Shaping Indigenous Spaces in Higher Education: An International Virtual Exchange on Indigenous Knowledge(Alaska and Aotearoa)
DOI :
https://doi.org/10.14288/cjne.v37i1.196563Résumé
While Indigenous faculty in higher education establish and expand "spaces" for students to engage in discussions around Indigenous knowledge(s) and research, littlesystematic work has been done on expanding these conversations outside of local institutions, in spite of sometimes extensive interaction between Indigenous scholarsin research and governance practices. In this paper, we describe four internationalvirtual exchanges between Alaska and Aotearoa among students enrolled in the University of Alaska's courses Documenting Indigenous Knowledge and Communicationin Cross-Cultural Classrooms and Victoria University of Wellington's Science andIndigenous Knowledge course. We describe our design and architecture of the collaborative digital spaces, highlighting aspects that facilitated the engagement and learning of our students, and challenges. We describe the key impacts of the initiativethrough selected student commentary from students' online forum posts and evaluations. Exchanges produced diverse outcomes for students, but three aspects that motivate us to continue the initiative are that virtual exchanges across internationalIndigenous spaces convey a critical sense of place, in local and global senses; (re)orientstudents in terms of Indigenous identities; and cause students to reflect on their current and future roles in shaping spaces that promote Indigenous safety, participation,and emancipation.