Indigenous Initiatives: Academic Programming
The College of Social and Applied Human Sciences offers academic programming that includes focus on Indigenous Peoples in Canada. These courses and programs examine Indigenous issues from various perspectives while striving to include meaningful Indigenous content and appropriate Indigenous pedagogies.
Certificate in Indigenous Environmental Governance
Master of Conservation Leadership
PhD in Social Practice and Transformational Change
Indigenous Scholars Lecture Series Course Content
Certificate in Indigenous Environmental Governance
The Certificate in Indigenous Environmental Governance is designed to provide students with a mix of theoretical knowledge and applied skills in Indigenous environmental governance.
The goal is to enable students to critically assess environmental stewardship from a knowledge systems approach and understand how Indigenous and western scientific knowledges describe and seek to address environmental change and (un)sustainable development.
The Indigenous Environmental Governance certificate program is offered through the Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences.
Master of Conservation Leadership
Ongoing environmental degradation and climate change, alongside a shift in conservation governance methods, means that the conservation of our biodiversity has never been more complex, nor more urgent.
Responding to this need, the University of Guelph has developed a Master of Conservation Leadership (MCL) program for those in the conservation sector and those working in partnership with the sector. The first of its kind in Canada, the program emphasizes innovative conservation practice including Indigenous-led conservation governance and conservation on private and working lands.
PhD in Social Practice and Transformational Change
The PhD in Social Practice and Transformational Change (SOPR) program is designed to stimulate interdisciplinary examination and critical theorization of social practice and its relationship to policy, programs and transformational change. This innovative program is grounded by six key pillars:
- Intersectional and Decolonizing Approaches and the 'Unsettling' Nature of Change
- Feminist, Gender, Sexuality and Other Critical Perspectives for Rethinking Difference and the Human
- Indigenous Knowledge Systems
- Social Justice and Praxis Orientation
- Methodological Innovation and Boundary Crossing
- Community Engaged Scholarship
Indigenous Scholars Lecture Series
The Indigenous Scholars Lecture Series 2020-21 is a student-led initiative within the Department of Political Science in support of the University of Guelph's commitment to action on equity, diversity, and inclusion. Indigenous scholars from many different treaty and unceded lands presented their research, bringing forward diverse perspectives on politics, governance, and settler colonialism. The series comprised three webinars with noted Indigenous scholars:
- Colonial narratives in the trial of Gerald Stanley: Is Justice Possible for Indigenous People?
- Sovereignty, Intimacy & Resistance: Legal and Relational Responses to Gendered Violence and Settler Colonialism
- Policy, Polity, and Indigenous Health: Examining Political Determinants of Health
Course Content
Courses examine Indigenous issues through anthropological, sociological, political, legal, and geographical lenses, developing students' understanding of Indigenous pasts, presents and futures in Canada.
- ANTH*2660 Contemporary Indigenous Peoples in Canada
- ANTH*3650 The Anthropology of Indigenous Peoples Before Canada
- ANTH*4740 The Anthropology of Place
- ANTH/SOC*6420 Environment, Food and Communities
- CONS*6000 Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Governance Models
- CONS*6050 Partnerships for Conservation
- GEOG*2510 Considering Canada: A Regional Approach
- GEOG*3210 Indigenous-Settler Relationships in Environmental Governance
- INDG*1000 Indigenous-Settler Relations
- INDG*4000 Capstone: Indigenous Environmental Governance
- POLS*3340 Indigenous Politics in Canada
- POLS*4050 Reconciliation in Canadian Public Law
- POLS*6050 The Politics of Identity
- POLS*6840 PhD Field Course in Gender, Race, Indigeneity, and Sexuality
- SOAN*4210 Indigenous-Settler Relations in Canadian Society
- SOC*2280 Society, Knowledge Systems and Environment
- SOC*3850 Seminar in Sociology