Taking the culture forward
Uvic’s new director of social work sees the need to apply aboriginal values to contemporary lifestyles
Reclaiming the native way of life is more about finding a spirit than recapturing a past, says Jacquie Green, the University of Victoria’s new director of the school of social work and the first aboriginal to take on the role.
When Green’s grandson turned 13, she held a coming-of-age rite by inviting friends and family over. They conducted a sharing circle where guests were allowed to speak and offer advice, support and love.
This rite of passage was contemporary and modern. But it also served the spirit of marking a milestone in years, just as a First Nations youth might once have been required to head to the bush and kill his first moose.
“We are trying to reintroduce [native culture] back into our lives,” said Green, 51, a member of the Haisla people. “But rather than talk about it and plan and plan and plan, we need to just do it.”
Looking for the spirit behind the culture — whether it’s B.C. aboriginal traditions, visiting overseas or in modern Canada — is how Green likes to approach the future for native people.
“We are learning and reclaiming but we also need to learn how to re-tell our stories,” Green said. “How will they look in a contemporary setting?”
Green, who has adopted the Haisla name Kundoqk, was appointed last month to her position at UVic, becoming the first indigenous person to hold the job at the university, and also the first indigenous person in Canada to head a mainstream post-secondary social-work program.
She struck another first last March when she became the first person to defend a PhD thesis at her Haisla community, near Kitimat, in the feast hall.
Members of the community turned out to watch, and school children were brought in to sit in rows and take note.
What they saw was one of their people take part in the defence of her ideas in the western tradition of academic scholarship.
“A lot of people in the community were very honoured by that,” Green said. “I was able to show them Haisla knowledge was something as significant as western knowledge.”
Young women came to her in tears afterwards, she said, moved and inspired to carry on in post-secondary education. Even a woman from Haida Gwaii, whom Green had never met, sent her a note expressing admiration.
It was after the defence of her thesis she started using the name Kundoqk, which means “journeying over the mountain with belongings on my back.”
It was a name granted to her mother and father on their wedding day to bestow on their first-born daughter. However, Green admits, her mother still calls her Jacquie, despite the adoption of her Haisla name, and that’s OK.
But she has faced some confusion from the older generation of First Nations. One man couldn’t understand why Green wanted to study something like social work, or public administration, her early specialization. Green believes the man’s experiences of social workers and government was mostly negative.
She is looking at her chance to lead UVic’s School of Social Work as a chance to inject new perspectives and possibilities.
“We have an indigenous specialization in the School of Social Work, so I’m thinking, let’s flip that around,” Green said. “Maybe it’s an Indigenous School of Social Work.
“Maybe we could even have a specialization in white studies or mainstream Canadian studies, not that that’s what we really want to do,” she said with a laugh.
“But for me to come into this position is a chance to create some change by bringing another voice to the table, another perspective to the discussion.”