Next year, Carleton will offer a joint honours program in Canadian and Indigenous Studies, which will be part of the newly-renamed School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies.
Set to begin in the fall of 2017, students in the program will learn about the historical world of Canadians and the contemporary world of Indigenous peoples and their experiences in our newly-formed societies, said Peter Hodgins, the director of the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton.
Hodgins said that the program was created because of a lack of proper education about the participation of Indigenous peoples in Canada’s history. The new honours program is a first step in righting past wrongs, he said.
“We as settlers have a moral obligation to face up our history of violence against Indigenous peoples, to the ways in which we continue to benefit from that history and in the ways in which we can we work together to build a more just society,” Hodgins said.
According to Hodgins, the development of new programs at Carleton normally takes three to four years and involves consultations with internal and external reviewers from academic organizations. The development of this program was different, however, as Indigenous community elders and external reviewers were included in the process.
Hodgins said the inclusion of the history of Indigenous peoples alters our perception of the Eurocentric history of Canada that society is accustomed to.
He added other universities are also creating similar programs, but Carleton’s is unique because of the coexistence of Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people, both at the university and the rest of Ottawa.
The capstone of the course is a fourth-year class called ‘Indigeneity and the City,’ in which students will learn about the life of indigenous people specifically in cities like Ottawa, Hodgins said.
Hodgins said the program will give students an education that will provide them the opportunity to see the world from the perspective of both indigenous and non-indigenous people. He said this idea is summarized in the Algonquin term aditawazi nisoditadiwin, meaning walking in two worlds with an understanding of both.
Ashley Courchene, the former co-ordinator of the Carleton University Students’ Association Mawandoseg Centre, said if the curriculum of courses for the degree includes Indigenous ways of knowing and teaching, then it could be of great benefit for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
“[It] would not only illuminate the problems of society but would stop defining Indigenous peoples as being defined by them, and would create a more accurate representation where the strengths of the diverse cultures are showcased,” he said. “This is necessary because it is through this aspect that we were able to survive for so long.”
