IPK 100, Learn Today, Lead Tomorrow, Deborah Alexander

A variety of books available freely online that provide you with the skills needed to succeed.

To explore topics about family, study and work life balance.

"This book covers diverse topics such as the journey to motherhood, lessons through motherhood, acknowledging ancestors and grandparents in one's mothering, how historical trauma and violence plague the past, and balancing mothering through the healing process. More specific to Indigenous motherhood in the academy is how culture and place impacts mothering (specifically, if Indigenous mothers are not in their traditional homelands as they raise their children), how academia impacts mothering, how mothering impacts scholarship, and how to negotiate loss and other complexities between motherhood and one's role in the academy." [From Publisher]

Two women figuring out how to take back their power.

"By articulating to each other Black and Indigenous perspectives on our unprecedented here and now, and the long-disavowed histories of slavery and colonization that have brought us to this moment in the first place, Maynard and Simpson create something new: a vital demand for a different way forward, and a poetic call to dream up new ways of ordering earthly life. "[From Publisher]

Jo-ann Archibald worked closely with Coast Salish Elders and storytellers, who shared both traditional and personal life-experience stories, in order to develop ways of bringing storytelling into educational contexts. Indigenous Storywork is the result of this research and it demonstrates how stories have the power to educate and heal the heart, mind, body, and spirit. It builds on the seven principles of respect, responsibility, reciprocity, reverence, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy that form a framework for understanding the characteristics of stories, appreciating the process of storytelling, establishing a receptive learning context, and engaging in holistic meaning-making. [From Publisher]

“Okay, I’m here,” thought Amber as she looked around. She is the first person in her family to attend university, and just getting to “here” is a milestone worth celebrating. Following registration the Admissions office put her in touch with the Aboriginal advisor and First Nations Centre. The Centre was warm, it smelled of sweet grass, and she noticed there was an Elders’ room. “I wonder if it’s okay I’m here,” she thought to herself, still a bit nervous and uncertain about being a university student. At the
Centre, she was welcomed by Stephan, who introduced himself as being from a nearby reservation and studying pre-med in his first year of university. [From Author]

From the book: Indigenous Pathways, Transitions and Participation in Higher Education : From Policy to Practice.
University is not for everyone, but a university should be for everyone. To a certain extent, the choice not to participate in higher education should be respected given that there are other avenues and reasons to participate in education and employment that are culturally, socially and/or economically important for society. Those who choose to pursue higher education should do so knowing that there are multiple pathways into higher education and, once there, appropriate support is provided for a successful transition.The book outlines the issues of social inclusion and equity in higher education, and the contributions draw on real-world experiences to reflect the different approaches and strategies currently being adopted. [From Publisher]

Educational success is a contested concept, especially as it relates to Indigenous youth. Tensions in the discourses about student success reflect the nature of priority setting of postsecondary institutions and their reliance on statistical data that have privileged narrow, assimilative criteria of Western or Eurocentric education, pedagogies, and perspectives. Indeed, the discussion of, as well as policy and program responses to, urban Aboriginal postsecondary student success have been long dominated by analyses of quantitative studies documenting significantly lower rates of educational success among Aboriginal youth than their non-Aboriginal counterparts. These statistical comparisons have yielded research questions and policy studies entrenching a “deficit” narrative or paradigm applied to Aboriginal peoples. That is, these analyses often focus on some perceived deficiencies and dependencies based on the inequities found as Aboriginal youth journey through the conventional educational systems rather than on the systemic challenges facing Aboriginal students, staff, and faculty navigating a system that has privileged Western knowledge as guarantor of systematic, rational thought and source of progress while actively excluding Indigenous knowledge and sensibilities. [From Author]