Browsing by Author "Hanson, Aubrey"
Now showing 1 - 12 of 12
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access Blackfoot Art and the Ongoing Survivance of Blackfoot Communities in Covid-19(2023-04-06) Tabor, Shannon Michelle; Fellner, Karlee; Hanson, Aubrey; Domene, JoséIn this dissertation I, Shannon Tabor, offer an introduction to myself that provides a context for understanding my research and writing as a non-Indigenous counselling psychology doctoral student and psychologist. I outline the underpinnings and foundational concepts that guide my research engagement with Blackfoot communities. I discuss my community-based work and describe its foundations in relational accountability. I share the methodological process of how I collaborated with a Blackfoot Advisory Council in exploring the question: “How have Blackfoot artists' engagement in art contributed to the ongoing survivance of Blackfoot communities during the Covid-19 pandemic?” Specifically, I outline the methods applied for recruiting, protocol, knowledge gathering, meaning making, and ensuring quality that emphasize a value for the knowledge offered by both story and inward knowing. Finally, I share the results of my meaning making process in three visual concept maps and conclude this dissertation with a discussion. The first map outlines factors of survivance and associated threats of Covid-19: (1) meeting basic needs vs. need insecurity; (2) connection vs. isolation; (3) finding purpose vs. losing purpose; (4) being present vs. grief and fear; and (5) awareness of spirit, culture, and self vs. disconnection from culture. The second map then outlines the specific ways that art contributes to each factor of survivance. The third map places the personal strengths of Blackfoot people and artists, also referred to as the Blackfoot Warrior Spirit (strength, courage, perseverance, adaptability, confidence, love, caretaking, and compassion) at the core of Blackfoot survivance. I discuss the findings from the meaning making process in relation to existing research and literature and share reflections on how this might apply in the field of counselling psychology and make recommendations accordingly. I further consider the strengths and limitations of my dissertation research and present considerations for future research.Item Open Access Kaa-waakohtoochik (The ones who are related to each other): An inquiry of Métis understandings with/in/through the city(2022-07-06) Bouvier, Victoria; Field, Jim; Crowshoe, Reg; Hanson, Aubrey; Donald, Dwayne; Eaton, Sarah; Gaudet, Janice CindyStories that reflect people’s historicity, worldview, emotions, enactments, and mobilizations are profoundly important in solidifying and validating people’s identity and self-understandings. Stories can allow people, as individuals and communities, to navigate relationships with themselves and others in healthy and nurturing ways. Understanding oneself, as Métis, in a seemingly new and changing environment – the urban landscape – is particularly important for future generations to be able to know who they are so they can live well and flourish as Métis in urban ecologies. This doctoral dissertation is two-fold; first, the methodology is described and illustrates the facilitation of the inquiry through an oral knowledge system of acquisition and validation. Moreover, the “Third Perspective” is shared as a method utilized to assess stories of the co-researchers. Secondly, the inquiry frames stories of Métis everyday practices with/in/through the urban environment as living experiences that are inherently relational and connected. Emphasis is placed on the everyday practices as these are often overlooked yet are crucial in self-determination. With little current research in this area, this dissertation provides narratives, both individual and collective, that illustrate Métis as dynamic and multifaceted people who engage in multidimensional relationships that (re)affirm our identity and belonging. Métis people face misconceptions of who we are, but through this work those narratives are disrupted, and our truths are presented that tell of our cultural lineages and historicity affirming we are still alive and well even in the city. This small collection of stories strives to contribute to current and future research endeavours that articulate and celebrate Métis brilliance.Item Open Access The Meaningful Experiences of Young Indigenous Filmmakers While Learning Filmmaking Techniques and Creating and Sharing Films(2022-11) Penney, Neil; Field, James Colin; Spencer, Brenda; Hanson, AubreyAlthough there has been some research involving Indigenous youth and digital media, there is a gap in the literature involving filmmaking as pedagogy with Indigenous youth. This qualitative research study employed a broad interpretive approach to investigate the meaningful experiences of young Indigenous filmmakers while learning filmmaking techniques and creating a sharing film. Data were generated through semistructured interviews with 6 participants from a multiage class of Grade 6–9 students in their school in a small community in the Northwest Territories of Canada, a reflective journal kept by the researcher, researcher observations of the participants, and informal conversations. This study contributes to practical pedagogical knowledge about filmmaking, and depicts the successful and meaningful experiences of the Indigenous students who participated.Item Open Access The Nice Girl Plight: Struggling to Become a Socially Just Citizen(2022-08) Van Beers, Rae Ann Shawna; Seidel, Jackie; Hanson, Aubrey; Spencer, BrendaThis study addressed the overarching question of how secondary students understood social justice, and how those understandings impacted the actions they took to make a difference in the world. The qualitative research focused on an extra-curricular social justice group that was populated by middle school girls that year, highlighting the role that gender often plays in such groups. True to duoethnographic form, the research became personal as I saw my own nice-girl-self reflected in the participants’ words and actions, rather than simply being a study in which I considered the data my participants created through their peer-to-peer duoethnographic conversations. In working through this, and with respect for my participants, I saw the need to counter the notion that social justice movements were filled with nice, (often) white girls who uncritically perpetuate the systemic issues and inequities they were working to change. Using the participants’ conversations, researcher observations, and the group’s meeting minutes as sources of data, the work highlighted the contributions that middle school girls can make as citizens of their school, and even more broadly as they deepened their understandings of the implications of their actions on others around the world. The findings of the study call for researchers and educators to enhance students’ opportunities for meaningful participation in the world of educational research, to interact with them as equal partners in social justice work, and encourage them to critique their own complicity in their attempts at activism.Item Embargo Proximity Mines, Archives: The Problem of Fictional Realism(2017-12-13) Moody-Corbett, Roderick; Vandervlist, Harry; Mayr, Suzette; Hanson, Aubrey; Dobozy, Tamas; Clarke, MichaelThe twenty-five short stories that comprise the creative component of Proximity Mines, Archives, while not linked in any strict formal sense, do share, in breadth of theme and comic temperament, a certain fixation on the psychological, social, and narratological difficulties attendant to the creation of realistic fiction. Employing a range of styles, from the subdued, minimalist strategies of Lydia Davis, Amy Hempel, and Raymond Carver, through the more exuberant, genre-dissolving prose of Donald Barthelme, David Foster Wallace, and Joshua Cohen, the collection performs and, in its sequencing, enacts a story of artistic maturation. Featuring a large cast of would-be writers and academics, the collection is at once deeply self-conscious and satirical. In composing a collection of disparate, fiendishly protean, short stories—from the stylistically sedate first-person narrative of “Terminal” through any number of long, one-sentence stories, pastiches, and nimbly ironic adaptations of canonical works (e.g., “Hills Like White Elephants, POV Hill”)—the collection both traces and challenges traditional forms of fictional representation. The accompanying critical afterword to this collection considers the relationship between creative writing and academic commentary, particularly as these roles fall to one author. Eschewing a standard, or purely theoretical approach, I undertake a vigorously subjective examination of the wide range of literary influences underpinning the stories in this collection. While examining the stylistic practices of a variety of writers (Mark Anthony Jarman, Stanley Elkin, Yann Martel), I make a case for my own aestheticism, aligning myself with those writers for whom the sentence serves as first philosophy. Finally, I argue that the inclusion of self-conscious or metafictive elements in a piece of fiction is not antithetical to literary realism.Item Open Access Reading for Resurgence: Indigenous Literatures, Communities, and Learning(2016) Hanson, Aubrey; Jardine, Patricia (Gail); Burwell, Catherine; Steeves, Phyllis; Srivastava, Aruna; Kelly, VickiThis study explores the relationships between Indigenous literatures, Indigenous communities, and learning. My primary research question was this: How do Indigenous literatures matter to the resurgence of healthy Indigenous communities? To investigate this question, I held individual conversations with 14 participants: seven Alberta secondary school teachers and seven Indigenous writers from across Canada. During these conversations, we discussed why Indigenous literatures matter to Indigenous communities through each participant’s experiences and perspectives. To analyze these conversations, I took up a hermeneutic and Indigenous métissage, interweaving my emerging arguments with perspectives from participants and from relevant scholarship. Through this interpretive process, I developed four primary understandings in relation to my research question. I found that Indigenous literatures matter to the resurgence of healthy Indigenous communities: first, because they create community; second, because they challenge colonial contexts, often through challenging learning; third, because they call readers to relate and respond; and fourth, because they enable transformation in education and in relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. By pursuing the rich connections between Indigenous literatures, Indigenous communities, and learning, this study asks what it means to read for resurgence. I therefore explore the spaces of possibility opened up by the work of particular writers and teachers. I also explore spaces where there is room for growth, amplifying the ongoing call for better ways of engaging with Indigenous content in Canadian schooling. Through its examinations, this research contributes to scholarship in Indigenous education and Indigenous literary studies, as well as offering implications for educational practice, particularly in relation to language arts curricula.Item Open Access Responding to the Calls to Action: Indigenizing a Graduate Program(University of Calgary, 2017-05) Pratt, Yvonne Poitras; Lablonde, Solange; Hanson, Aubrey; Danyluk, Patricia; Werklund School of EducationIn this article, we present our work on Indigenizing pedagogy as a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) Calls to Action. While Indigenous scholars provide access to the written voices of First Peoples (Battiste, 2013; Donald, 2009; Smith, 2012), the graduate program we created around the topic of reconciliation intentionally invited in Elders and allies to teach and learn alongside students. Our research reveals that inclusion of knowledge keepers, a respectful learning environment, along with creative pedagogical approaches, fostered transformative learning; yet we argue these innovations were only possible because our visions were supported by allied leadership.Item Open Access Stepping away from the Campfire: Decolonizing the Concept of Eating Disorders through an Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy Lens(2023-01-23) Plante, Maureen; Fellner, Karlee; Hanson, Aubrey; Vandenborn, ElisaEating disorders are severe mental health concerns that have profound mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual implications for a person. Despite the severity of eating disorders, eating disorders continue to be predominately understood, researched, and treated through Western ways of knowing, doing, and being. In 2015, the 94 Calls to Action was released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), stipulating the need for culturally appropriate training when working with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples. The Canadian Psychological Association and the Psychology Foundation of Canada posit that research and treatment for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples must be culturally relevant. An area within mental health discourse that continues to neglect appropriate and culturally relevant care for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples are eating disorders. Therefore, this research responds to the Canadian Psychological Association and the Psychology Foundation of Canada task force. Through a relational Cree-based methodology, conversations with knowledge carriers, and introspective processes, this study examines how Indigenous Focusing-Oriented Therapists (IFOT) see eating disorders. This research takes in the interconnected and relational aspects of understanding to deepen the knowledge that eating disorders are an act of survival in response to experiences of racism, sexism, colonization, and emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.Item Open Access Stories from the Pandemic: A Métissage on Digital Environments, Embodiment, and Indigenous Education(University of Calgary Conference on Postsecondary Learning and Teaching, 2023-04-27) Hanson, AubreyThrough a métissage or interweaving of vignettes, reflections, and scholarly engagement, this presentation draws on Hanson’s experiences over the past few years to consider the topic of collective transformation. Hanson explores the transformation precipitated by the unexpected years of online life starting with the outbreak of COVID-19, alongside the ongoing transformation called for in Indigenous Education. The work of weaving Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing into teaching and learning in Western institutions requires perseverance and calls us to grapple with complex frameworks like decolonization, reconciliation, and relationality. Meanwhile, the experiences of the past few years have called for adaptability in response to the material realities of the online era. Set amidst the pandemic, these considerations touch on themes of embodiment, land, climate, culture, consciousness, and uncertainty.Item Open Access Translanguaging On and With the Land: Anti-coloniality, (Re)connection and Learning with Refugee Learners(2023-07) Thraya, Sophia; Takeuchi, Miwa Aoki; El Halwany, Sarah; Hanson, AubreyNon-dominant multilingual learners, particularly those who have experienced forced displacement, are often met by educational environments where deficit discourses, monolingual norms and colonial silencing persist. This work examines how co-learners from refugee backgrounds in a multiyear land-based program, Soil Camp, have co-created spaces to challenge dominant norms, power dynamics and colonial histories. Alongside racialized facilitators, the children co-constructed environments that affirmed their multilingual identities and empowered agency within the teaching and learning spaces—a significant shift away from monolingual norms seen in formal schooling and dominant societal settings. Based on video-based interaction analyses, the findings illustrate the transformative power of translanguaging practices that validate multilingual identities and intergenerational knowledge systems, resulting in the co-creation of new social realities for learning, exhibited in moment-to-moment interactions. This work on earth-centered translanguaging practice seeks to connect to silenced intergenerational and new knowledge beyond named languages while attending to historicity and power, transcending human and more-than-human (MTH) divides. Children provided glimpses of their semiotic repertoires through highlighted child-led moments, which foraged new pathways for embodied representations of community, identity and MTH (re)connection. The result is translanguaging spaces where linguistic fluidity and embodied communicative practices sustain (re)connection on and with the land.Item Open Access Using Indigenous Talking Circles in Online Environments(2021-05-10) Danyluk, Patricia; Hanson, AubreyTalking circles online offer an opportunity for students to connect with one another during the course and in doing so enhance student satisfaction with the course. When facilitating a talking circle, the host must make it clear that they are drawing upon Indigenous knowledge systems. This requires educators to learn about the Indigenous peoples in the territory and ensure that they are respecting protocols and practices. Talking circles can be used to share feelings and thoughts, to connect with content, to build community, and as a form of assessment. The authors share their experiences using talking circles in synchronous sessions.Item Open Access “We Stick Out Our Tongues” De-essentializing for Decolonization: A Storywork Study on Indigenous Relationality(2021-07-26) Minet, Chantai Michelle; Fellner, Karlee; Mudry, Tanya; Wada, Kaori; Domene, Jose; Hanson, AubreyFor Indigenous people, one of the most powerful acts of decolonization is reclaiming who we are and sharing our stories with the world. Indigenous relationality describes who we are in relation to all of creation. Our relationality is diverse, multifaceted, and inappropriately underrepresented in literature. To date, much of the literature aiming to guide work with Indigenous people is essentializing, reducing Indigenous relationality into pan-Indigenous or uniform formulas that are inaccurate and harmful. This research directly addresses the issue of essentialization through exploring relationality. From an Indigenous (Lingít) research paradigm, I use Indigenous Storywork (ISW) to explore and amplify four Indigenous graduate students’ diverse experiences of their Indigenous relationality. Our filmed research conversations, stories, and poetry took on a life of their own, leading to a collective meaning-making circle and reciprocity poetry as an expression of Indigenous relationality. This study provides insight around the construction and preservation of Indigenous relationality and addresses the essential role of reciprocity within Indigenous relationality. This study is a courageous, decolonizing, reciprocity effort that honours our Indigenous relationality and our respective Indigenous and academic communities. This study responds to the recommendations made in Psychology’s Response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Report, and creates space for reclamation, reconciliatory conversations, and social change.