UNews - Department of Geography

U of L to host 2020 Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing in Yellowknife

trevor.kenney — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 20:36:14 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, along with Wilfrid Laurier ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, is gearing up to host the 2020 Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing at a unique off-campus location — The Explorer Hotel in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

The five-day conference, July 13-17, 2020, brings together the country’s foremost experts in remote sensing with this year’s focus on the increasing rate of change in today’s environment. Titled, Landscapes of Change; Remote Sensing for a Sustainable Future, the conference will showcase a wide range of technical, applied and natural sciences topics relevant to the remote sensing community. The group will also host special sessions and workshop discussion dedicated to remote sensing of environmental change and, more critically, how remote sensing-based knowledge can help pave the way for solutions at community to global scales.

It is the first time the conference is being held in the Northwest Territories and Dr. Chris Hopkinson, Chair in Terrestrial Ecosystem Remote Sensing and a member of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s Department of Geography is one of the lead organizers. He says the location will offer some unique opportunities for attending delegates.

“We felt it was appropriate to host our national meeting in Canada’s North, as the remote nature of these vast landscapes means satellite and airborne monitoring are the most effective ways to monitor the widespread ground-level impacts of climate change,” says Hopkinson. “The symposium will host all the typical themes relevant to our national community but given climate and land surface changes are most severe in the North, we will host special sessions and workshops dedicated to these topics.”

The conference program, although not yet finalized, will feature a host of educational workshops and daily keynote presentations on a range of local, regional and nationally significant topics in the field of remote sensing and change. There will also be ample opportunity for delegates to attend informal social and student networking events.

“The symposium is a great networking opportunity for senior and junior remote sensing professionals and students,” adds Hopkinson. “A unique element of this year’s meeting is how we plan to engage communities to understand their needs and explore opportunities for remote sensing-based solutions.”

For more information on the event, visit the conference website at https://crss-sct.ca/conferences/csrs-2020/

New U of L series to highlight research in social sciences and humanities

caroline.zentner — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 15:48:24 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, thanks to funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), is launching a new series called Celebrating Connection: A SSHRC Exchange Series.

The series is designed to help disseminate research findings and provide opportunities for networking and collaborating in the humanities, social sciences, arts, education and management through events such as conferences, presentations and workshops.

“U of L researchers in the social sciences and humanities are conducting leading-edge research and a series like Celebrating Connection allows them to share their results and further involve their students in learning opportunities,” says Dr. Claudia Malacrida, associate vice-president (research). “This series will be of interest to the broader academic community, as well as the public at large.”

Eight proposals have been accepted and topics include a variety of disciplines, from art history and music to archaeology and philosophy. Most of the sessions will occur during the 2019-2020 academic year but the first is scheduled for June 14 and 15.

The first instalment of the series, titled The Line Crossed Us: New Directions in Critical Border Studies, brings together emerging scholars working on aspects of border studies. Organized by the Border Studies Group at the U of L — which includes Drs. Julie Young (Geography), Tier II Canada Research Chair; Sheila McManus (History) and Paul McKenzie-Jones (Indigenous Studies) — the conference will examine Indigenous and migration politics and also put contemporary border issues and crises into historical perspective.

“We’re excited about the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of this conference,” say Young, McManus and McKenzie-Jones. “Border studies often takes place siloed in three distinct disciplines—history, geography and political science—which is what makes our conference unique and important, especially in an era when nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise amidst calls for stronger borders.”

The conference includes a screening of the film El Muro: The Wall (2017), a documentary that focuses on the ancestral lands of the Lipan Apache in Texas and governmental efforts to dispossess them. Anyone interested in attending is asked to register for a free ticket through Eventbrite.

The conference schedule can be found online at Border Studies.

U of L research project will provide access to detailed models of historical Blackfoot objects held in British museums

caroline.zentner — Wed, 22 May 2019 18:20:00 +0000

A team of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers and Blackfoot Elders will soon embark on an ambitious project that will provide immediate virtual access to historical Blackfoot objects held in museums, thanks to federal funding from the New Frontiers in Research Fund.

