The 2009 conference is hosted by The Science Shop, Queen's University Belfast

Dialogue With and Bridge-Building Across Worldviews, Culture and Language in Higher Education:  CBR and Higher Education Approaches in British Columbia, Canada and Busoga, Uganda

Abstract:

The Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association (IAHLA) located in British Columbia, Canada is a network of 33 community controlled indigenous adult education centres.  These centres are the only post-secondary institutions in British Columbia under the full control of their First Nations Communities.  IAHLA led an indigenous community-based research project. The study examined ways of strengthening these indigenous locally-controlled adult education centres and ways of supporting students coming from these institutions in making a transition to some kind of post-secondary programme.  The project was funded by the Ministry of Advanced Education and had the support of the University of Victoria’s Office of Indigenous Affairs and Office of Community-Based Research.

Mpambo, the Afrikan Multiversity, emerged over a period of 10 years from a grass-roots indigenous community-based research project that had no external funding.  The goals of their indigenous community-based research project were to articulate a vision for creating and building an institution to support the higher education and scholarship of mother tongue scholars.  Mpambo shares with the IAHLA institutions a focus on providing curricula that are based on the cultures of local communities. 

Both of these indigenous community-based research projects offer quite distinct ways of working along with similar and different objectives and approaches to doing research.  But, importantly, these two quite distinct experiences represent ground-breaking approaches to research based on indigenous ways of knowing, respect for community language and protocols and empowerment of indigenous peoples in these quite different settings.

The workshop will share goals and objectives, methods used, role of indigenous knowledge in community-based research of this nature.

Theme: Engaging students in community based research

Names of Presenters: Paulo Wangoola, Nabyama, Mpambo, Afrikan Multiversity, Busoga, Uganda

Fran Hunt-Jinouchi, Director, Office of Indigenous Affairs, University of Victoria, Canada

Presenters’ Institutions:

Mpambo Afrikan Multiversity, Busoga, Uganda

University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Presenters Biography:

Paulo Wangoola is the Nabyama (keeper of the secrets) and Founding President of Mpambo, the Afrikan Multiversity. He is an agriculturalist, a philosopher of Afrikan Indigenous Spirituality and an adult educator.  He has worked in Busoga, in Uganda, in Africa and all over the world in support of the African people for 40 years.

Fran Hunt Jinouchi is the Director of the Office of Indigenous Affairs at the University of Victoria in Canada.  She is from the Kwagiulth First Nations, is an adult educator and former Director of the Saanich Indian School Board Adult Education Centre and has served her people as an elected Chief.