Indigenous Initiatives

2024 School Welcome Event

For the first time in over a decade, our annual Welcome Event took place on the unceded lands of the Musqueam Peoples. The Musqueam Cultural Centre provided a beautiful setting for acknowledging the recipient of the annual Inspiring Social Worker of the Year Award and the Paul Cheng Memorial Lecture.

Our commitment to work towards reconciliation and decolonization remains strong and underlies numerous Indigenous initiatives our community is actively involved in. The following highlights some key initiatives:

Indigenous Advisory Circle

As always, we extend a heartfelt thank you to the Elders and Indigenous leaders on the School’s Indigenous Advisory Circle whose guidance and wisdom support our efforts. We are forever grateful for the love and teachings the late Elder Doris Fox graciously shared with us over many years. She was an active member of the Advisory Circle, blessed us with inspiring words at our annual welcome, and shared her wisdom and beautiful stories at numerous events and workshops, and in many of our courses. It was truly an honour to have her part of our School.

Indigenous Program Committee

This school-wide committee is formed of student representatives and faculty members and actively supports Indigenous initiatives and provides vital feedback about Indigenous-related matters in the School.

Indigenous Resurgence Project

This project aims to decolonize and Indigenize the School’s BSW and Field Education programs. It is a highly collaborative project led by Marie Nightbird and is funded by the UBC Indigenous Strategic Initiatives Fund. The project is a significant way we are working towards meeting goals in the School’s Indigenous Strategic Plan (2021) and advances goals in the UBC Indigenous Strategic Plan (2020) within social work education. Project outcomes include:

• Compiled a wide range of Indigenous-created curricular resources.
• Wrote a teaching guide to support social work educators in decolonizing their practice.
• Implemented “Seven Promising Principles for Decolonizing Field Education”.
• Created a guide of UBC resources for Indigenous social work students.
• Developed the Indigenous Resurgence Project website to house the above and other information, and as a means to publicly share resources.
• Hosted the second Indigenous Social Services Agency Fair.
• Arranged Elder-led cedar rose making workshops.
• Started a Resource Library of Indigenous-authored materials.

Cedar Rose Workshop:

2024 Indigenous Agency Fair:

Indigenous Speaker Series

For our third event we were fortunate to have Charlotte (Salla) Sukow, Project Manager for Child and Family Jurisdiction for the Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Nations and Interim Director of Operations for the Galgapothla Society, present about reclaiming their inherent right to exercise jurisdiction over child and family services. Her presentation, titled Rights Reclamation, was engaging, powerful and inspiring. It was the first in the series to be held in person and took place at the First Nations Longhouse, November 2023.

Engagement in Indigenous Events

We continue to actively participate in Indigenous and reconciliation events on the UBC campus and in the community, including the Intergenerational March to commemorate Orange Shirt Day.

Orange Shirt Day Sep 30, 2024 - Intergenerational March