hitch? Students:    [looking…

  • What to say about teaching and learning?

    by Rob Ferguson, Teaching Faculty Member and Co-Chair, Department of Recreation and Tourism Management, Faculty of Management, VIU What to say about teaching and learning?  For me, linking these two terms with ‘and’ has always seemed somewhat problematic. The English language seems to fall short here in capturing the essence of teaching and learning by…

  • A lesson I bring to my VIU students

      By Susan Lymbery, Teaching Faculty Member, Faculty of Academic and Career Preparation and Faculty of Arts and Humanities, VIU I’d been twenty-five years out of high school when my son encouraged me to enrol at Malaspina University-College.  Eight years later, I found myself teaching at Cowichan Tribes Yu’thuy’thut Adult Training Centre.  One day, as…