Associate Professor Lana Whiskeyjack wins Community Scholar Award

Lana Whiskeyjack is an Indigenous female leader whose work is deeply committed to addressing and counterbalancing the enormous intergenerational harms of colonization. Her work is focused on supporting marginalized individuals who have been separated from cultural teachings, language and land-based knowledge, and rites of passage. Her project, “Strengthening Kinship Relations”, resulted in the collaborative development of culturally appropriate ceremony and rites of passage for Two-Spirit Indigenous youth as well as a naming ceremony for the participants and the project - which was given the name tapahtêyimôkamik or ‘Humble Lodge’. The Humble Lodge project also resulted in the official establishment of a heart-shaped clearing in the forested river valley that acts as a site for land-based experiential learning. It is an exciting and innovative site of gender-inclusive land-based ceremony and transformative learning. Lana also played an instrumental role in the “Walls to Bridges University” collaborative initiative between the University of Alberta and the Edmonton Institute for Women. The model developed through this initiative is unique across Federal Correctional facilities, in that it is Indigenous developed, lead, and focused, maintains a minimum 80% Indigenous enrollment, and has an Elder/Spiritual advisor attached to all of the university credit courses sessions to provide ceremony and cultural knowledge. Lana’s insightful and progressive efforts have helped Indigenous women to experience stability, self-worth, success, and provided a platform to highlight and realize their true potential. She is a scholar who models an innovative interdisciplinary approach to de-colonizing, Indigenous-centered research that is grounded in ceremony and oriented toward the development of cultural knowledge that will strengthen relationships, build cultural connections, decolonize language and return rites of passage to youth and elders alike.