How to organize a strike

“So You Want to Go on Strike: A Skillshare for Departmental Student Strikes at McGill,” was held on September 16. The workshop discussed the different skills required to stage a successful departmental strike, covering a variety of topics from organizing a general assembly, to dealing with unsympathetic professors.

In order to have a successful departmental strike, the facilitators explained, organizers must set up accessible general assemblies, deal with possible opposition from student executives or faculty, and effectively communicate with other students in the department. This means coordinating the distribution of flyers, posters, and other forms of communication to reach as many sympathetic students as possible.

The facilitators stressed the importance of solidarity throughout a strike, which includes having well-defined roles for every student during the strike, so no one feels overwhelmed. For instance, if planning to picket, organizers should know which students are comfortable with physical aggression when confronting other students or police officers.

The facilitators also pointed out that a successful strike needs to provide material and emotional support to the protesters. For example, during the Women’s and Sexual Diversity Studies Student Association (WSSA) strike in April of 2015, this meant booking a room with food and couches, where students could go to recover, calm down, and talk to a counsellor if necessary.
At the end of the discussion, the facilitators noted that ultimately the only way to gain these skills is to take part in a strike.

–Daniel Huang

Street medic training

“Intro to Street Medic Training,” a first-aid workshop on medic training for demo safety, took place on September 16. The workshop gave an introduction to the basic skills necessary for dealing with first-aid situations specific to the context of demonstrations, such as washing out pepper spray from eyes, minimizing damage from tear gas, and treating shock and panic.

This workshop targeted those involved in demonstrations, but many of the skills and much of the information presented were broadly applicable to anybody who lives in downtown Montreal, where many politically charged events take place and where police employ tear gas to control demonstrations. For example, as tear gas is a volatile chemical weapon that does not discriminate between demonstrator, journalist, police, or civilian, it could be useful for all residents to know to wash themselves thoroughly after exposure, as oils in the skin can make the burning sensation worse.

The workshop also highlighted the distinctions in dealing with different chemical compounds. Pepper spray, unlike tear gas, is an oil – water will cause the chemical to spread and lead to intense pain. According to the workshop, the most effective way to treat pepper spray is to immediately rinse with Maalox (milk of magnesia, available in pharmacies), especially if eyes were exposed.

A central theme was the idea of consent in a medical context. The workshop emphasized that many of those needing medical attention at a demonstration may find themselves unable to receive help at hospitals for legal reasons, making it critical for street medics to respect the decision of a wounded person if they do not wish to seek medical attention at a hospital.

The workshop also discussed post-demonstration care, especially after a traumatic or violent incident, and stressed the long-term commitment involved. It was emphasized that many of those involved in demonstrations are from marginalized communities, often unable to seek formal health services for legal reasons. As such, it was said that giving protesters access to the care and support networks they need from their peers remains crucial.

–Vincent Simboli

Organizing against casualization

“Working from the Roots: Student/Worker Solidarity Against Casualization on Campus,” was held on September 15 and was facilitated by Molly Swain, president of the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE), and Tyler Lawson, Collective Agreement Coordinator of the Association of McGill University Research Employees (AMURE).

Lawson defined casualization as “the process wherein full-time workers” – those who receive benefits such as long-term contracts with higher wages, healthcare, and pension – “are replaced by part-time, casual workers who do the same work for less.” As a result, Lawson said, “constant anxiety [over job security] induces passivity.”

Swain argued that casualization is driven largely by austerity, saying that “all of the proponents of austerity are profiting from the confusion of household debt with governmental debt.” Swain also depicted government debt as an “entirely necessary” aspect of capitalist economy, unlike household debt, arguing that “the emphasis on paying back [government debt] is purely ideological.”

“Capitalism binds people through indebtedness,” Swain said, especially students who, as job opportunities appear more scarce, go into thousands of dollars of debt, working unpaid internships. Through strikes and organized movements, students attempt to resist austerity and the debt it incurs. However, students are not considered workers under Quebec law, and are therefore excluded from unions. Groups who may refer to themselves as unions representing the interests of students – like SSMU – are not, in fact, classified as such, and have little to no collective agreement or bargaining power. Lawson proposed that “undergraduate work should be valorized in the economy,” and that students are workers and deserve pay and unionizing power as such.