The U of L researchers, led by Christine Clark (BFA ’10, MFA ’14), an assistant professor of New Media, and including Dr. Josie Mills, director and curator of the U of L Art Gallery, Danielle Heavy Head, Blackfoot Digital Library liaison, Jackson 2Bears, U of L art studio professor, and Marcus Dostie, U of L geography instructor, will create extraordinarily detailed 3D models of non-sacred Blackfoot objects held in British museums. Their collaborators in England include Louisa Minkin, MA Fine Art course leader at Central Saint Martins, Ian Dawson, co-director of the Critical Practices Research Group at Winchester School of Art, and Andy Jones, archaeology professor, ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Southampton.

In order to adhere to their protocols and priorities, the project will be directed by Blackfoot Elders. Blackfoot approaches to knowledge emphasize the importance of caring for and sharing knowledge. The digital objects will be linked to people living in Treaty 7 territory through the Blackfoot Digital Library website, exhibitions at the U of L Art Gallery and live events, such as beading workshops.

The project is not focused on sacred objects nor on repatriation - the return of objects. Repatriation claims by Blackfoot elders focus on objects that would be returned and put back into use and as a result, these claims focus on sacred objects, such as ceremonial bundles. Mills explains “Our goal is to support sharing knowledge about how Blackfoot objects were made and to allow young artists to learn about historical techniques and materials. We will make images of everyday items which we can share with a wide audience because these do not have protocol restrictions.”

“This funding will allow us to study emerging technologies from a Blackfoot perspective. Imaging the artifacts in England is just the start; the biggest challenge is what we do with the resulting digital models,” says Clark. “We want to design media that reunites the objects with their traditional knowledge and supports the needs of the community, even in places where there isn’t high-speed internet access.”

“The importance of this project is huge for the Blackfoot Digital Library, as well as the Blackfoot community,” says Heavy Head. “These models are going to be freely available to our local artists. Many like to do traditional crafts like making beaded outfits and moccasins. This project allows them to examine the item closely, figure out how things were made back then and eventually be able to use those techniques in their contemporary pieces. These kinds of projects help us relearn, rediscover and re-ignite ceremony into the collective consciousness of our community.”

After creating detailed digital models of Blackfoot artifacts, the researchers will use digital tools, art-based public engagement and hyperlocal network technologies (for areas with limited access to high-speed Internet) to allow Blackfoot people to have immediate access and interact with the historical objects and their associated knowledge.

The research project begins with a trip to England with Blackfoot Elders and students to produce digital images of non-sacred objects in the British Museum, The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, and the Horniman Museum in London. To get an idea of some of the objects in the collections, read this article from the Horniman Museum & Gardens blog.

The research team will then produce web-based prototypes featuring the digital models to reunite the objects with their culture. In the final phases, the researchers will ensure the objects become part of the Blackfoot Digital Library website, as well as organize exhibitions and public programming to engage people with the knowledge held by the objects. Participants in the project will gain skills in digital media technologies—an area that needs more Indigenous voices. Indigenous youth will be involved in multifaceted workshops directly connected to their culture, creating an entry point for further learning and engagement.

“I’m excited about the professional development opportunities for our students,” says Mills. “This project will build bridges between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and perspectives. We will be able to hire Blackfoot students to deliver programs in Lethbridge and on the Kainai, Piikani and Siksika reserves.”

The New Frontiers in Research Fund supports high-risk, high-reward and interdisciplinary research to help Canadian researchers make the next great discoveries in their fields.

U of L researcher part of team to study migration through the lens of refugee experience

caroline.zentner — Tue, 14 May 2019 16:24:53 +0000

How have current stories of migration been shaped by longer histories of borders and displacement? What can the experiences of those crossing the Canada-U.S. border tell us about the history of Canada and the U.S.?

