UNews - Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council SSHRC

Research project to highlight Kainai women’s activism and build historical literacy

caroline.zentner — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 21:32:42 +0000

In line with the recommendations that flowed from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015), a research project led by Dr. Carol Williams, a professor in Women and Gender Studies and History at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, will assemble diverse historical and contemporary accounts about Kainai women’s community reform work from 1968 to 1990.

“Our goal is to generate a history of southern Alberta Kainai women’s grassroots activism for social change,” says Williams. “We want to expand historical literacy to illustrate how women have positively transformed their communities.”

Researchers and collaborators in the Kainai Women's Project include (back row left to right) Erin Turner, Charlene Oka, Cherilynn Blood, Sonny Brewer, Dr. Carol Williams, Hali Heavy Shied and (front row, left to right) Lenore Hoof, Linda Weasel Head and Faye Heavy Shield.

Williams will collaborate with Hali Heavy Shield (BA, BEd ’06; MEd ’12), vice-principal at Aahsaopi Elementary School on the Blood Reserve; Linda Weasel Head, the library and learning coordinator at the Kainai Public Library, and Faye Heavy Shield, a nationally exhibited independent artist and Hali’s mother.

“The process of the project demonstrates Indigenous epistemology because it’s a coming together that will give youth, women and us, as a community of researchers, a chance to collaborate,” says Hali Heavy Shield. “In a sense, that’s the traditional way of knowing and learning for Kainai. We’re very much being authentic to the family systems of learning.”

The project, titled Kainai Women’s Activism in Treaty 7 Territory 1968 to 1990: Contemporary Histories of Social Change, has received more than $121,000 over three years from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

“This research project is very timely, given the 94 calls for action that came out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” says Hali Heavy Shield. “We had two residential schools in Kainai, St. Paul’s and St. Mary’s, and so now is a time for the process and a call on our federal, provincial and even our community leadership to first tell the truth about our own history.”

Students will be involved in every step of the research, including creating a preliminary display consisting of historical articles, photos or government reports to be used as a starting point for conversations at community gatherings. Williams says many historical documents have not been accessible to community members and the research project is committed to repatriation of a range of relevant records.

Glenbow Archives #NA-2908-12. About the subject of this portrait, Faye Heavy Shield notes: “Kate Three Persons was married to Pete Heavy Shield, widowed, and then married to Tom Three Persons. Kate was an artist, designer and storyteller. I believe any art I’ve made was through her.”

The study will use a variety of methods to engage with community. Williams says her previous research on Indigenous women’s social and educational activism has indicated that the health and education of children has been a key motivation for action. For example, Faye (Heavy Shield), Hali (Heavy Shield) and Linda (Weasel Head) were part of the community group that was instrumental in building the partnership with Blood Tribe Chief and Council, Kainai Board of Education and Chinook Arch Regional Library System to get the public library on the reserve. The library was crucial in building literacy through access to books and the Internet.

Linda Weasel Head speaks to these ambitions: “Our goal in creating a library was to offer an essential service on the reserve as many people were unable to get to services in surrounding communities. The bigger picture is to offer an opportunity to increase literacy skills and that reading, writing and numeracy skills assist over time in lowering poverty. Our library’s motto, Okstakit (read), reflects what our people did to survive, thrive and pass on knowledge or pommotsiiysinni. Our library is a facet of all those purposes or ihpipototst and opportunities, or aksistoiypaittapiisini, while demonstrating kindness or kimmapiipitsinni, and respect or innakotsiiysinni. Most important is aasimmoiyihkanni, as we are all spiritual beings who must look out for each other through prayer and positive actions.”

Faye Heavy Shield reflects on how making art can also be part of women’s activism, as it was artists who kept traditional songs, ceremonies and beadwork alive, despite federal prohibitions against cultural and ceremonial life: “As a child, through the stories told me by Sommitsikana, I experienced an immersive adventure into the fantastic where animals spoke and a hero came to life from a blood clot. Later, I recognized the more profound impact of maintaining language, imagination, and the aspiration to values of kindness, courage and creativity and, not the least — time spent with a grandmother.”