“Not only are [undergraduates] crucial to the university just by being here, [they] are also actively producing labour in [the] classrooms,” stated Lawson. The workshop also explored the intersectional history of unionization. Both Swain and Lawson proposed that it is and has always been in the best interest of the capitalist state to exclude certain groups in the history of labour and unionization. Although pivotal to the history of labour in Canada, Black and Indigenous people are often discounted and ignored in history as the first unionizing labour forces. Swain said, “Discounting the work of oppressed peoples perpetuates a white supremacist and patriarchal society.”

As the workshop drew to a close, facilitators and participants discussed ways to disengage from such a system, suggesting potential alternatives where both the exploitation of workers and the resulting labour unions would be non-existent. Swain emphasized that “collective mobilizing is the most powerful source of social change.” In a direct challenge to the assumption that millennials cannot stand up against the rise of austerity and casualization, she stated, “We are told precarious work is the work of the future. I am not saying we should be looking to the [pre-industrial] past. […] I am suggesting this rhetoric is a lie.”

—Anna Vail

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At issue here are two key pieces of legislation. The first, which has generated the most controversy, is Montreal’s municipal bylaw P-6. Amendments 2.1 and 3.2, added to the legislation in May 2012, during the Maple Spring student protests, require protesters to provide an itinerary and route to the police and forbids them from wearing clothing that obscures their faces.

The court ruling on February 9, 2015 saw three tickets issued under this bylaw dismissed, with Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre announcing that all similar pending cases against protestors would be dropped. At the time, Judge Randall Richmond, who made the ruling, called police use of P-6 “shocking,” adding that the SPVM “risked condemning innocent people,” due to the fact that the police distributed the tickets en masse.

Since then, however, the ruling seems to have made no difference to police actions. In an interview with The Daily, Katie Nelson, a student at Concordia and a veteran of the Maple Spring, pointed out that protesters have “still received P-6 tickets after the judgement” and that police “still threaten P-6 when [activists] go to protest.”

The second legislation protesters have cited is article 500.1 of Quebec’s Highway Safety Code, which gives police the right to stop any obstructions to vehicular traffic on public roads. According to Nelson, 500.1 is responsible for most of her tickets.

The article, while not new, has only been regularly applied to protest situations since March 2011, when it was used to disperse the 15th annual anti-police brutality protest. In 2013, some who were arrested at that protest legally challenged the city’s application of the article, which relies on the false assumption that protesters’ primary intent is to block traffic.

“Within a month of the P-6 ruling […] instead of seeing mass arrests [under P-6 or 500.1], we just saw super heavy violence from the police.”

In particular, COBP has argued that the police have selectively targeted certain protests over others. In a publication released in May 2014 on its website, COBP points out that over sixty protests have occurred since 2013 where police were not provided itineraries and routes, in violation of P-6, but did not interfere with protesters. In other cases, most notably during May Day and anti-police brutality protests in 2015, police issued P-6 warnings and immediately stopped protesters with mass arrests and ticketing.

Without any indication that those protests would be violent, such police actions, COBP claims, can only amount to political profiling, and a worrying sign that police have the power to arbitrarily decide which protests are good or bad.

To Abraham Weizfeld, a Montreal-based peace activist and author, “Police no longer treat protests according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Speaking to The Daily, Weizfeld argued that police are specifically targeting demonstrations that “are affecting the pro-austerity policies of the government.” Nelson also pointed out that all of her tickets, amounting to approximately $11,000, have been “in the context of something political […] whether it be a strike or a picket line, a protest, a rally, or sit-in – even events that are apolitical in their nature.”

“So for example, […] there was a movie screening in a park […] regarding the 2012 [student strikes.] We received tickets there,” Nelson explained.

Increased police violence in face of protests

Nelson suggests the police response to the controversy has just been “way more violence.”

“Within a month of the P-6 ruling […] instead of seeing mass arrests [under P-6 or 500.1], we just saw super heavy violence from the police,” Nelson said.

According to Nelson, this is a trend that runs contrary to what is supposed to be the SPVM’s public image, pursuant to which it tries to keep everyone safe.