These are some of the questions driving a new project, Remembering Refuge: Between Sanctuary and Solidarity, that will build a digital oral history archive of the Canada-U.S. border as recounted by refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti.

Canada-U.S. border at Chief Mountain, Alberta, Flickr photo by Carolyn Cuskey and shared under Creative Commons (CC-2.0) licence.

The project, led by Dr. Julie Young, Grace Wu and Johanna Reynolds, is supported by a grant from the National Geographic Society and will be carried out in partnership with the Department of Geography at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge. Young, Wu, and Reynolds have worked collaboratively on a number of projects over the last decade related to borders and migration. Young is also the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Critical Border Studies and an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the U of L.

“At a time when the public is inundated with a crisis narrative about migration and borders,” says Young, “the oral histories in Remembering Refuge remind us that it is urgent to step outside this story of ‘crisis’ and focus on the experiences of people who have been displaced multiple times, who now face being stranded by shifting policies between Canada and the US.”

The project team will carry out 20 oral history interviews with individuals who made refugee claims between the 1980s and 2018 and entered Canada through the Detroit (MI)-Windsor (ON) or Plattsburgh (NY)-Lacolle (QC) ports of entry. The sound recordings will be digitized and made publicly available on an open access, multimedia website, along with teaching modules designed for secondary and postsecondary educators and students.

Through oral history, educational modules, and digital storytelling, Remembering Refuge seeks to illuminate the experiences of those people who have crossed the Canada-US border—stories that are not often told in-depth in public—and to foster critical thinking and engagement on how borders are constructed through politics, history, infrastructure, and our imaginations.

By focusing on the accounts of people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti, “whose movements are so often tied to the foreign policies of Canada and the US,” says Wu, “we want to engage with the public about the contexts that drive migration to and through North America.”

“Oral history is called ‘history from below,’ and it’s really effective for storytelling and education,” says Reynolds. “Our goal is to engage with communities about how it feels to encounter borders and how this might increase understandings of migration.”

“This project looks at how ‘unofficial’ archives reveal that communities have always contested borders and the ways they are enforced,” says Young, whose previous research has documented how border communities in the 1980s organized across the Canada-US border in solidarity with Central American refugees.

Oral history interviews will be carried out in the summer and fall of 2019 and the open access website, oral history archive, and teaching modules will be launched in early 2020. The team would like to speak with community members on either side of the border, who have themselves come through these routes, or who know of people who crossed the Canada-US border to seek refuge, especially from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti, and entered through the Detroit-Windsor or Plattsburgh-Lacolle ports of entry between 1980 and 2018. Please contact rememberingrefuge@gmail.com.

Government of Canada supports sustainable and culturally respectful resource development

trevor.kenney — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 21:26:48 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge is receiving over $1.6 million in funding towards two projects to support sustainable and culturally respectful resource development. The announcement was made today by the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and Minister responsible for Western Economic Diversification Canada.

Supporting sustainable and culturally respectful resource development boosts economic growth and creates well-paying jobs for all Canadians.

An investment of $1,195,805 will support the purchase of the Titan multi-spectral LIDAR (MSL) imaging system, a one-of-a-kind airborne 3D data collection sensor that will enable industry and academia to obtain data and capture high accuracy 3D images over long distances through traditionally inaccessible terrain, such as forest canopy and below water.

“The cutting edge airborne multi spectral laser scanner technology will help us monitor resource and environmental conditions impacted by climate change and natural disasters, as well as evaluate the risks to communities from hazards such as wildfire, floods and oil spills,” says Dr. Chris Hopkinson, research Chair and professor in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s Department of Geography.

This equipment will complement the U of L’s nationally unique Ecosystem Diagnostic Imaging (EDI) facility to enhance market readiness and validate MSL capabilities for companies in sectors such as oil and gas, forestry and agriculture. The project is anticipated to create 20 jobs for highly qualified personnel and assist 50 small- and medium-sized businesses. This investment demonstrates the Government of Canada’s commitment to promoting growth, long-term prosperity, innovation and global competitiveness.