The Kainai women’s project will include a series of cultural and historical workshops for all age groups. The workshops might take the form of using art to make graphic histories, sessions of storytelling, archival scanning of historical family photographs, talking circles or other small conversational gatherings.

“I am an educator and I hope to use my experience in the classroom to bring about and encourage and inspire members of the community to tell stories and to be inspired themselves, to tell their truth and to share,” says Hali Heavy Shield.

“One central motivation for this project is to expand historical literacy about women’s labour and social and community activism,” says Williams. “Another of the major eventual outcomes will be a sustainable website that will become a legacy for Kainai educators teaching kindergarten to Grade 12, but also for university students and other researchers.”

Dr. Carol Williams

Williams said another important goal of the project is to mentor and train Indigenous students so they can continue to build Kainai community histories and develop marketable skills for their future careers. Several research assistants have joined the project to assist in reviewing and assembling archival documents, helping with design of workshops and contributing to the thematic organization of the project.

Charlene Oka (BA ’17), Ii’ni’skin’akii (Buffalo Stone Woman), is a member of Kainai, mother to five children and grandmother to two grandsons, with a granddaughter on the way. She is working toward applying to graduate studies and is exploring and learning more about Kainai and its historical roots.

Sonny Brewer was raised with Blackfoot traditions and ceremony and brings an understanding of cultural practices and protocol to the Kainai Women’s project. As a third-year music (composition) student, Brewer offers a different perspective on the project, through a lens rooted in the aural realm.

Erin Turner, a fourth-year history major at the U of L, will lend her expertise as an archival researcher. Her travels abroad have given her a greater respect for cultural diversity in Canada and around the world.

Rachel Hoof, Sootaaki, (Rain Woman), is a fourth-year social work student studying at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary’s Lethbridge campus. Hoof wants to help youth, women and families as they work toward healing and recovery from the historical impacts of colonization.

Cherilynn Blood, Puhksikaki’ihkitsikimuhksaki, is a member of Kainai and the mother of one. She is working towards becoming a teacher of Social Studies and Native American studies. She’s an advocate for Indigenous peoples and looks forward to working on the Kainai women’s project to learn more about Blackfoot history for future use in classrooms.

“Our commitment is to collaboration, reciprocity and challenging the colonial character of the archives with alternative stories and histories,” says Williams. “We will find our path as we go.”

Study to examine competition for mates in third-gender cultures

caroline.zentner — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 21:20:12 +0000

Women in North America typically don’t worry about gay men flirting with their boyfriends but in cultures that recognize same-sex-attracted males as a third gender, all bets seem to be off.

Dr. Paul Vasey, a psychology professor at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, wants to investigate what happens to women’s sexual psychology when they find themselves competing for mates with third-gender males. His proposed research study recently received more than $140,000 over four years from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

“The research that I’m proposing to do in this latest SSHRC grant takes a different approach,” says Vasey. “It doesn’t ask why same-sex sexuality exists. We’re going to take it as a given that individuals who are same-sex attracted exist in the environment and we want to examine the influence they have on the behaviour and cognition of heterosexual individuals.”

Most research in human mating psychology has separated reproductive interactions from non-reproductive encounters but Vasey maintains that sex for procreation and sex for recreation evolve in concert and can influence each other. He conducts research in cultures that recognize a third gender, specifically the muxes in the Istmo region of Oaxaca, Mexico, and the fa’afafine in Samoa. The fa’afafine and muxes are same-sex attracted feminine males or what could be called transgender in North America. Fa’afafine and muxes will engage in sexual activity with masculine men who are bisexual, and bisexual males are quite commonplace in these cultures.

“I’m asking questions about how those third-gender males influence women’s behaviour and cognition,” says Vasey. “When you have these same-sex-attracted, feminine males in the environment and masculine men are willing to have sex with them, this creates a unique mating problem for heterosexual women. In such an environment, heterosexual women not only have to compete with other women like they do here in Canada, but they have to compete with these third-gender males as well.”

