Day 1: Welcome and introduction

Before class:

Required

  • Watch/listen to Lisa Ravensbergen (in Manning, 2018) open the keynote “Reverberating Frequencies—Embodied Ciphers” (00:00 to 16:53).
  • Then, watch/listen to Jeannette Armstrong speak (22:40) at the 2002 Bioneers National conference.
  • After watching or listening to both videos, reflect on your own relationship to the place where you are. Please come to class having thought about these questions.
    • Where have you come from?
    • Where are you now?
    • How did you come to be here?
    • If you are a visitor to the Land where you live, how are you being a good visitor?

Recommended

During class:

Presentation slides

Activities

  • Land acknowledgement (~5 minutes)
  • Course overview (~15 minutes)
  • Discussion of Land as first teacher (~10 minutes)
  • Introduction to the concepts of research, presearch, and the education of attention (~20 minutes)
  • Introduction to the Attentive Repetition and Log assignments (~15 minutes)
  • Introduction to the Attentive Repetition self assessment procedure (~5 minutes)

Land acknowledgement: Author’s example

The UBC Okanagan campus, and much of the research and learning/teaching activities conducted by students and faculty associated with the campus, are located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceeded territories of the Syilx (Okanagan) peoples. This Land supports and is supported by traditions and protocols established as law, ethics, and practice, through uncountable generations of Syilx existence and thriving with the tmixʷ (life force) of this place. As a course taught on and with this Land, Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness is anchored in these facts and the tensions that arise through mechanisms of settler colonial patterns and practices, which have disrupted lifeways for the peoples of this place. As Bowra et al. (2020) state, “[i]t is imperative that all human beings find a way to live in synergy with the land and all of creation to allow healing from colonial practices.” This course is designed to help its participants take a step in that direction.

It is important to acknowledge this history and sit within the entangled complexities of power, privilege, and place. This is why (as I, Madeline, understand it) we do Land acknowledgments: This is Syilx Territory, I was not invited to be here, I am here nonetheless.

Where Land acknowledgments can fall short is at their end, when we realize these are words, words to connect speaker, listener, and lands/waters, though fleeting all the same. “The gifts of the land must be actively recognized through expressions of gratitude and giving back” (Kuokkanen, 2007, p.3); we must extend land acknowledgments into action, from noun to verb. In the same way that free, prior, and informed consent is not enough, acknowledgment as due diligence is not enough. Consent must be ongoing, as must our cultivation of and tending to relationships. We will talk about consent and relational accountability in the context of research activities throughout this course.

After class:

  • Please fill out the Tech Access Survey by the end of the day tomorrow. The survey is a form that you will submit to the instructor to determine what sorts of technologies you have access to for next class period (do you have access to a laptop with internet access that you could bring to class with you?) and the duration of the semester (camera, audio, and video devices). In addition to determining where we hold our next class, the results of this survey will assist the instructor in facilitating the providing of appropriate resources for students throughout the semester. An email will be sent out the the day before our net class clarifying where we will meet.
  • Attendance on Day 2 is required for proceeding in this course. If for any reason you will not be able to be in class this day, please contact the Instructor(s) as soon as possible so alternative arrangements can be made.
Go to Day 2 →