The University of Regina (U of R) recently released its 2015-2020 Strategic Plan, titled “peyak aski kikawinaw” which the school translates into English as “we are one with Mother Earth”.
As stated in the plan, the main emphasis along with sustainability, is to “Indigenize” the university through priorities including student success, research impact and commitment to our communities.
Roman Young, a current U of R student, from Shoal Lake Cree Nation, thinks the university is not doing enough to Indigenize the campus.
For starters, when Young looked at the Strategic Plan, he noticed a problem with the Cree version of the title.
“As a teacher assistant for the Cree language program at the First Nations University, one of the first concerns I had was how they misspelled a lot of the Cree words,” he says. “It makes us look bad teaching fundamentals of the Cree language and they can’t even utilize the Cree language the way it’s supposed to be used... especially when they know that there’s experts in the Cree language,” says Young referring to the First Nations University of Canada.
Young says one of the letters didn’t have a macron over it and the words “peyak aski” should have been hyphenated. He says the way it’s spelled doesn’t make any sense when it’s translated into English.
“Peyak aski is one month or one year. As someone who is a fluent Cree speaker and also a teacher assistant,” he adds.
Shauneen Pete, the Executive Lead on Indigenization for the U of R, says elder Noel Starblanket played an important role in the strategic plan naming process.
“He never did that work alone. He took that tobacco to a ceremony and he offered it to another elder and that name came open,” says Pete.
Aside from the phonetic emphasis on the strategic plan title, Young says another area that is often overlooked within the university is the lack of acknowledging other Treaty territories within the university.
“[The university] is too exclusive with only focusing on Southern communities...they need to understand there are more reserves out there besides [Treaty 4 reserves] such as northern Saskatchewan,” says Young. “If they really want to Indigenize the campus, they really need to start working with First Nations University especially when they are trying to indigenize the campus,” he adds.
U of R President Vianne Timmons says the new plan is going further with Indigenizing the university.
“It’s a big challenge...we’re going to try to integrate in particular sustainability and Indigenization into our thinking and decision making. There will be a cultural change on this campus,” says Timmons. “We’ve achieved so much with the last plan,” she adds.
Timmons says the university met the expectations in the last strategic plan on the focus of Indigenization.
“We’ve expanded the Aboriginal Student Centre, we hired an Aboriginal leader to advise the president, we put money into Aboriginal bursaries for Aboriginal students and we set up the Aboriginal Advisory Circle,” says Timmons.
The Aboriginal Advisory Circle contains Aboriginal faculty and staff on campus to advise the President with recommendations to ensure the campus meets the needs of the university’s Aboriginal students, staff and faculty members.
Wendy Whitebear, U of R staff member and Chair of the Aboriginal Advisory Circle says she is happy with the newly released strategic plan.
“The main theme is Indigenization and sustainability...there are specific things in there that will further Indigenize the university for our Indigenous staff, faculty, students and the future students,” says Whitebear. “I’m looking forward to the next five years and implementing the U of R’s strategic plan...the Aboriginal Advisory Circle is a dedicated group of people who volunteer their time to move both strategic plans forward,” she adds.
