Indigenous Engagement at Bridging Divides
Working across the lands on which we work comes with responsibilities
Bridging Divides is a national research program connecting researchers, students, staff, communities, and partners across multiple universities and regions. Our work therefore takes place across many Indigenous lands and territories, each with distinct Nations, histories, treaties, laws, knowledge systems, and relationships to land.
As a research program focused on migration, displacement, borders, settlement, citizenship, and belonging, we recognize that these questions cannot be separated from colonial histories and their ongoing effects. In Canada, conversations about immigration and settlement take place on lands where Indigenous Peoples have longstanding and ongoing relationships to territory, and are continuously shaped by settler colonialism.
Researching migration and the settlement of newcomers on Indigenous lands requires us to reflect critically on our own position and responsibilities as a research community. In this sense, Indigenous engagement must extend beyond acknowledging the lands on which we work. It requires us to consider how research is conducted, whose knowledge is valued, who participates in decision-making, how relationships are built and sustained, and how research can contribute to reciprocity rather than extraction.
Mindful of the (PDF file) Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (external link) , we are committed to learning, building relationships, and strengthening our practices with Indigenous communities, scholars, knowledge holders, organizations, and partners across the lands and territories where our network operates.
We recognize that this is ongoing work, work that requires humility, accountability, reciprocity, and sustained relationships.
Our approach
Learning, engaging and creating together
We have begun creating opportunities to learn, build relationships, and engage with Indigenous communities, scholars, knowledge holders, and partners.
Continuing dialogue and deepening our relationships
Our next phase of Indigenous engagement is focused on continuing dialogue, deepening relationships, and developing more sustained and intentional approaches.
An ongoing commitment
Indigenous engagement for our research program is not an endpoint. It is a foundation for continued learning, dialogue, relationship-building, and action.
What does it mean in practice?
Learning, engaging and creating together
Across the Bridging Divides network, we have begun creating opportunities to learn, build relationships, and engage with Indigenous communities, scholars, knowledge holders, and partners.
This work has taken different forms, from Indigenous-led and community-engaged research to storytelling, creative practice, dialogue, and learning opportunities within our own research community.
These initiatives represent steps in an ongoing process. We continue to learn from these experiences and consider how Indigenous engagement can become more relational, reciprocal, and sustained across the research program.
- Building relationships through research: Research teams collaborate with Indigenous communities and leadership to strengthen how research is developed and conducted, through approaches such as co-developing research questions and tools, incorporating Indigenous co-authorship, and supporting community-led data collection.
- Supporting Indigenous-led knowledge and research: Bridging Divides supports Indigenous-led approaches to creating and sharing knowledge, such as land-based research grounded in Indigenous epistemologies, the intergenerational transmission of traditional knowledge, and educational resources developed for communities, newcomers and settlers.
- Creating through storytelling and art: The program supports projects that create spaces for storytelling, weaving, exhibitions and other creative practices that bring Indigenous and newcomer perspectives into dialogue and support learning about land, migration, identity, memory and belonging.
- Cultivating spaces for dialogue: Opportunities for Indigenous and newcomer communities are created to engage in dialogue and shared learning about land, colonialism, migration and belonging through approaches such as film, storytelling, art, educational activities and community gatherings.
- Learning about our responsibilities: Researchers, staff and students are encouraged to strengthen their understanding of Indigenous sovereignty, research ethics and data governance, including First Nations principles of data ownership, control, access and possession (OCAP®), and the responsibilities that accompany research conducted on Indigenous lands.
A moment from Aaniya Asrani's exhibition, Weaving Belonging: Stories from Unceded Territories (external link) (photo by: Thomas Jose)
Below, a tapestry made by Nidhi Menon and Maya-Rose Simon, preseted at the WhereWeStand (external link) premiere in Brantford, Ontario (photo by: Yuma Hester, Bawaadan Collective)
Continuing dialogue, deepening our relationships
Indigenous engagement is a responsibility and an ongoing process of learning, dialogue, relationship-building and action. As a research program examining migration, displacement, borders, citizenship, settlement and belonging, Bridging Divides has a responsibility to continually reflect on what it means to conduct this work across Indigenous lands and within the ongoing realities of settler colonialism.
Building on the relationships, research and learning already underway, Bridging Divides has developed an Indigenous Engagement Strategic Action Plan in collaboration with Reciprocal Consulting Inc. (external link) , an Indigenous-owned and operated consulting firm. The Plan provides a foundation for moving from individual initiatives toward a more sustained and intentional approach to Indigenous engagement across the program.
An ongoing commitment
The next phase centres on deepening and sustaining relationships; strengthening reciprocity and Indigenous leadership in research and decision-making; expanding learning across our research community; supporting ethical research, Indigenous data sovereignty and knowledge practices; and developing stronger approaches to accountability and evaluation. It also recognizes Indigenous engagement as distinct from, while interconnected with, our broader EDI work.
This responsibility is shared across Bridging Divides. Program leadership, researchers, staff, HQP, students, fellows and partners each have a role in creating the conditions for respectful and reciprocal engagement.
As this work evolves, the relationships we build and what we learn through them will continue to shape how we research, collaborate, make decisions and understand belonging.