Nicole Rosen, Canada Research Chair in Language Interactions in the Department of Linguistics studies Canada’s vast linguistic diversity and works with organizations such as the Conseil jeunesse provincial (provincial couth council) of Manitoba and the BC Métis Federation to address the language rights of groups such as recent immigrants and First Nations, Métis and Inuit children. She also focuses on Manitoba’s diverse population to spark innovation in the study of past and present interactions among official; heritage; and First Nations, Métis and Inuit languages.

“What interests me most is understanding the interactions between people and languages that are in close proximity to each other,” she says. “My research aims to discover what language tells us about the interactions between people, but also how language changes as a result of these interactions. This relationship goes both ways.” Rosen says this could include vocabulary, expressions, pronunciations and overall sounds producing distinctive accents that coexist harmoniously. 

Rosen highlights bird species that borrow sounds from surrounding birds, singing differently depending on their location, like a dialect. “We never say that birds sing badly or that they should express themselves differently. It should be the same for the diversity of accents. It is so lovely to hear these differences that reflect the mosaic of people,” she concludes.

To read the full research profile, please follow the link to the Government of Canada.

From enhancing cultural awareness in mental health for Indigenous populations, to applying lessons from Greek antiquity to modern democracies, to preserving the music and language of underrepresented groups, the winners of this year’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s (SSHRC) Impact Awards are shaping Canadian society in lasting ways.

Today, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced the recipients of SSHRC’s 2024 Impact Awards. These awards are SSHRC’s highest honours, recognizing outstanding Canadian researchers and their achievements, research training, knowledge mobilization and outreach activities funded partially or entirely by SSHRC. The awards also highlight SSHRC’s commitment to funding research that drives change and fosters a deeper understanding of our shared human experience. The five winning scholars will receive a combined total of $300,000 to continue their groundbreaking work.

Marcia Ostashewski, from Cape Breton University, is recognized with the Connection Award for her interdisciplinary and collaborative work advancing decolonization within the music industry, and providing a framework for recording the music and cultures of underrepresented groups. The Connection Award recognizes an outstanding initiative that facilitates the exchange of research knowledge within or beyond the social sciences and humanities community to generate intellectual, cultural, social or economic impacts. Her team is made up of Afua Cooper, Laurianne Sylvester, Graham Marshall, Shauna MacDonald, and Jody Stark from the Desautels Faculty of Music.

Read the full press release here.

-Prairie Town by R. Bachman

Randy Bachman, Burton Cummings, and Neil Young famously grew up in Winnipeg, a mid-sized Canadian city in Treaty 1 territory with a burgeoning arts scene. Contemporary Winnipeg is home to a multitude of musicians of all genres, and the city is not only culturally diverse, but also boasts the highest per capita urban Indigenous population of any Canadian city.

In spite of the tremendous musical and cultural diversity in this place, music education in Winnipeg schools tends to be relatively uniform. School music offerings are performance-oriented and consist mainly of concert band, choir, instrumental jazz, and guitar programs in senior high contexts, and general music, instrumental, or choral programs for younger grades. While students in Winnipeg schools reflect the musical and cultural diversity of the city, music teachers generally do not. The majority of music educators are of European descent and have completed a Bachelor of Music degree during which they engaged in private classical or jazz instrumental or voice study and participated in similar ensembles to the ones they now teach in schools. Music teachers’ remarkably uniform experiences as music learners and music teacher candidates result in the reproduction of a Euro-derived pedagogy focused on the performance of specific musical work rather than allowing students to create their own music or to engage with the musical practices of local musicians.

Desautels Faculty of Music associate professor Dr. Jody Stark wants to do something about this situation. Stark has received over $60 000 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to develop and pilot a local music pedagogy that responds to and incorporates various ways people make and enjoy music in Winnipeg, Canada. Stark plans to engage in a collaborative research project with a group of music educators and community collaborators including local Indigenous and settler musicians and representatives of various local cultural institutions and organizations. Together, the group will create and test out a decolonizing pedagogical framework for local music education on the land, and with the popular, contemporary, and traditional musics, of Treaty 1 territory..

Stark notes, “Through the process of doing this research, out team will have the chance to think about how to ethically bring diverse musical practices and musicians into the Winnipeg music classroom, but also to notice and explore the barriers to decolonizing and Indigenizing music education. Schools are colonial social structures with often invisible assumptions about teaching, learning, people, and the world, and this makes change challenging. By developing and piloting a framework for a local music pedagogy, our team will not only explore how best to undertake school-community musical partnerships, but we will also have the chance to notice and wrestle with some of these challenges.”

The results of this innovative project will allow the research team to contribute to the knowledge base of music teachers, university-level music teachers and teacher educators, policy makers in schools and community arts organizations, and artists seeking to engage youth and children. Plans are underway to offer in-person and online workshops, articles for music educators, community musicians and music education researchers, and for the team to create a podcast for other music educators interested in exploring a local approach to their teaching.

The new volume features six issues that include no less than three Criminal Law special issues edited by the Robson Crim research group; the annual Underneath the Golden Boy and Asper Review of International Business and Trade Law; and the inaugural issue of the Desautels Review of Private Enterprise and the Law.

Schwartz explained that since 2010, the MLJ has established a unique place among Canadian law journals by re-focusing on being relevant to its own community within Manitoba, including Indigenous communities, students and teachers at Robson Hall, and the Manitoba legal community.

“Everything we do is within the mission of “we serve our communities,” said Schwartz. “We are innovators in the way we do that, including our research projects involving oral histories. We have shown that you can be relevant to your own society while at the same time, meet the highest scholarly standards.”

Upon first learning of the success of the journal’s third SSHRC application, