A Feast Centre Conversation on Gender: Part 2

October 19th, 2023

1:00-2:30PM EDT 

Our Panelists: 

Elder Sheila Nyman

Shelia Nyman is an Elder in the Feast Centre Council of Elders.

Elder Albert McLeod

Honorary Doctor of Laws, Albert McLeod is a long-standing activist in the Indigenous response to HIV/AIDS and 2Spirit/Indigenous LGBTQI education, outreach and advocacy. He is a First Nations Cree living in Winnipeg; Treaty #1 Territory and the Homeland of the Red River Metis Nation. Albert specializes in education about 2Spirit history and re-emergence, Canada's Truth and Reconciliation process, and the outcomes of the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls. You can find him online at www.2Spiritconsultants.ca.

Doris Peltier

Doris Peltier is the Community Engagement Coordinator with the FEAST Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research (a McMaster University & Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network partnership). Doris  is a 66-year-old HIV+ Anishinaabe mother, grandmother and great grandmother from Wikwemikoong, a First Nations community located on the unceded territory of the Odawa, Ojibway and Pottawatami peoples on Manitoulin Island in Ontario. Doris currently works as the Community Engagement Coordinator with the Feast Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research which is a partnership between McMaster University and CAAN. She is the co-creator of Visioning Health I & II, a research project by and for HIV-positive Indigenous women that focused on the strengths-based stories of her peers who tell their stories of health. Doris is one of two North American members of the Women Living with HIV Advisory Group with World Health Organization (WHO), and more recently she stepped into a board role with Indigenous Health Centre of Tiohtià:ke. She has worked tirelessly for almost two decades within the Indigenous HIV movement in Canada, inclusive of more than a decade in Indigenous Community-based Health Research. Notably, in 2022, Doris was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Social Sciences for her contributions to Indigenous health and wellness in Canada. She is fluent in her Indigenous language, which frames her worldview in Indigenous health research. 

This event will take place July 17-21st 2023

What is the Inuit Iliquhii Land-based Learning Experience?

The Inuit Illiquhii Land-based Learning Experience is being led by Inuit Elders Anaoyok Alookee and Naulaq LeDrew, Elders’ Helper Ellen Ittunga, Kimberly Fairman, the Executive Director of the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research and is being supported by Feast Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research researchers and knowledge holders. This land-based learning experience follows on the success of Smy’ May,’ a Feast Centre Indigenous land-based learning experience led by Sylix Elder Sheila Nyman on the traditional territories of the Sylix people in the Okanogan valley.

Illiquhii is a term that captures Inuit values and philosophy in relation to all activities including sewing, making tools, language, relations, food and the land and environment. Illiquhii is a foundational strength for Inuit in everything we do. In modern day it is applied to education and health systems as well. It can be taught through words and by showing or demonstrating skills and approaches but as children we feel it before we understand it. It is a sense more than a defined concept. This is very important and a key to the Land-based learning approach. It is an understanding that comes from being part of the social, spiritual and practical day-to-day Inuit life. It is regular sounds, timing and rhythms, breathing, singing, scraping, pounding, footsteps on snow or ice, all day, every day. We do this now, we look here, we listen “ataa!”

The Feast Centre is a national research centre that privileges the use of community-based research approaches that draw on Inuit, First Nations and Métis knowledges and adopts a decolonizing orientation to shape methodological approaches. For this land-based learning experience, of particular focus is the use of culturally relevant data collection in addition to analytic procedures that create relationships and support Inuit autonomy to respond to sexually transmitted blood-borne infections (STBBI) in ways consistent with Inuit cultural traditions. This includes supporting research that focuses on strengths and contributes to the health and wellbeing of Inuit communities.

The objective of the Inuit Illiquhii Land-based Learning Experience is to bring six researchers who are committed to and engaged in Inuit STBBI research to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, to learn on the land alongside and with Inuit Elders and knowledge holders. The goal is to get a better understanding and embodied sense of how Inuit ways of knowing are fundamental to conducting STBBI research that is decolonizing and responsive to Inuit communities that are dealing and living with STBBI.

The Inuit Illiquhii Land-based Learning Experience will take place in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut from July 18th to 21st, 2023. July 17th and 21st will be travel days. Accommodations are being provided at the Canadian High Arctic Research Campus and will be shared.
Flights, accommodations and food will be provided by the Feast Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research.

Who is eligible?

Up to six persons will be selected to attend the Inuit Illiquhii Land-based Learning Experience. Only those who submit a complete application will be eligible.
Participants will be required to complete a pre- and post-event evaluation survey. After the experience is complete participants will be required to provide the Feast Centre with a 2–3-page (double-spaced) reflection regarding what was gained by participating in this experience and its impacts for their research.
Preference will be given to applicants who have not already participated in in-person Feast Centre activities and who demonstrate ongoing work with Inuit communities.