Commemoration and Indigenous Organizing

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Foster, William M

• SSHRC IG awarded 2022: The research aims to understand the importance of collective memory and collective identity to the resilience and self-organization of nine Indigenous nations and communities across Canada on Turtle Island (North America). Specifically, the research focuses on processes of 'co-memoration' (remembering together) through ceremonies and rituals for 're-membering' (becoming a member). The team will examine the communities' use of ceremonies, such as powwows and potlaches, to deal with past traumas, build resilience, and develop self-government. The project adopts two-eyed seeing as a way to balance Indigenous and mainstream approaches such as Organizational Memory Studies. The team engages in ethnography adopting a inductive, qualitative, and exploratory approach towards of the nine case studies in order to understand the similarities and differences across each community. Ultimately, the team argues that commemorations provide important opportunities for sharing collective knowledge across different generations of members to reinforce a collective sense of belonging and identification with a nation.

• Date created

  09/22/2021

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Insight Grant
  • IG
  • SSHRC
  • Indigenous Knowledges
  • Commemoration
  • Collective
  • Identity
  • Memory
  • Resilience
  • Management
  • Business
  • Social Organization
  • Indigenous Peoples
  • 1670AD-2021AD
  • Canada
  • Central Canada
  • Western Canada
  • Atlantic Provinces

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-x7sg-2r95

• License

  ©️Foster, William M. All rights reserved other than by permission. This document embargoed to those without UAlberta CCID until 2029.