“Our government is laying the foundation for Canadians to become more competitive and succeed in the global economy,” says Bains. “Today’s investments in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge build on our competitive advantages and will result in new innovations for sustainable and culturally sensitive resource development, boosting economic growth and creating good, middle-class jobs for Canadians.”

The U of L, with co-management support from the Piikani First Nation (PFN), is also receiving $432,184 to develop and implement community-based environmental monitoring that integrates traditional Indigenous knowledge with emerging environmental monitoring technologies.

Indigenous graduate and undergraduate students from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ will be recruited as team leads to 15 Piikani youth who will be trained to collect, store and manage environmental and cultural data under the guidance of Elders. The project will increase PFN’s capacity to take advantage of environmental monitoring business and employment opportunities generated by regional natural resource extraction and industrial development. With this investment, the Government is taking concrete action to advance reconciliation and make a better future for Indigenous Peoples and all Canadians.

"The Community Based Environmental Monitoring (CBEM) project is a partnership project between the U of L and Piikani Nation that engages and trains community at all levels in the development, use and application of emerging monitoring technologies with the goal to promote self-sufficiency and efficacy and build community capacity,” says Dr. Michelle Hogue, associate professor and coordinator of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s First Nations Transition Program.

“Indigenous communities will benefit and greatly improve prospects for economic diversification by training individuals to collect, store and manage their own environmental and cultural data.”

Canada’s Innovation and Skills Plan aims to build an economy in which Canadians have access to high-quality jobs and Canadian businesses are well-placed to participate in a rapidly evolving and competitive global marketplace.

Early career researchers at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge secure SSHRC awards

caroline.zentner — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 17:06:39 +0000

A dozen ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers have been awarded more than $600,000 in new funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for diverse projects, including agricultural supply chain management and repatriating Métis music.

These Insight Development Grants, announced earlier this year, are designed to support emerging scholars and research in its early stages, with up to $75,000 available over one or two years.

From the Dhillon School of Business, Drs. Duckjung Shin, Adriane MacDonald, Jocelyn Wiltshire (Calgary campus) and Alireza Tajbakhsh have secured more than $187,000 in funding for their projects.

Shin’s research looks at human resource management as a social system within an organization. He examines the interference between work and life domains, the diminishing power of unions under modern human resource practices, widening status differences within an organization and its societal consequences.

MacDonald’s research will examine the potential of sense-making tools to improve communication and problem-solving in multi-stakeholder partnerships, an approach espoused in the United Nations’ global sustainable development agenda. Engaging multiple stakeholder perspectives in complex problem solving can create new problems and ultimately prevent groups from reaching their goals. MacDonald’s study will focus on how sense-making tools, such as boundary objects, metaphor and storytelling, can help individuals in these partnerships overcome the inherent difficulties of collaborating at knowledge boundaries.

Wiltshire’s research looks at the dark side of leaders’ influence behaviour in the workplace, known as dark political skill. To what extent do manipulative and deceptive leaders contribute to a political workplace climate and impact employee behaviours and well-being? Along with Drs. Kelly Williams-Whitt and Mahfooz Ansari, Wiltshire will conduct a series of surveys and interviews. Their findings will speak to effective managerial and organizational practices that may mitigate or neutralize these harmful consequences.

Tajbakhsh will examine the existing literature on agricultural supply chain management in both crop and livestock sectors in Canada. The agriculture sector is at the nexus of world hunger and climate change. Tajbakhsh’s research will look at successful sustainable practices adopted in Canada and what corporate and government sustainability regulations have influenced agricultural networks in Canada.

Five researchers in the Faculty of Fine Arts — Dr. Dana Cooley (New Media), Dr. Bryn Hughes (Music), Jackson Two Bears (Art), Dr. Amandine Pras (Music) and Dr. Devon Smither (Art) — have secured awards worth nearly $280,000.

