Exploring Decolonization and Supporting Indigenous Students and Local Heritage
Date: Tuesday , November 16, 2021
Time: 10am EST / 3pm GMT. Click here for time converter.
Title: Exploring Decolonization and Supporting Indigenous Students and Local Heritage
Following the social outcries for greater equity and systemic societal change around the globe people often focus on their own communities, current trends or and related issues. Spanning half the globe (3 distinct regions), our virtual panel will explore decolonization and how inequity presents for indigenous groups in present spaces. Exploring similar issues from different contexts around the world – this session frames the issues within a local context allowing opportunities for growth and expanding perspectives. Panelists will examine cultural and historical factors, current barriers, and needed responses to social justice for indigenous persons looking to the future.
Join us to learn more about supporting indigenous persons and the impacts of decolonization efforts from different lenses.
Moderator Tadd Kruse, SUNY Broome Community College, United States
Panelists
Raymond Sewell Saint Mary’s University, Canada
Charlotte E. Davidson, Ph.D University of Wisconsin – La Crosse , United States
Pura Mgolombane University of Cape Town , South Africa
Raymond Sewell is an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Literature and Culture at Saint Mary’s University. He teaches L’nu Culture and Literature, Indigenous spirituality, data sovereignty, Indigenous narratives, and worldview. Raised in the community of Pabineau First Nation, Raymond is familiar with politics, leadership, and networking within the community. Raymond delivers many lectures and performances continuously strives to be a community ambassador and collaborator on Indigenous world-view inclusion. Raymond’s teaching pedagogy is based in a’tugwewinu (storyteller) method. The style requires students to transgress normative colonial learning structures and to approach knowledge in a traditional L’nu way.
Charlotte Davidson is Diné and a citizen of the Three Affiliated Tribes, also known as the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. After receiving a B.A. in American Indian Studies from Haskell Indian Nations University, she earned an M.Ed. and Ph.D., respectively, in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She possesses over fifteen years of progressively responsible experience across institutional types and functional areas. Indigenous matrilineal pedagogies and place-based relationalities profoundly influence her scholarship and practice. She utilizes these understandings to inform her approach to shaping Indigenous women’s identity and leadership development in higher education. In NASPA, she is the 2022 Power and Place Symposium co-director, 2022 Conference Leadership Committee member, 2019-2022 NASPA SERVE Academy cohort member, guest editor of the Winter 2021 issue of the Leadership Exchange, and is NASPA’s Indigenous Relations Advisor.
Mr Mgolombane is well versed in higher education, having worked in student affairs at no less than six institutions of higher learning in South Africa. After starting his career in higher education at the then Technikon Pretoria (now Tshwane University of Technology) as a facilitator in student governance, he continued to show strategic insights, the ability to make decisions and leadership skills – which culminated in his appointment as Dean: Student Affairs at UFS in 2016. Mr Mgolombane also played a role in the development of the student affairs profession through serving as the Deputy President of the National Association for Student Development Practitioners and, currently, as the Secretary General of the South African Association of Senior Student Affairs Professionals. Mr. Mgolombane is currently the Executive Director for the Department of Student Affairs at the University of Cape Town.
Tadd has 20 years’ experience in higher education spanning the US, UK & Middle East (including 17 years abroad). Tadd has worked for more than a decade within several areas within student affairs.
