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EPISODE 4 of Dispersion Season 2 is NOW LIVE!

06 Feb 2023

Our Identities Don’t End at the City Limits

The Zoryan Institute is pleased to announce that Dispersion Season 2, Episode 4: Our Identities Don’t End at the City Limits with Guests Jean-Paul Restoule and Sacha DeWolfe is NOW LIVE on all of your favourite podcast platforms!

In this episode, Jean-Paul and Sacha have a candid conversation about their Indigenous identities as they relate to land and place, and the complexities they face in navigating their identities while living in urban spaces. This episode explores tensions between Indigenous ways of knowing and relationships with the land, and the ownership words utilized in Diaspora Studies.

“The relationship with land was interwoven with language, so deeply that one almost can’t exist without the other”.
– Sacha DeWolfe

Sacha DeWolfe:
Sacha DeWolfe is an assistant professor at Mount Allison University working with the Canadian Studies Department. She is a Dr Althea Warren Macaullay CFUW scholarship recipient (2018-2019), Indspire’s Building Brighter Futures: Bursaries, Scholarships and Awards recipient for 2018-2019, 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, an O’Brien Fellowship recipient 2019-20 and was recently awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant (2020-2022).  The focus of her PhD research is investigating the social, political and historical factors contributing to her identity as a Mi’kmaq woman and how her life stories contribute to an expanded dialogue of Wabanaki identity. Included in her dissertation is a documentary film which takes the audience on a journey from damage to desire.

Sacha received her Bachelor of Arts with a major in Sociology and a double minor in Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations, Bachelor of Education with a focus on elementary, and Master of Education in Critical Theory at the University of New Brunswick. Her Master thesis research was titled, “Schooling Behind Bars: An Analysis of the Therapeutic Community Model and How it Shaped Education for Incarcerated Youth.”

She has been an educator for over 15 years at all levels of practice. She was formerly the Director for the Office of First Nation Education at the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development in New Brunswick. Sacha has also been involved on research teams investigating various aspects of Indigeneity.

Jean-Paul Restoule:
Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule is Professor and Chair of the Department of Indigenous Education at University of Victoria. He is Anishinabe from Dokis First Nation in Ontario, and his research focuses on bringing Indigenous worldviews to a wide audience which includes Indigenizing and decolonizing teacher education and investigating the use of Indigenous knowledge in online learning environments. He is principal investigator of a SSHRC Insight Grant on supporting teachers to adopt Indigenous perspectives in their professional practice, and a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant exploring how Indigenous Knowledge can be applied effectively in online learning environments.

Restoule is also co-editor of Indigenous Research: Theories, Practices, and Relationships (Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2018), a ground-breaking collection for students and scholars interested in learning how Indigenous research is carried out in practice. He has also studied how Indigenous identity and knowledge is developed and applied in urban spaces, an interest that led him to think about the ways urban Indigenous populations can be viewed as diasporic.

“I’m always aware that our identities don’t just end at the city limits. When we go into the city, we still bring our knowledge and ourselves, and who we are…”
– Jean-Paul Restoule

The Dispersion podcast brings diverse Diasporic Canadians together to engage in conversations centered around identity, home, and belonging. This is done with the aim of challenging stereotypes and discrimination, and promoting tolerance and understanding.

Season two has an exciting line-up of episodes and engaging conversations that you don’t want to miss. Stay tuned to hear our guests dive deep on a number of interesting topics as they relate to religion, gender, conflict and the experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada. New episodes of Dispersion will be released every Monday at 12:00 pm EST on SpotifyApple PodcastsAmazon PodcastsAcast, and Google Podcasts.

Interested in learning more about Diaspora and Indigeneity? For each episode of Dispersion released over the coming weeks, University of Toronto Press Journals will be making related academic papers from the Institute’s journal, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies free to read. This week, read more about how diasporas relate and form identities and relationships with their culture and homeland with conflict by reading the articles below.

 

Itzigsohn, G. (2003). Andean Transnational Merchants: An Indigenous Community in Globalization. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 12(1), 131-141.
Safran, W. (1999). Comparing Diasporas: A Review Essay. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 8(3), 255-291