Cooley’s project, To Hear a Shadow, is an interactive installation that translates a participant’s EEG (brain activity) data through a Rube Goldbergesque chain of digital and early scientific measuring devices that spin and flutter, turning the signals into light, sound, and movement. Behind a partial wall, a second participant tunes in to the audio transmissions through a specially equipped headset. Proximity sensors respond to the second participant’s movements which affect the colour and intensity of light in the room. The perceptual feedback loop constructed by Shadow draws our attention to the interconnectedness we have with each other and our environment.

Hughes plans to delve into the factors that allow people to activate different musical languages. He wants to determine what musical features contribute most to syntactic violations and why some musical gestures sound wrong in one kind of music but not in another.

Two Bears’ research will explore the ways in which the creative use of digital technologies can support the innovation, transmission and transformation of Indigenous creative and cultural practices, while providing a site for critical dialogue and reflection. Two Bears plans to create an immersive 360-degree video and audio art installation and a multimedia app that will feature mobile media artworks.

Pras' research focuses on the democratization of the 21st century recording studio and the production techniques and creative processes that define it. Her multidisciplinary project includes three complementary case studies — an ethnography on street recording studios in Bamako, Mali, a longitudinal survey in the international Audio Recording Engineer Practicum of the Banff Centre and an experiment that will examine the learning process of a young Malian studio practitioner when attending the Banff Practicum for one semester.

Smither is conducting a study that looks at the marginalization of women artists and artistic realism during the first three decades of the 20th century. Specifically, she will focus on Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and the women artists she collected and supported from 1905 to 1930. The works formed part of the founding collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, which opened in 1931.

The other recipients include Drs. Monique Giroux, Canada Research Chair and a professor in Indigenous Studies; Kara Granzow, a professor of sociology; and Julie Young, a professor of geography and Canada Research Chair.

Giroux’s research centres on the repatriation of Métis music. It includes three key elements: understanding what constitutes musical repatriation, creating an inventory of Métis musical belongings housed in archives and private collections, and determining the priorities of Métis communities for the repatriation of these musical belongings. Through consultations with Métis advisory boards, she will create a strategy for musical repatriation, including the possibility of establishing programs to support musical revival and resurgence.

Granzow and Dr. Amber Dean, co-investigator and professor at McMaster ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, seek to understand and contribute to preventing sexualized colonial violence through exploring the enduring relationships between an economy based on resource extraction and the ongoing high rates of sexualized violence against Indigenous women in Alberta.

Young’s research examines the impacts of Canadian refugee deterrence policies. Phase one analyzes how the Canadian government conceptualizes and operationalizes deterrence via the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement, the Mexican visa policy, the Anti-Crime Capacity Building Program and the recent information campaign in U.S. cities. Phase two involves fieldwork in Windsor-Detroit and Leamington to assess the local consequences of these policies.

PUBlic Professor Series features Johnston discussing the role of place in shaping our past, present and future

trevor.kenney — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 17:13:07 +0000

Just as every population cohort is presented with different sets of circumstances, every geographic location has associated with it, constraints and opportunities that are specific to time and place.

This is the fifth talk of the 2018-19 season for the Faculty of Arts & Science’s PUBlic Professor Series.

On Thursday, February 28, ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge geography professor, Dr. Tom Johnston, will present The Geography of Circumstance. This is the fifth talk of the 2018-19 season for the Faculty of Arts & Science’s PUBlic Professor Series. The free event runs from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Sandman Signature Lethbridge Lodge and is open to the public.

Drawing on examples ranging in scale from the neighbourhood to the nation-state, from the micro scale to the macro, in this presentation Johnston will explore the manner in which geographic location, both in absolute and relative terms, plays a role in shaping futures and helps us explain the present and the past.

