Two Indigenous research chairs appointed in B.C.

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Money makes the research world go round. It takes money to get the best researcher in the world to come up with plans and courses of action in a field of endeavor.

Dr. Lorna Williams of the University of Victoria and Dr. Mary-Ellen Kelm of Simon Fraser University are two of the best, and have been awarded research chairs by their respective institutions through the Canada Research Chairs program.

A research chair is a senior professorship granted to an academic who has attained pre-eminence in his or her field. The goal of Canada Research Chairs is to advance the frontiers of knowledge within the chairholder's field, not only with their own work, but by mentoring graduate students and co-ordinating the efforts of other researchers.

The goal of the Canada Research Chairs program is to help Canadian universities attract and retain the world's most accomplished and promising researchers in all fields.

The government of Canada has budgeted $900 million for the creation of 2,000 research chairs at universities across the country. The federal government seeks to make Canada one of the top five countries in the world in terms of research and development performance. And their goal is to be in the top five by 2010.

Nominees are chosen from a university and a peer-review process decides who gets the chair. Williams's chair is in Indigenous Knowledge and Learning. It is a chair that is shared between the faculty of education and the department of linguistics within the faculty of humanities at the University of Victoria.

"There has been very little research into Indigenous knowledge to understand what this is and to know how to bring the understanding of Indigenous knowledge to Western institutions like schools and universities. It has been a huge struggle," said Williams.

Williams said that science is currently seen as being at odds with Indigenous knowledge.

"In order for our children to be able to be engaged in science they have to be able to be engaged without losing a sense of who they are as Indigenous people," she said.

It is Lorna Williams' goal to bring an understanding of Indigenous knowledge to as many different fields of study as she can through language.

"Where we locate many of our understandings and concepts is in our languages, so we need to use language as the doorway to understanding Indigenous knowledge."

Williams acknowledges that Indigenous languages are in a state of crisis, but she wants to use her chair as a means to revitalize those languages.

One of the programs Williams is creating is the training of teachers of Indigenous languages in order that communities may save their languages.

"The way that we understand and live time, the way that we understand and live space, all of those are housed in and found in languages. When our languages go, our identity goes."

Williams said that British Columbia is home to 34 languages that are not found anywhere else.

"What I am looking to do is to finally establish a respectful place for Indigenous knowledge."

Mary-Ellen Kelm's research chair is in Indigenous peoples with a focus on First Nations' health.

Kelm is studying the history of medical research in the 20th century. Her research will lead to a greater understanding of the ethical issues underlying medical research involving First Nations people and improve the health of communities.

"I am principally concerned with a couple of tendencies. The first is the way in which health, the knowledge of Aboriginal health, has been produced by various historical, socio-political and cultural contexts and how non-Aboriginal people have observed Aboriginal people to produce certain kinds of knowledge about health. I am also concerned with how Aboriginal people have been able to intervene in the process to get their own perspective on health into government and healthcare agencies," said Kelm.

She is concerned with how Aboriginal people are described in very negative nd pathological terms in health literature and how that must speak for the quality of care that they have received. She also wants to research how this health literature language prevents Aboriginal people from influencing health care service.

Kelm said that one of the biggest ethical dilemmas facing Aboriginal health is a lack of informed consent of medical testing and research. Aboriginal people have been exposed to tuberculosis drug testing without consent for example, she said.

Aboriginal women have also been exposed to gynecological operations without consent. These situations have produced mistrust and fear in the community.

Kelm hopes that her research of Aboriginal health history will lead to a more collaborative process of forming future health care policy.

"One hopes that we will have a more well-rounded knowledge about Aboriginal health so that it isn't just a focus on pathologies that disempowers Aboriginal people. We hope to create processes whereby collaborative health goes on so that the needs of communities and individuals are being met by that research rather than just producing more knowledge about medicines."