EVENT: What is "Indigenous Ways of Knowing" and what is its place in a university?
An evening with Frances Widdowson.
On Monday, October 28th at 7:00 PM we will host Frances Widdowson for a discussion about “Indigenous Ways of Knowing.” IWK has been incorporated into our collective agreement but it remains undefined. Most people do not understand IWK yet Laurier has plans for “[i]ncreasing the Indigenous content across all disciplines at Laurier” and for individual faculty to create “space for Indigenous knowledge in their courses.”
Frances Widdowson is a scholar with expertise in Canadian indigenous issues and has been critical of some aspects of indigenization of the academy. She has written and published extensively on this topic, but in so doing has brought upon herself intense criticism, including the loss of her tenured faculty position at Mount Royal University.
Dr. Widdowson will be joining us to offer a perspective that is largely absent from university campuses. We hope that there will be some thoughtful dialogue and that Dr. Widdowson will be constructively challenged. To that end, we have personally invited several Laurier administrators and scholars to join us. We hope that some of them will participate.
We hope you will join us to learn about IWK and its impacts in the university. The event will occur in Bricker Academic BA101 at 7 PM on Monday, October 28th.
"Indigenous ways of knowing" has not been incorporated into the collective agreement. "Indigenous forms of knowledge," "Indigenous forms of scholarship", and "Indigenous forms of
teaching" have, which by their very nature of being different phrases imply different things.