Before taking up his appointment at the U of L, Johnston earned degrees from the universities of Guelph and Waterloo, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Massey ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ in New Zealand. His research interests focus on resource policy analysis and structural change in rural systems, especially the agricultural sector. His current research projects include a study of the effectiveness of voluntary-adoption resource stewardship programming, and human dimensions of wildfire, especially the post-event recovery phase.

Johnston teaches courses on introductory human geography, agricultural geography, the rural-urban fringe, the geography of Canada and the history of geographic thought.

The final talk scheduled for 2018-19 will feature geography professor, Dr. Hester Jiskoot. Details on Jiskoot’s presentation can be found at: ulethbridge.ca/artsci/publicprofessor.

Diverse skill set aids geography graduate Banting in professional career

trevor.kenney — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 18:13:39 +0000

Geography deals with some of the most exciting issues on Earth. It studies the interaction between human beings and the global environment and the resulting problems and opportunities.

We, as human beings, are an intrinsic part of the global ecosystem. We are a powerful part of nature and create imbalances that can have global influence. Geography is also concerned with spatial analysis: the distribution characteristics or network structures of a wide variety of physical and human features on the Earth's surface. It is from these concerns that Geographical Information Science (GIS) has emerged.

For geography alumnus James Banting (BSc ’09, MSc ’16), the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge was the environment he needed to discover his passion. Banting bounced around between a few programs in his first year before he decided what kind of degree he truly wanted to pursue. He started with general science, looked at political science and finally settled on geography. Perhaps his childhood fascination with National Geographic maps played a role in the decision? Nevertheless, it was the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s liberal education approach that allowed him to explore these opportunities.

“I was also able to meet some very smart and interesting people through my studies, student groups and extracurricular activities which has helped immensely in my professional career,” says Banting.

During his undergrad studies, Banting worked with Dr. Sarah Boon on some of her environmental research work in the Oldman River watershed. This was his first experience with geospatial work outside of lab or class settings and it helped shape his understanding of the requirements for geospatial work outside of school. Some of his favourite class experiences were trips into the field, as well as Dr. Hester Jiskoot’s glaciology lab where he was able to build a replica glacier to simulate how ice flowed around obstacles.

“My professors encouraged me to always think of the bigger implementations of my work. Why were we doing some task? Could there be a better way? The environment in which they taught allowed me the freedom to question methods I did not understand and seek clarification in areas I poorly understood. Through their guidance, I was able to realize the meaning behind the saying, ‘The more you know, the more you know you don't know’.”

Banting gained further work experience when he joined the Co-operative Education program and completed a work term with the Alberta Geological Survey. His experience helped him understand the governmental approach to GIS work, and was his first introduction to computer programming.

“The biggest advice I can give to future students is to take a basic course in computer programming. Knowing how to code is immensely useful in any discipline, even more so in geography and GIS,” advises Banting.

Banting now works as a geospatial developer at Sparkgeo, which provides geospatial expertise to tech companies. There he studies cloud native approaches to geospatial problems. He is very enthusiastic about the business applications for machine learning on remotely-sensed data.

“The projects I work on cover a wide range of geospatial topics including remote sensing, geographical information science, cartography and data collection,” he explains.

For more information about the geography program offered at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, click here. If you’re ready to jump into the excitement and discover your passion for geography, apply today!

Dramatic Arctic rescue story of Captain Robert Abram Bartlett the focus of PUBlic Professor Series talk

trevor.kenney — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 17:25:00 +0000

Captain Robert Abram Bartlett (1875-1946) attempted the Pole with Admiral Peary, worked to advance Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, and, in 1914, was responsible for one of the most remarkable Arctic rescues of all time. His fame extended throughout North America to Europe where he won awards and dined with royalty. Bartlett’s story mirrors that of other early 20th century explorers such as Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott, Donald MacMillan, and others.

On Thursday, October 25, ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge geography professor, Dr. Maura Hanrahan, will present, Creating Heroes and Claiming the North: Captain Robert Abram Bartlett in the Arctic, as the second talk of the 2018/19 Faculty of Arts & Science’s PUBlic Professor Series. The free event runs from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Sandman Signature Lethbridge Lodge and is open to the public.