Remembering the 2015 May Day protests, Nelson said, “[The police] had tear gas being shot into Centre Eaton, and there were kids, there were people, there was a family that ended up in the hospital. […] It’s [unbelievable] because they’ve completely disregarded everyone.”

Weizfeld, who also attended the May Day protests, stated that the police, realizing that tickets given under P-6 and article 500.1 of the Highway Safety Code “were likely to be thrown out of court,” instead “escalated it, […] and charged us under the criminal code.”

“What the police want to accomplish with such charges is intimidation. They want to intimidate people so they don’t come back to a demonstration,” Weizfeld said.

“The justification has always been that we are the aggressors, or we are the people who attacked first or threw something,” Nelson said. “Now, we’re seeing the police just automatically crackdown before a protest even starts. […] The police are no longer needing justifications for violence.”

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On February 10, the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) held its first hustings for the election of the interim secretary-general position following the resignation of Secretary-General Juan Camilo Pinto. The event featured only one of the two candidates, Saturnin Espoir Ntamba Ndandala, who delivered a short speech and answered questions from the audience of approximately thirty people. The other candidate, Yony Bresler, was out of town at a conference, but provided a short written statement read by Chief Returning Officer (CRO) Colby Briggs.

The statements provided by the candidates focused on similar ideas, notably the need for an experienced candidate, and the ability to quickly learn the intricacies of the PGSS governing system and its relationship with the university.

Bresler highlighted how his previous involvement with both PGSS and the McGill Graduate Association of Physics Students (MGAPS) allowed him to learn about “the various aspects of our student governance bodies, including procedures, activities, and ongoing issues.” Ntamba Ndandala, while noting that this was his first semester at McGill, pointed to his previous leadership roles as president of the student societies at the University of Cape Town, Sorbonne University in Paris, and the University of Toronto, as evidence of his “great expertise in leadership.”

On policies, both candidates’ platforms emphasized the need for greater transparency in PGSS. Bresler noted that, if elected, he would introduce “strict timelines for existing practices such as the release of minutes,” thereby giving PGSS members a quick and reliable source of information about the society’s activities and discussions.”

Most strikingly, the event highlighted the substantial contrasts between the candidates’ visions and leadership styles.

“As far as my goals if elected, I would be tempted to make bold and ambitious statements. However, given the short-term nature of the interim position […] my main goal would be to consolidate and assist in the activities of the current executive and Council officers,” wrote Bresler in his statement.

Ntamba Ndandala, on the other hand, enthusiastically outlined his plan to challenge the University on the issue of student funding, to create new fundraising events so that a minimum level of funding for every PhD student at McGill could be established, and to introduce a mandatory sexual harassment awareness plan where “new PhD and [post-graduate] students at McGill would be quizzed on the school’s sexual harassment and bullying policies.”

On PhD student funding, Ntamba Ndandala pointed to the growing problem of “students in some departments not getting sufficient funding.” He noted that other top universities in North America, namely Harvard and Stanford, provided individual funding for each PhD student to pursue independent research; he challenged McGill to provide a reason why it couldn’t do the same.

In response to these ideas, an audience member questioned Ntamba Ndandala’s ability to understand the “extremely complicated bureaucratic machines” of PGSS and McGill. Acknowledging this issue, the candidate clarified that his platform would extend beyond the interim, toward a second full term as secretary-general next year.

The voting period for this by-election runs from February 18 to 24.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Yony Bresler had previous experience with the Physiology Graduate Student Association (PGSA). In fact, he has experience with the McGill Graduate Association of Physics Students (MGAPS). The Daily regrets the error.

The article has also been updated to reflect the reason of Bresler’s absence at the hustings.

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Reductions in education spending have already lowered the quality of Quebec’s schools and universities. Here at McGill, budget constraints have meant delays to much-needed infrastructure repairs, reductions of TA salaries, and hiring and salary freezes for faculty members. This is already affecting the university’s teaching and research capabilities: class sizes have increased, and research opportunities have dried up.

Failing to invest in education (a public good that contributes to society) damages Quebec far more than an unbalanced deficit. Still, while students are affected, austerity measures hit marginalized groups the hardest. Ironically, as our province begins to fail to provide adequate opportunities for its citizens, it will find itself in a devastating race to the bottom.