Vasey, and graduate students Lanna Petterson, Scott Semenyna and Francisco Gomez, have conducted some preliminary interviews in these cultures, asking heterosexual women if a fa’afafine or muxe had approached their boyfriends or husbands. One woman reported trying to compete by offering her boyfriend the same sexual services as the fa’afafine, while another reported rejecting her boyfriend after he chose to be with a muxe over her.

“No one has talked about these kinds of competitive mating interactions in the human literature,” says Vasey. “Ultimately, this research has implications for Darwinian sexual selection theory because sexual selection involves mate acquisition, which results in differential reproduction between individuals.”

Previous research has shown women in North America say they would be more upset if their husbands or boyfriends had a one-night stand with another man, rather than with a woman. Women in Samoa, when asked the same question, say they would be more upset if their husbands or boyfriends had a one-night stand with a woman than with a fa’afafine.

From an evolutionary perspective, Vasey says that a woman in North America interprets the situation and concludes her husband is gay. This is something she can’t compete with so she foresees losing her husband. Faced with the same situation, a woman in Samoa likely concludes her husband is bisexual and will eventually return to her because he wants children. A husband who had a one-night stand with another woman would be more upsetting because the chances of her being abandoned would be greater.

Vasey and his students will conduct interviews, questionnaires and experiments in the lab here in Canada and at their field sites in Samoa and Mexico to obtain their data.

“This research is cutting edge. We are the only lab in the world that has a sustained program of research on third-gender males,” says Vasey. “Studying non-traditional mating systems such as those that include Samoan fa’afafine and Istmo Zapotec muxes can result in transformative new ways of theorizing about the dynamic interplay between reproductive and non-reproductive sex. This can help reconfigure our thinking and help to correct biased, incomplete or erroneous views about human sexual psychology.”

Future Commons project designed to foster new research network

caroline.zentner — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 20:56:09 +0000

While the Internet was originally designed as a way for research scientists to share their work, people soon began using it for all types of communication from email to online shopping. The resulting revolution in global communication changed the playing field for many businesses and industries except for, ironically, research publishing.

“The Internet was designed as a system for scholarly communication and it’s really the only industry that hasn’t been radically disrupted,” says Dr. Dan O’Donnell, a ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge professor in the Department of English. “The same journals are still in charge, the same five publishers still run the market and the profit margins are the same.”

O’Donnell concentrates most of his research in the Digital Humanities, a field of study that applies tools and methods from computer science to humanities fields such as history, philosophy and literature. The more he dug into the publishing system, the more he became aware that scholarship is still being evaluated and rewarded using performance indicators from the print era. Wanting to address the lack of innovation in scholarly publishing, O’Donnell began working on building a different kind of research network called Future Commons.

“The goal of Future Commons is to develop a set of principles that you can use to adhere to best practice across your research life,” he says. “One of our principles is that research should be freely and publicly available but another of our principles is that you can have closed tools or services. Openness is a principle of ours but we’re not solely about openness, in fact, we’re trying to find a space where corporations could still make profit.”

O’Donnell, along with Educopia Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to building networks and collaborative communities, Force 11, a community working to change scholarly communication through use of information technology, and the universities of Montreal and California-San Diego, recently received $200,000 over two years from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to move Future Commons forward.

The Open Access model provides scholarly research that is digital, online, free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. The model is better developed in the Global South (mid-and low-income economies) than it is in the Global North (high-income economies). To build some bridges between ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and students on both sides, some of the research funding will go toward a summer school in San Diego in July. The goal is to teach people across disciplines about best practice in scholarly communication.

“The idea is that we can learn a lot back and forth across the boundary. In the north, we have very robust systems for academic freedom and investigator freedom,” says O’Donnell. “In the Global South, Open Access publication is far better developed and much more integral to the lives of individual researchers.

Another aspect of the program will provide opportunities for students through Innovation in Scholarly Communication Fellowships. Students will be invited to propose a project on innovation in scholarly communication and the U of L School of Graduate Studies will pay the tuition while the student does an independent study based on the proposed project.

O’Donnell expects work on the Future Commons will extend into the future as more partners are added and it becomes a full-fledged research network.