Hanrahan earned degrees at Memorial ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, Carleton ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and the London School of Economics where she was a Rothermere Fellow and an LSE Fellow. She worked in First Nations and Inuit land claims, right litigation and policy for Indigenous governments across Canada, the federal government and the UN. Later, she was Memorial ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s first Special Advisor to the President for Aboriginal Affairs and, following that, Chair of Memorial’s Humanities Program.

She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the U of L and an adjunct professor at Memorial ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s Environmental Policy Institute. She was born and raised in Newfoundland. Through her mother, she is a citizen of Ireland. Through her father, she is a member of Splet’q Mi’Kmaq First Nation, now under the umbrella of Qalipu Mi’Kmaq First Nation.

Like the other explorers, Bartlett's successes in Arctic exploration were made possible by deliberate and sustained heroic masculine image-making, which masked the complexities of his personality and of his work in the Arctic. On the lecture circuit, in his books and on film, Bartlett carefully constructed a well-received image, buoyed by general understandings of the Arctic as undiscovered and devoid of any organized society. This made the Arctic a unique site for western male exploits. Its harsh environment and climate elevated the Arctic to a testing and proving ground. As explorers foregrounded themselves, they backgrounded the Inuit whose participation in Arctic expeditions was vital. This approach cost and still costs the Inuit. It cost the explorers, too; Bartlett, for one, suppressed his personal struggles as he sought to mirror the image he so successfully created.

This talk promises compelling images, gripping stories of danger and human drama, and important insights on the role Arctic exploration continues to play in Canada for the Inuit and for all Canadians.

Further talks scheduled for 2018/19 feature Dr. Amy Shaw (history), Dr. Alexander Darku (economics), Dr. Tom Johnston (geography) and Dr. Hester Jiskoot (geography). Details on each of their presentations can be found at: ulethbridge.ca/artsci/publicprofessor.

Making a difference one name at a time

caroline.zentner — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 16:28:52 +0000

When Annita Lucchesi describes herself, she will tell you her Indian name is Hetoevėhotohke’e, which means Evening Star Woman, and that she is a Heévȧhetané'e, a Southern Cheyenne woman. She’s a direct descendant of the people who come from the place where the Ho'honáéva (Rocky Mountains) meet the tóhtoo'éšé'e (prairie). Her life has been marked by abuse, but she is a survivor and is proud to be a mé’êśko’áe, a hellraiser girl —one who is always stirring things up.

Having a firm grasp on who she is and her roots has not only formed a foundation for Lucchesi personally, but has been invaluable in directing her research as a PhD student in the Cultural, Social, and Political Thought program at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts in geography from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of California-Berkeley, Lucchesi graduated from Washington State ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ in 2016 with a Master of Arts in American Studies. Several years ago, while working as an activist and advocate, Lucchesi found herself frustrated with the lack of comprehensive information regarding missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW).

While there were many lists and sources, there was no central database that was routinely updated and shared with the general public. Those that did exist often were formed on narrow, exclusive criteria with missing gaps. As a response, Lucchesi herself began to log the names of MMIW in Canada and the United States, from 1900 to the present, gathering information from news articles, online databases, family members, social media, federal and state missing persons databases, law enforcement records and lists compiled by Indigenous advocates and community members.

As the lines of names multiplied, it grew to be a spiritual process for Lucchesi and her research became a form of ceremony.

“I came to understand myself not just as a data collector, but as a caretaker for the data and the spirits,” she says. “Maintaining the database is a process of prayer in the sense that there’s so much unhealed trauma and so much unhealed grief around these pieces; if we’re able to document and honour them and help their stories and the violence they experienced have meaning, then we may be able to resolve some of that grief and trauma.”

