Dear Colleagues:
This past Friday, 22 February, I was at Queen’s Park to applaud as our colleagues, Gilberto Fernandes, Carolyn Podruchny, Alan Corbiere and Anong Beam were awarded the prestigious Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation. It is truly an honour that members our department received two awards for two very different projects.
Dr. Carolyn Podruchny along with Alan Corbiere, (PhD student), Anong Beam (MA student) were members of a team which were given the award for the Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute project. Dr. Gilberto Fernandes was awarded for his City Builders’ project. Both are described below.
Please join me in congratulating Gilberto, Carolyn, Alan and Anong.
Thabit
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The Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute (MISHI) is designed to nurture, promote and disseminate Anishinaabe knowledge held by Elders and knowledge-carriers in Anishinaabe spaces and to reach out to university-based scholars and students to transform academic knowledge. The seven-day 2018 MISHI explored Anishinaabe worldviews through clans, generations, and interconnectedness from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Co-sponsored by the History of Indigenous Peoples (HIP) Network, a research cluster embedded within the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York University, and the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation (OCF), an organization devoted to Anishinaabe culture, the summer institute brought together 32 established and emerging professors, graduate and undergraduate students, administrators, archivists, Elders, and knowledge-keepers to explore the history through site visits, lectures, stories, and activities on the island. MISHI 2018 had two Ansihinaabe instructors and 19 guest speakers, and also visited the Wikwemikong Heritage Organization, dedicated to preserving and enhancing Anishinaabe culture through education and participatory cultural opportunities with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Principle organizers were Carolyn Podruchny, Alan Corbiere, Anong Beam, Lewis Debassige, and Deborah McGregor.
The City Builders is a public history project aimed at recording, examining, and divulging the history of Toronto’s immigrant construction workers and their labour organization after the Second World War. Since November 2017, Dr. Fernandes has led a team of experiential education students, research and digitization assistants, filmmakers, designers, and other professionals towards delivering a digital humanities website packed with interactive maps, timelines, bios, photos, and audio recordings; 19 short oral history videos featuring retired construction workers and labour organizers; a two-part documentary totalling 90 minutes; and a multimedia travelling exhibition. You can find all its digital contents on its website here.
The City Builders’ exhibition will be on display at the Columbus Centre (901 Lawrence Avenue) from March 19 until March 31, as part of the Myseum Intersections festival. The opening reception is scheduled for Sunday, March 24, starting at 3.00 pm. Register for the event here.
This is a free event. All are welcome.
Originally published in YFile.