“Academic research is a huge driver of our economies and yet, it’s a fairly inefficient system and there’s a lot of evidence that says, because it’s traditionally conservative, it’s not following best practice,” he says. “Given how much money the public invests in university research, one of the goals here is to at least improve the efficiency of the delivery system without selling the public good to private corporations.”

Comparing approaches to learning a second language

caroline.zentner — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 20:46:48 +0000

Recent waves of immigration have led to a burgeoning bilingual population in Canada and second-language programs offered by the public education system have flourished in response.

The ability to speak a second language at a level that approaches native-like proficiency can positively affect academic and career success. However, graduates of second-language programs often produce speech errors that impair how well they are understood and sometimes lead to stereotypical judgments of their capability.

Now, thanks to $150,000 in funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Dr. Fangfang Li, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, will be able to examine the factors that might influence speech errors. Li hopes to better understand the origins of such speech errors after she found some rather puzzling results from research she conducted with elementary-aged children in local French Immersion programs.

“In my past research, I looked at students in Grades 1, 3 and 5. At the time, we thought students in the higher grades should make fewer speech errors than students in lower grades but that’s not the case,” says Li. “We found that, if students make pronunciation errors when they are in Grade 1, it’s going to persist in Grade 5. They’re not getting substantial improvement over time.”

As Li pondered possible reasons for the finding, she hypothesized that local children in French Immersion programs continued to make the same speech errors because they most likely have an Anglophone background and are learning a second language that isn’t the dominant language in the community. These factors limit opportunities to speak French outside the classroom.

Li and fellow researchers from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Montreal have designed a further study to test out that hypothesis. Working with a colleague from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Montreal, one part of the study will have native French speakers evaluate students’ speech production and identify areas that need improvement. This information can then be used by teachers to design better educational materials.

“Once we obtain the normative data, we can then use it as a reference to design standard tests,” says Li.

In her previous study, Li spoke with school administrators who indicated a concern that no standard testing is available for students who are native speakers of English who acquire a second language such as French.

Another part of the study, done in collaboration with the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta, will look at a bilingual Mandarin Chinese and English program in Edmonton where the curriculum is divided equally between English and Mandarin.

“The student body is also divided so that native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and native speakers of English are mixed in the same classroom,” says Li. “That’s the kind of opportunity that French Immersion students, say in Lethbridge, don’t have. They don’t have the opportunity to talk to native speaking peers on a daily basis.”

Li expects that English students who have more opportunities to talk with native Mandarin-speaking peers and teachers will produce more accurate Mandarin speech as they move into the higher grades.

“If the Mandarin-English bilingual program proves to be better, I think it may be time to think about whether we can combine students from Anglophone backgrounds and Francophone backgrounds in the same school so they can learn from each other,” says Li.

Research project examines atomic tourism at site of the world’s first atomic bomb blast

caroline.zentner — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 20:13:22 +0000

A visit to New Mexico and the test site of the first atomic blast led Mary Kavanagh, a professor in the Department of Art at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, on a new multi-year project that explores atomic tourism in the context of the emergent nuclear Anthropocene.

Photo by Terry Ownby

Her project recently received nearly $150,000 over four years from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the first Insight Research/Creation Grant awarded to a faculty member at the U of L.

“Since the end of the Cold War, atomic tourism has been on the rise, with millions of visitors each year travelling to significant sites of atomic history, industry and accident,” says Kavanagh. “My project, Atomic Tourist: Trinity, explores nuclear anxiety in the post-Cold War era through a series of interviews with visitors to the site of the world’s first atomic bomb detonation.”

Under the auspices of the Manhattan Project, a secret wartime consortium led by the United States with the support of Britain and Canada, the development and use of atomic weapons presented new orders of destructive capability. Codenamed "Trinity," the test took place deep in the desert on July 16, 1945, south of the Manhattan project's headquarters in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Every living thing within a mile of the blast was obliterated. A rehearsal for the bombing of Hiroshima three weeks later, and Nagasaki three days after that, today the significance of Trinity site as a marker for the birth of the atomic age is widely acknowledged socially, culturally, and psychologically.

