World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education
CYC professors Alan Pence and Jessica Ball presented workshops at the World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education held in Honolulu from May 19-24. The conference was hosted by the Native Hawaiian Education Association. This global conference, which regularly attracts over 2000 mostly Indigenous participants, is held every three years, and the much anticipated announcement on the closing day was that the next conference, in 2017, will be hosted by Six Nations and based in Toronto. Alan Pence presented a workshop on promoting post-secondary education approaches that promote capacity with examples from work with First Nations in Canada and in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Jessica Ball presented a workshop with Dr. Onowa McIvor, a CYC MA graduate who is currently the Director of Indigenous Education in the Faculty of Education at UVic. Their focus was ‘paddling the canoe together’ through community-university partnerships. Jessica also presented a workshop with Ojibway scholar Sharla Peltier on creating a culturally responsive environment for children in primary school. All the workshops drew standing room only crowds and provided opportunities to consolidate and renew collaborations between CYC and Indigenous educators and organizations around the world.