It’s time, as it was for students in 2012, to strike. More importantly, it’s time for a general strike: for workers and students to unite in fighting back against damaging cuts.

You only need to look at Greece’s dramatic decline for evidence that austerity doesn’t work. It punishes the poor in order to protect the interests of the rich. Many in Quebec realize this, and are demanding a reduction in the cuts. But simply asking the government nicely has not worked. Petitions, and consultation with various commissions, as well as protests by unions and elected officials have all done nothing to prevent this government from slashing funding. Opinion pieces and editorials in newspapers and media outlets haven’t done anything either.

It’s time, as it was for students in 2012, to strike. More importantly, it’s time for a general strike: for workers and students to unite in fighting back against damaging cuts.

As far back as last summer, organizations throughout the province, from unions to universities, have called for local strikes. This winter and spring however, a number have banded together under one movement: the Printemps 2015 committees. Together, they are dedicated to mobilizing support, and eventually calling a strike.

McGill joining the strike would be a gesture of unity with the millions of people affected in our province, as well as a necessary and effective move for our university’s future wellbeing.

This spring will be a crucial moment for this movement. It’s a time when many local unions and organizations, including police officers and social workers, are due for contract renegotiations with the government. Add to this the increasing frustration across the province due to extensive cutbacks. As a target of these cuts, but more importantly, as an integral part of Quebec and Montreal society, McGill should also join this growing voice of dissent. Only through solidarity and unity can a general strike be effective, and only then might the government change tack. McGill joining the strike would be a gesture of unity with the millions of people affected in our province, as well as a necessary and effective move for our university’s future wellbeing.

Most importantly though, strike and protest actions work. A history of massive mobilization to address social issues or change government policy has existed in Canada since the 1919 general strike in Winnipeg. And they have worked, overwhelmingly so, in many other cases. With increasing frustration and resentment, the provincial government is particularly vulnerable to work stoppages and protest. There is every reason to believe in the power of a general strike.

Quebec has been hit with hard times. A government bent on austerity has done everything in its power to cut funding where it can: from cities, schools, and unions. It’s time to reverse the damage being done to our communities, and for McGill to join the rest of the province: to strike.

To contact Daniel Huang, the writer, please email to commentary@mcgilldaily.com.

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The Transgender Day of Remembrance vigils began in 1999 as a response to the brutal murder of Rita Hester, a trans woman of colour living near Boston. A vigil memorializing her death the following day inspired the international Transgender Day of Remembrance, an event that has spread throughout North America and Europe, that collectively honours the thousands of trans individuals around the world that have been killed.

Shannon, who was attending the event for the first time, spoke to The Daily about the significance of the event. “[Trans] rights are human rights, and the fact that there is so much violence that permeates around the world that continues to this day deserves to be illuminated, deserves to be recognized, and deserves to be contested.”

During the vigil, one of the event organizers, Ché Baines, read the names of over eighty members of the trans community killed in the past year while candles were lit to commemorate their lives. Baines said that the vigil was a way to “continue on the legacy of people we’ve lost, and to remind those around us that events like these shouldn’t be needed.”

Looking at the circle of people formed around the candles, Baines reminded participants, “We gather on this day to remember that we also have living community members who face violence every day.”

“I kept telling myself, ‘Well, things would get better.’ […] No […] we’re getting killed on a regular basis.”

Each participant was also invited to read out the location in which and the age at which each individual died along with their names, to give a sense of the widespread nature of anti-trans violence. The list included girls as young as eight and men as old as sixty in locations from Brazil to Belarus.

What was common with most of the named victims was that they were “overwhelmingly trans people of colour,” said Baines. “And the fact that I am running this event, and not a trans woman of colour, and the fact that there are no trans women of colour here, is a shame on all of us,” Baines continued.

Participants were also welcomed to contribute their own personal experiences.

Alanna, a vigil attendee, shared, “I kept telling myself, ‘Well, things would get better. The group [of those killed] is going to get smaller. The event is going to get less important.’ No […] we’re getting killed on a regular basis, this event remains important.”