Photo by Tyler Muzzin

Kavanagh has been making annual trips to Trinity, New Mexico, since 2012. Building upon interviews gathered during a highly successful pilot study, Kavanagh will continue to gather participant testimonials from a broad spectrum of tourists during bi-annual Trinity Open Houses.

"This audio/visual material will provide a spatial-temporal archive, consisting of an accumulation of voices, perspectives and experiences all addressing the unique meaning of Trinity site," says Kavanagh.

She anticipates the results of her study will have implications for scholars in the humanities and social sciences, or for anyone engaged in post-atomic studies, especially as the Trinity test nears its 75th Anniversary (2020) and interest in the subject ramps up.

Interview participants have offered a variety of motivations for visiting the test site, ranging from the deeply personal to the curious. There are war veterans, history buffs, scientists, nuclear industry workers, filmmakers, activists and cancer survivors. They arrive in the thousands, some travelling from far-flung places to experience firsthand where the atomic age began.

A series of art works or "chapters" including moving-image vignettes, photographic works, book works, and installations will be produced over the four-year period of the grant, while a culminating experimental documentary filmwill offer an extended meditation on the research and annual fieldwork.

“The most important thing for me as an artist is the question of vulnerability and what’s at stake. This project specifically focuses on the vulnerable human and animal subject, and on the slow violence unleashed through the vast and unstoppable nuclear experiment,” she says.

Kavanagh's project will construct an archive of voices that reveals the profound global embodiment of the nuclear era as collective and cumulative. Considered alongside the historic, ethical and ecological dimensions of Trinity site, this drilling down or deep mapping of the site will uniquely contribute to the growing body of scholarship on urgent questions of the nuclear age.

McDaniel one of three finalists for SSHRC Insight Award

caroline.zentner — Wed, 28 Sep 2016 22:40:10 +0000

Dr. Susan McDaniel, a ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge sociology professor, has been chosen as one of three top finalists in the Insight Award category of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s (SSHRC) 2016 Impact Awards.

“I extend my respect and congratulations to Susan, whose career is one most of us aspire to but few of us achieve,” says Dr. Claudia Malacrida, associate vice-president of research. “This is a real coup; a quick glance at the history of this award reveals that recipients have primarily come from five institutions in the country."

"I am very honoured that the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge nominated me for this award and deeply pleased to be on the list of three finalists. That said, this award is not about me or individual researchers, but that social science research makes a difference. Sometimes, as in the case of my research, it makes a big difference to policy and Canadian society," says McDaniel.

In addition to McDaniel, the other two finalists are Marc-André Bernier from the Université du Québec à Trois-Riviéres and James Waldram from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Saskatchewan.

Each year, the Impact Awards acknowledge the achievements of exceptional researchers, students and research partners who have received SSHRC funding. Awards are bestowed in several categories, including talent, insight, connection and partnership categories, and a Gold Medal recipient is chosen. This year’s awards ceremonies are scheduled for Nov. 22 in Ottawa.

McDaniel, director of the Prentice Institute and Canada Research Chair in Global Population and Life Course, primarily studies macro-level trends that intersect with the life courses of Canadians and others around the world. She was nominated by the U of L for her work in a SSHRC-funded study that compared Canadians’ and Americans’ views on retirement and financial security in middle age. This research project showed that older people in the future will likely be very different from older people today and their lives are being shaped dramatically by recent economic and political events. These differences highlight the need to adjust policy. From this research project, McDaniel launched another project looking into the aging workforce in Canada and the effects on the future labour market.

As a result of her research work, McDaniel is sought out by policy officials in Canada and elsewhere to advise on a range of social issues and challenges. McDaniel’s work has set the research agenda in several areas of population studies and sociology. Her research project informs a variety of initiatives in social and health policy related to healthy aging. Corporate policies about retirement planning and the aging workforce have been significantly impacted by her research results.

UNews - Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council SSHRC

Research project to highlight Kainai women’s activism and build historical literacy

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Research project examines atomic tourism at site of the world’s first atomic bomb blast

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