Congratulations to doctoral candidate Paul Pritchard on being awarded a 2024-25 Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellowship. Through his research and teaching, and through his role as an educational developer, Paul has been analyzing and implementing innovative and transformative curricular and pedagogical approaches that aspire to lead learners to (re)imagine their social and ecological belonging on the Indigenous Territories where their learning takes place.
To this end, Paul is collaborating with Dr. Dani Kwan-Lafond to create an interactive teaching tool using ARC-GIS Storymap software. The Storymap features several Land-based learning and treaty educational activities at different sites along UTSC’s Ma Moosh Ka Win Trail and throughout the Highland Creek Ravine. Freely accessible online, users will be able to visit each site in person, or participate virtually, thanks to photographs from a 360-degree camera. Activities center Indigenous relationships to Land, perspectives on place, local plant knowledge, and include Anishinaabemowin translations. Key to developing these activities is ongoing collaboration with Josh Eshkawkogan, an Anishinaabe Elder, Knowledge Keeper, and language speaker from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, and Isaac Crosby, a Black/Indigenous plant Knowledge Holder, steward of UTSC’s Indigenous Garden, and member of the Ojibways of Anderdon. Drawing on contemporary Indigenous and anticolonial approaches to teaching and learning, the activities provide opportunities for students to engage with Indigenous knowledge systems and pedagogies by learning on and from the Land. They are prompted to reflect on how they are embedded within an interconnected web of relationships and encouraged to think about the responsibilities connected to this relational standpoint, such as imagining better ways to uphold treaty responsibilities.
This initiative stems from Paul’s broader doctoral research project, titled Indigenous Curriculum and the Shifting Politics of Belonging in Canadian Higher Education, which investigates the expansion and substantive quality of Indigenous curricular content at the University of Toronto to understand how Canadian universities are responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action. Paul’s doctoral research has been generously supported by an R.F. Harney Graduate Research Fellowship in Ethnic, Immigration, and Pluralism Studies from the Munk School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and a Mary H. Beatty Fellowship, among other accolades.
Paul Pritchard is Michif (Red River Métis) and a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation. He holds a graduate student position on the University of Toronto’s Arts and Sciences Dean’s Advisory Committee on Indigenous Research, Teaching and Learning, and is a member of its Working Group on Indigenous Curriculum. He also holds a graduate position on the Canadian Sociological Association’s Decolonization Sub-Committee.