When asked why it was so important for this event to be held annually, Ash, another attendee, said, “It’s to remind us that when these things happen regularly, they also need regular attention, so they can stop happening.”

Baines added, “It’s not ending, which you would hope, by this time, the numbers would get smaller but they don’t. In fact, the list [of trans people who are killed] is getting longer every year.”

“Every year when I attend or help organize the event, I see more and more people on this list, and it makes me more and more angry, and more and more tired that we don’t take action, that we only remember and [remain] silent,” said Baines.

Baines emphasized that, in the future, events like the vigil should no longer be necessary. “[The point is to] bring our community together so that we can find ways to take action to make sure events like this don’t have to happen anymore.”

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Mock, a well-known author, speaker, and activist for trans rights, was in Montreal to speak about gender, race, and her experiences with identity, as well as to discuss her book, “Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More.”

The event started with a moderated discussion between the CGA’s director, Gabrielle Bouchard, and Mock, who received an enthusiastic cheer from the audience upon entrance; it touched on a variety of topics, from Mock’s personal life to the issues that currently affect the trans community. As Bouchard pointed out, what these issues primarily boil down to is giving people the “freedom to choose, determine, and act so you know you are loved not in spite of your truth, but because of it.”

Born in Honolulu, Mock grew up in a turbulent household where both her parents were, as she put it, “loving and wanting to protect [her], but not knowing how to do so.” At the age of 16, she became a sex worker to pay for college, and by 18 she had “carved out a space for [herself],” to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

Mock said her purpose in writing the book was “to write as if I was communicating with my seventh grade self. I wanted to tell a personal narrative of my life, but also include a ‘manifesto’ of terms and policies and definitions because my seventh grade self didn’t know about ‘transgender-ness’ or feminist issues. By centering on myself, it gave me access and connection to everyone else that will read the work.”

After the moderated discussion, members of the audience were invited to share thoughts and ask questions. A variety of topics were raised, including how people outside the trans community could help tackle discrimination to how racial discrimination that exists in the trans community could be stopped.

Mock also stressed the importance of the other causes she advocates for, namely equality for women and people of colour. As she told the audience proudly, “I call myself a young, transgender woman of colour, and while one of those terms I will soon have to drop, the others form an integral part of my identity […] Even before I identified as transgender, I was at an intersection of race, which is the first thing that makes you realize this world is not yours.”

When asked about the difference between the trans and LGBT movements by an audience member, Mock stated, “For me, the issue was about inclusiveness […] But it is also important to understand that there are transgender people who are and aren’t queer, and who do and don’t identify with the LGBT community.”

Kiana, a McGill student, told The Daily that she was pleased with the event. “It was really inspiring, I still can’t get over how good it was. It’s a really important issue and I’m glad that everyone was so enthusiastic,” she said.

Mock ended the evening’s events with a message to those in the audience: “There’s so much we need to transform, and change, resist, and destroy, build, and reconstruct […] hopefully, we are working toward a world in which, when you decide, you are allowed to change your ID, your name, your gender, whatever the hell you want.”

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From September 15 to 19, the Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) office hosted McGill’s annual Indigenous Awareness Week. The week-long series of events is meant to honour and celebrate Indigenous cultures at McGill and beyond, and help increase awareness within the McGill community about Indigenous peoples. Events included everything from lectures, to panel discussions, to workshops; here is a small selection.

Two-spirits: history and survival | The KAIROS blanket exercise | Healing and decolonizing: impacts of the institutionalization of Indigenous children | Holding the academy accountable: Indigenous studies and community inclusion | Indigenous students at McGill: before and beyond graduation

Two-spirits: history and survival

On Thursday, Ben Geboe, a PhD student at the School of Social Work, gave a lecture about the history and survival of two-spirit people at the Native Friendship Centre of Montreal. The lecture lasted about an hour, and focused on Geboe’s experiences as an Indigenous person in the LGBT community and on the meaning of the concept of two-spirit.

According to Geboe, two-spirit people are those who identify as both female and male. “While everyone has a combination of male and female spirits, two-spirit people have male and female spirits that are the same size,” explained Geboe.
Geboe grew up on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, U.S.. While he said that his tribe was very open to people who identified as gay, not all tribes were as welcoming. “Every community is different and some [did not] have the acceptance mine did,” he said.

