UNews - Erin Spring

Building rapport key to success of the Raising Spirit project

caroline.zentner — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 21:51:11 +0000

Taylor Little Mustache couldn’t have asked for a better summer job. As a research assistant with Raising Spirit: The Opokaa’sin Digital Storytelling Project, Little Mustache says she felt honoured to work on a project where she learned so much.

“I feel humbled by being a part of this creation,” she says about the project that features photos of Blackfoot family life and audio recordings where Blackfoot Elders and children come together for the telling of traditional cultural stories.

Raising Spirit is a collaborative project of the Opokaa’sin Early Intervention Society and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge’s Institute for Child and Youth Studies (I-CYS). The purpose is to help ensure Blackfoot history, language and values endure and shape future generations, as well as build research capacity and understanding of intergenerational knowledge transmission that was interrupted by residential schooling. Once completed, the goal is to produce a digital library that will be a community resource.

Little Mustache, who’s entering her third year of studies at the U of L, is working on a combined education, Native American Studies and history degree. She also has a love of athletics, especially basketball. She has coached for the Alberta Summer Games and the Junior Pronghorns teams. She became part of the Raising Spirit project after taking a history of childhood course and an independent study with Dr. Kristine Alexander, the director of I-CYS.

Her fields of study and experience working with youth and community organizations have served her well in her work with the Raising Spirit project. She’s been busy building rapport with the Opokaa’sin Early Intervention Society and the Piikani and Kainai First Nations. Little Mustache has worked with children aged four to seven and youth up to 18 years of age. She has presented on the project at conferences, met with Elders, collected and organized data, and transcribed interviews. In addition, Taylor has supervised the growing research skills of two high school summer students, Hudson Eagle Bear and Tesla Heavy Runner.

Little Mustache says she found the field work component of her job especially engaging. She attended a Blackfoot immersion camp, slept in a teepee for the first time and furthered her knowledge of cultural traditions.

“I’ve learned so much from the elders I got to meet over the summer. They hold so much knowledge,” she says. “I’m well connected to my culture but this field work made the connection even stronger.”

At first, she wondered how she could contribute to the research team — Tanya Pace-Crosschild (BSc ’98), executive director of Opokaa’sin, and the Opokaa’sin staff, U of L professors Jan Newberry and Kristine Alexander and Erin Spring, a post-doctoral fellow and Amy Mack (MA ’16). Michelle Hogue and Francis First Charger serve as advisors on the project.

“When I first met them I felt a little under-qualified because I was just an undergraduate. However, they made me feel comfortable and I want to acknowledge their mentorship,” says Little Mustache. “This project really opened doors for me.”

One of those doors is a co-operative placement with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada this fall. She’ll be working as a junior program analyst in the education branch.

“I’ll be conducting policy research and analyzing indigenous education issues,” she says. “I’m super excited and the position is a good fit for my research skills.”

Blackfoot culture and identity explored in joint project between Opokaa'sin and U of L institute

trevor.kenney — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 16:26:23 +0000

The Opokaa’sin Early Intervention Society, with support from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge’s Institute for Child and Youth Studies (I-CYS), is helping to ensure that Blackfoot history, language and values will not only endure but help shape future Blackfoot generations.

On Saturday, March 5, 2016, a special photo exhibit titled Raising Spirit: The Opokaa’sin Digital Storytelling Project opened at Park Place Mall. The display features photos of local Blackfoot families in everyday moments of childrearing, a testament to Blackfoot culture and identity as it continues to thrive despite disruptions such as the residential schooling system, among others.

The storytelling project, featuring photos such as this, builds on the earlier work done between Opokaa’sin and I-CYS, led by principal investigator Dr. Jan Newberry, a U of L anthropology professor.

The exhibit runs for two weeks and is one facet of a larger project, of the same name, in which Blackfoot Elders and children will come together to develop interactive digital recordings of traditional cultural stories – a way to preserve the past and help its rich heritage influence future generations.

“We are very excited about this project because it speaks to the strengths of the Blackfoot people,” says Tanya Pace-Crosschild (BSc ’98), executive director of Opokaa’sin. “Blackfoot people were traditionally very family-oriented. With the colonization of our people, we saw significant challenges to our traditional way of life, especially in respect to childrearing practices.”

The storytelling project builds on the earlier work done between Opokaa’sin and I-CYS, led by principal investigator Dr. Jan Newberry, a U of L anthropology professor. That project was initially featured in a small exhibition at the Galt Museum & Archives and will now reach a wider audience as it makes its way into a busy community space. In addition to the photos, participant-photographers, people at powwows in Blackfoot territory and Elders were asked to respond to the pictures. A book featuring the photos and the responses is in the works.

“The intergenerational transmission of stories, language and values is central to the project. What’s terrific here is the inter-disciplinary reach of the project and how all of this aids a local community organization in raising issues of First Nations families,” says Erin Spring, a Post-Doctoral Fellow for I-CYS. “Not only does this raise community awareness of Opokaa’sin’s work and the resilience of local families, it also showcases how powerful local, collaborative research can be.”