Lucchesi's work has garnered significant attention internationally as it has been covered by NPR in the United States, The Daily Mail in the United Kingdom and on The Stream through Al Jazeera.

For Lucchesi, the work is deeply personal. Many of the names, including those of family, friends and former students, are familiar. What’s more, as a survivor of domestic and sexual abuse, she recognizes how easily she could have been one of the almost 3,000 names recorded.

“I came to this work as a woman who almost became a victim on lists of missing and murdered native women myself,” Lucchesi writes in her thesis proposal. “If any of the men who almost killed me had succeeded, I would want to be honoured and remembered. I would want my story and the violence that I experienced to have meaning. I would want to be part of the fight for future generations of native girls to not have to go through such violence.”

Now taking her work further, Lucchesi is using the continually evolving database as a springboard for a PhD thesis — a project in which she hopes to take the information and transform it for even greater healing.

Lucchesi plans to gather stories and create an atlas of maps recognizing, honouring and addressing the geographies in which Indigenous women live and die. And while she will be a contributor as a cartographer, the intent is to create a wide collection of maps by bringing others into the process.

“Individually, each map tells its own story, but collectively they also tell a much bigger story,” she says.

Waiting first for an invitation, Lucchesi will work with local anti-violence organizations in various tribal communities in Canada and the U.S. — both on reservations and in urban areas — to host voluntary workshops. Participants will be given opportunities to share their stories, and ultimately be involved in mapping.

“People think maps are super technical, difficult to do and that you need all sorts of training, but that’s really not the case,” says Lucchesi. “When people think of Indigenous mapping they think of something pre-contact, super traditional. Certainly, it can be those things, but I’m giving people glitter glue. Mapping doesn’t have to be super fancy or historical; as long as it represents our cultures and experiences, it’s Indigenous mapping.”

Her work aligns with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council's description of research creation as "an approach to research that combines creative and academic research practices, and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expression, scholarly investigation and experimentation."

As Lucchesi explains, we encounter maps every day in everything from directions on our iPhones to news articles. They are regarded as scientific and authoritative and held with respect. But mapping also provides the opportunity to create a platform where community members can tell their experiences and interpretations of what violence looks like in their community.

Lucchesi points to current examples such as a map that analyzes the life paths of individual victims in Montreal and Thunder Bay, and the changes in geography that put them at risk, or a series of maps of the night sky from varying locations, with constellations representing stories from the people indigenous to that area and the murder victims represented as stars. The possibilities are endless.In this way, mapping is highly adaptable and can build bridges that humanize narratives while staying true to statistics and numbers.

“It is designed to empower Indigenous people to tell their stories in ways that are meaningful to them and to collectively use this storytelling to organize against continued violence,” she says.

In cartography, a field dominated by white men, Lucchesi is an outlier (there were a record-breaking two Indigenous cartographers at the International Cartographic Association conference last year and Lucchesi was one of them), so the mentorship she’s received from Dr. Jan Newberry, her PhD supervisor at uLethbridge, has been immeasurable.

“Jan’s been a wonderful advocate for me,” says Lucchesi. “All of my experiences with geography have been with male faculty and male mentors, so having a woman mentor with a background in geography, mapping and space has been a really good fit. She’s been amazing.”

In that same spirit, Lucchesi is supporting other young, native women, helping them find their own roots and the personal definitions that will steer the course of their lives. As Lucchesi explains, knowing her research presents the capacity for change motivates her, even in the face of trauma and obstacles.

“I love, love, love seeing youth getting involved. For example, I’ve been able to Skype with a girls’ basketball team in Montana that is working on raising awareness of this issue by doing a community project and petitioning their tribe for change. It’s just amazing to see these girls who don’t have to do that, but choose to. To be able to talk and support them in what they’re doing is really exciting; it makes me feel like I’m doing something useful,” says Lucchesi. “Cheyenne women are known for being resilient, beautiful and immensely strong and brave. It is my aim to continue that legacy.”

UNews - Department of Geography

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