Throughout the lecture, Geboe stressed that his tribe didn’t have the same gender binary as the Western world. “The main difference between the Western world and Native world is that [in the Native world] no one can tell you who you are, people have to ask you who you are,” he explained.

Alan Vicaire, the Indigenous Education Advisor for the Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) office spoke to the goal of Geboe’s talk. “[We want] to create a safe space and open [a] dialogue for Indigenous students at McGill. Our primary goal is to educate students,” he said.

The KAIROS blanket exercise

The KAIROS blanket exercise, an interactive event meant to illustrate the history of Indigenous populations and their land, took place on Tuesday. During the event, participants played the roles of Indigenous peoples so that they could relate more directly with the history they were enacting, which also allowed for more emotional engagement with the subject of the exercise.

Organizers covered the floor with blankets to represent Canadian lands as they used to be inhabited by Indigenous people. The participants of the event were invited to freely walk on the blankets, to try get used to them, and to try to feel the connection with the land.

Yao Xi Zhang, a McGill Kinesiology student who participated in the exercise, considered the visual format of the event very helpful.

“They tell you [that people] took the Indigenous populations’ land. You hear it every day in social [science] class. Some country conquered another country. But when you are [standing] on the blanket, and they are folding the corners [to illustrate the land’s usurpation], you realize, ‘Oh. It’s my territory, and it just got smaller.’”

People who attended the event had a desire to learn more about colonization – precisely because the exercise had an emotional effect on the attendees, they found the exercise more illustrative of the colonization of Indigenous lands than class textbooks that aim to convey the same knowledge.

“[The exercise] is actually more important than the textbook, because we read [textbooks so much], we are not so sensitive to it,” Yao noted.

This was the second year in a row that the KAIROS blanket exercise was used during Indigenous Awareness Week. Although event organizers noted that this year’s exercise was a bit different from that of last year, participants still found it impactful and educational.

Healing and decolonizing: impacts of the institutionalization of Indigenous children

On Thursday, Lindsey Decontie, executive director of the National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence (NACAFV), spoke at McGill about the legacy of residential schools in Canada. Decontie touched on a variety of issues that have a concentrated effect on Canada’s Indigenous women, from familial abuse and homelessness to the reserve system.

Ending in the 1990s, residential schools were a systematic plan to assimilate Indigenous children into white Canadian society funded by the Canadian government. The schools were, as Decontie pointed out, places where “Aboriginal children were told they could not speak their own languages, and where there were many definite cases of physical and sexual abuse.”

Decontie called the residential schools’ legacy today a “historical trauma” that influences, for instance, how an Indigenous woman might seek help after being abused.

As she stated, “what happens is, since they were victims, they might be afraid to ask for help, or reluctant to solve these problems because their self-esteem and self-worth have taken a big hit.”

In her presentation, she elaborated on the “stereotypes and assumptions that do exist, not only about Aboriginals who are in this position but also about the shelters that they seek help from.” As an example, she pointed out the demeaning stereotype that Aboriginal women “will only be victims for as long as it’s profitable to be victims.”

To those who believe the situation is improving as a result increased awareness, Carole Brazeau, National Project Coordinator of NACAFV, pointedly warned, “the problem has not improved, it has gotten worse; it was a crisis ten years ago, and it is still a crisis now.”

When asked what McGill students could do to help, Decontie responded that “oftentimes people might feel that, there’s nothing we can do, this is such a big problem, and I don’t know where to start, but it doesn’t have to be anything big. It can be as simple as volunteering at a women’s shelter, or writing a letter to their local MP [member of parliament].”

Holding the academy accountable: Indigenous studies and community inclusion

On Tuesday, the Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) office and the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) co-hosted a panel to discuss Indigenous relationships with academia, exploring both the accountability of Indigenous studies programs to the voices of Indigenous peoples, as well as ways to create decolonized spaces in universities.

Moderator Molly Swain read out the questions, written by SEDE over the summer, to a panel consisting of three speakers: Marsha Vicaire, a doctoral student at McGill who is Mi’gmaq (from the Listuguj First Nation); William Straw, a professor at McGill and director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada; and Karl Hele, an associate professor at Concordia and director of its First Peoples Studies program.

