VIU Canada Research Chair in Community-Engaged Research Dr. Amanda Wager has had her program funding renewed by the Government of Canada for another five years.
Dr. Amanda Wager has also received $60,000 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to support her research
A project at Vancouver Island University (VIU) that brings together youth from different cultures and backgrounds to engage in arts-based learning, research and healing work will continue.
VIU Canada Research Chair in Community-Engaged Research Dr. Amanda Wager has had her program funding renewed by the Government of Canada for another five years. She has also received $60,000 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to support new research infrastructure and an archive project.
Wager uses theatre, storytelling and community-engaged research to work alongside Indigenous Elders, youth and community leaders. Her goal is to support Indigenous language learning and reawakening, while also addressing past harms and supporting healing through art. The Canada Research Chair program supports the arc: Art Research Community Institute, which is created and run by, for and among intergenerational local community members. The centre increases intergenerational youth leadership and capacity development and encourages cross-cultural relationships.
A key focus for Wager is Scenes from the Nanaimo Indian Hospital. The multi-lingual theatre production was co-created with Indigenous partners and shares stories about Canada’s segregated health-care system. It also helps bring forward and supports the use of Hul’q’umi’num’, Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwak’wala languages, three main language families of the Island.
“Language is rooted in the soil where we stand, where we sit, and deep within the waters that flow beneath us. The languages were here before us," she says. "It is my hope that this research chair will be yet one support from them to thrive here."
Wager’s research responds to long-standing efforts in Canada to erase Indigenous languages, culture and knowledge through systems such as the Indian Act, residential schools, the “60’s Scoop” and Indian hospitals.
Over the next five years, Wager will expand her intergenerational arts programs and continue building education and wellness approaches with communities across Vancouver Island. School and community performances will be paired with post-show Sharing Circles, where audiences can reflect and discuss the work.
"Language reawakening and diaspora create new routes to flow through, like water forging its way through soil to find its way to the ocean, metamorphosing into different shapes and sounds, dancing and singing through the ages of technology and beyond while still being connected by their roots," she says.
The CFI funding will also help create a new archive of the history of Indian hospitals which will bring together oral histories, language recordings, documents, photographs and interviews connected to Indian hospital history and Indigenous language revitalization.
Read more about the funding from the Government of Canada and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
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Media contact:
Eric Zimmer, Communications Officer, Vancouver Island University
P: 250.618.7296 | E: Eric.Zimmer@viu.ca | W: news.viu.ca
The VIU community acknowledges and thanks the Snuneymuxw, Quw’utsun, Tla’amin, Snaw-naw-as and Qualicum First Nation on whose traditional lands we teach, learn, research, live and share knowledge.
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