The Raising Spirit project will enhance Blackfoot language skills, transmit stories from generation to generation and create an archive of material that will be available in both Blackfoot and English. It has already involved multiple areas of the U of L campus, from the humanities, social sciences and fine arts.

The display in Park Place Mall also involved collaboration with museum studies faculty.

"It was a really wonderful opportunity for Star Crop Eared Wolf, our first major in Native American Art History/Museum Studies, and Amy Dalton, a museum studies intern, to curate the digital display," says their supervisor, Dr. Anne Dymond of the Faculty of Fine Arts.

The project also has the potential to incorporate high school students in the future.

“We are currently working on securing STEP (Summer Temporary Employment Program) funding that will give local high school students the chance to work on the project and enhance their research and digital skills,” says Newberry. “Eventually, we want to share this digital library with the southern Alberta community as a whole.”

Opokaa’sin Early Intervention Society is an Aboriginal child and family organization that was a joint initiative created in 1996 by various Aboriginal service agencies that shared a commitment to improving the well-being of all Aboriginal children. Among its founding principles is a belief that supportive relationships with grandparents and Elders helps decrease anti-social behavior and increase social competency, thus fostering resiliency in children.

“Raising Spirit is a project that captures traditional core values that are still evident with today’s Blackfoot families,” says Pace-Crosschild. “It examines traditional value systems in a strength-based approach that align with Opokaa’sin’s ideology of drawing on the strength of our Indigenous people and recognizing of the strength in our traditional cultural systems.”

The photo exhibit appears in Park Place Mall March 5-19, 2016. A formal public reception for the opening of the exhibit will take place on Monday, March 21, 2016 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Opokaa’sin Early Intervention Society.

Grant supports Spring research project with local First Nations young adults

caroline.zentner — Tue, 12 May 2015 19:49:27 +0000

Dr. Erin Spring, a post-doctoral fellow with the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge’s Institute for Child and Youth Studies (I-CYS), will build on her doctoral research as she embarks on a local project with First Nations young adults.

Her previous work honed in on Canadian youths’ responses to place and identity in young adult fiction. The results showed they were very aware of the role of place within their lives.

“I think this is because they’re at a time in their lives when they’re thinking about where they want to live, who they want to be, and what is and isn’t important to them,” she says. “Characters in young adult texts are often confronting similar issues, and thinking through these questions as readers of fiction can help young adults make sense of their world.”

Dr. Erin Spring was recently awarded the Frances E. Russell Grant to support her research in young people's literature.

Now, she hopes to learn how local Aboriginal youth react to sense of place and identity in Canadian fiction for youth and young adults.

“In order to know more about Aboriginal youth and youth in general, we need to hear their voices and we need to know what they think about the world and what they think about the books written for them,” she says. “This research will help to fill an important gap in the literature about young adult’s responses to fiction and could help parents, librarians and teachers find new ways to connect with the young adults in their lives.”

Spring has chosen two fiction works penned by First Nations authors. In Richard Van Camp’s book, The Lesser Blessed, Larry Sole is a Grade 11 student, a member of the Dogrib Indian band, and a youth with a troubled past. A coming-of-age tale, The Lesser Blessed describes how Larry finds his place in the world. In addition, Spring has chosen Arvus in Excelsus, written by local author Gordon Fox. Arvus is a First Nations cowboy whose life has been negatively affected by residential school. He returns home to Kainai after being gone for several years and works hard to overcome his past.

“I will be working with Blackfoot youth by reading these First Nations texts and getting them to respond in a reading group discussion,” says Spring. “I’m interested in hearing what they think about these First Nations texts and how they use their knowledge of the world and their culture to shape their reading experience.”

Spring plans to establish a reading group for high school students at a southern Alberta library.

“My overall goal is to better understand children, youth and young adults and how they interpret texts and interpret and talk about their own identities in relation to what they’re reading,” she says.

Spring’s research recently got a boost from IBBY Canada, the Canadian section of the International Board on Books for Young People, when she was awarded the Frances E. Russell Grant worth $1,000. The grant is designed to encourage and support research in young people’s literature leading to a publishable work on Canadian children’s literature. Spring plans to use the funds to purchase texts for the reading groups; the texts will remain with the participating organizations after the study has wrapped up.

“I was honoured to receive the grant,” she says. “The people who have won this in the past have great positions at other Canadian universities and they’re doing important research, so I feel like I am following in some big footsteps. It’s wonderful to have your work recognized and have other people tell you that what you’re doing is important. Thanks to I-CYS as well for giving me this opportunity to do the post-doc and to spend the time to put the project together.”

Originally from Huntsville, Ontario, Spring remembers being a youngster and wanting to read books about girls living in similar situations.

“I wanted to find myself in the pages and that desire led me down this path to understand myself better through fiction and now to see if it applies more broadly to other youth,” she says.

UNews - Erin Spring

Building rapport key to success of the Raising Spirit project

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