Throughout the discussion, Vicaire focused on the perspective of the learner, saying that, as an Indigenous student, she would like to see recognition of the differences between Indigenous and Western culture, as well as recognition that the methods of Indigenous peoples, while different, are also valuable.

“We really need to be valued, respected, and we also need to have that sense of inclusion,” said Vicaire, “so I think those would be things to consider within those spaces, within those learning environments.”

Hele emphasized the importance of teaching the Indigenous community, as it is a complex society composed of different peoples.

“If you’re saying Indigenous studies, it’s got to be […] broad enough to include the other communities within at least McGill’s [reach],” he said.

Hele also encouraged the inclusion of more Indigenous voices and perspectives in the curricula of Indigenous studies programs at universities, stressing the importance of creating a welcoming place for Indigenous employees as well as hiring Indigenous professors to teach topics unrelated to Indigenous issues.

Straw said that those in charge of funding should make Indigenous studies more of a priority. He also criticized the tendency of other departments to make the Indigenous studies department the sole source of accountability for Indigenous issues, and noted a need to integrate more space for Indigenous students within the curriculum.

During the question-and-answer session, an Indigenous audience member and University of Victoria student spoke to the importance of accepting and utilizing alternative methods of research, such as more conversation-based qualitative data, in order to better represent Indigenous communities.

“We have to be looking through an Indigenous lens,” said the student, “and not looking through a separate lens […] and the understandings will come from there.”

In five years, said Vicaire, she would hope to see more second- and third-generation Indigenous students at university, as most Indigenous students are currently first-generation, as well as a more welcoming environment for Indigenous students.

“It’s going to be coming onto this campus knowing ‘yes, I am an Indigenous person and I belong here.’”

Indigenous students at McGill: before and beyond graduation

On Wednesday evening, Indigenous peoples, scholars, and activists gathered to celebrate Indigenous culture, hear from an alumnus about her experience at McGill, and to rethink McGill’s founding and its relationship with the Six Nations of the Grand River.

Audra Simpson, McGill alumnus and associate professor of anthropology at Columbia University, stepped up to give a different speech than the one that was expected. Simpson did not solely discuss the significance of McGill and of the forms of training she received for her scholarship, as had been planned, but focused instead on the history and legacy of McGill for Indigenous students.

According to Simpson, the founding of McGill is often narrated as stemming from the 1811 endowment from Scottish merchant James McGill. While the financial problems of the institution’s first forty years are often acknowledged, Simpson noted that little attention is paid to the money that was transferred from the Six Nations to McGill in the mid-1800s to rid the university of its financial crisis.

“No mention is made of the crucial transferring of funds from the Six Nations of the Grand River in the 1850s that helped to save McGill from bankruptcy, [and] helped to repair [and] construct buildings. I suspect that was also money that in fact kept the university open,” stated Simpson.

Funds from the Six Nations were used without the permission of the communities during the financial crisis, and McGill has never reimbursed the Six Nations for this outstanding debt, which now adds up to $1.7 billion.

“[This unpaid debt should be paid] through a public acknowledgement, and not a superficial one at that, that McGill was kept afloat because of this unpaid debt […] that needs to be acknowledged rigorously,” she said. “[Indigenous students] should [… also] have scholarships in the name of each person that signed off on this loan, who in different ways contribute to this complicated history and the flourishing of this fine institution.”

Simpson added that compensation for this debt should also be made through hiring more tenured Indigenous scholars and professors. “But what is needed along with this big commitment to revitalizing hidden pasts, forgotten pasts, non-commitments to pasts, is diversifying this university. And here I want to ask, ‘Where are the Indigenous scholars at McGill, scholars in tenured positions?’”

She also noted that McGill’s new Indigenous studies minor is a good start, but that the university should aim for an Indigenous studies major.

“I am very happy to hear that there is an [Indigenous] studies minor. That makes me happy. Let’s go now for a major.”

A previous version of this article stated that Holding the academy accountable: Indigenous studies and community inclusion was hosted by SEDE. In fact, it was co-hosted by SSMU and SEDE. The Daily regrets the error. 

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