HCT INDIGENOUS ISSUES SERIES

STAYING CONNECTED: Breaking News from Past Speakers
By Nancy J. Coombs
Founder, Indigenous Issues Series

The HCT Indigenous Issues Series, since its launch on Canada’s first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation in 2021, has seen HCT members, other Harvard alumni, and guests join together to engage in discussion with Indigenous leaders and experts in webinars covering critical topics including Indigenous-led approaches to healthcare, housing, food security, conservation, language revitalization, child welfare, as well as reconciliation, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and more. As we continue to work together towards lasting change, honouring Harvard’s 1650 Charter Commitment to Indigenous Education by supporting the Harvard University Native American Program (HUNAP) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a new section has been added to the HCT website to facilitate access to news on projects from past speakers and other related resources.

We invite you to read about encouraging developments and explore what is on the horizon for this group of inspiring past HCT Indigenous Issues Series’ participants.

Rebecca Jamieson, Six Nations Polytechnic President - CEO, presented Alfonso Licata, ORION President - CEO, with a wampum belt symbolizing friendship and respect in closing remarks of new partnership’s launch event (photo: ORION blog)

Rebecca Jamieson, Six Nations Polytechnic President - CEO, presented Alfonso Licata, ORION President - CEO, with a wampum belt symbolizing friendship and respect in closing remarks of new partnership’s launch event (photo: ORION blog)

 

REBECCA JAMIESON (Tuscarora, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory) SIX NATIONS POLYTECHNIC (SNP) PRESIDENT-CEO  –who is also Chair of the Indigenous Institutes Consortium (IIC)—has let HCT know about SNP's ground-breaking new partnership with the ORION network and Canada’s National Research and Education Network (NREN). They were “officially connected in July 2023, becoming the first Indigenous-owned and governed institution in Ontario and Canada to be part of the network”. A launch event took place on Thursday, September 21, 2023, at the Six Nations Polytechnic Brantford campus. “This is an opportunity to be part of a network that embraces diversity and fosters innovation that will provide unprecedented opportunities for connectivity and collaboration for SNP staff, faculty, and learners. We look forward to launching SNP-led research via the network and the many opportunities this partnership can bring to education in our community," Jamieson elaborated.
Joint press release
Orion’s blog post
The Indigenous Institutes Consortium (IIC) also announced a new partnership with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) in September 2023, offering fourteen (14) new scholarships to Indigenous Institute students from the seven consortium member Institutes: Six Nations Polytechnic; Kenjgewin Teg; Oshki-Wenjack; Ogwehoweh Skills & Training Centre; Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gaamig; Anishinabek Education Institute; and IOHAHI:IO Akwesasne Education & Training Institute. The new program will provide two scholarships for each Institute per year for five (5) years. “It’s very exciting that soon, students will have such a good opportunity to receive education opportunities, and even employment in their communities. This is what community development looks like.” Rebecca Jamieson, Chair, IIC Chair, stated. Media release

She spoke on “Language Revitalization” in the HCT Indigenous Issues Series on March 3, 2023.

Dr. Anna Banerji at a Nunavut grocery store (Photo Richard Hersley/ First Nations Film)

 

DR. ANNA BANERJI, PEDIATRICIAN, SOCIAL AND HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST, as well as Associate Professor in pediatrics at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto was featured December 7, 2023, on Global National News in a story on Food insecurity in Indigenous children based on a paper to which she contributed. Dr. Banerji is calling for a national strategy to address food insecurity in the north. “We’ve got children who are starving in this country, how is that reconciliation? We have to get beyond the words. We have to get beyond the rhetoric and make some real substantial changes,” she said. Since she began working in Nunavut in 1995, Dr. Banerji has travelled to the Arctic “more than 50 times, conducting research and running pediatric clinics”. Her recent paper co-authored in the PLOS Global Public Health journal “highlighted the consequences of food insecurity for First Nations, Métis and Inuit children”.

She is also currently developing a documentary entitled, Three Mothers about “three women living vastly different lives in different parts of Canada, struggling to understand and come to terms with the deaths of their Inuit sons by suicide”. 

Dr. Banerji was the HCT Indigenous Issues Series’ inaugural speaker on “Health discrepancies in Indigenous populations” on October 22, 2021.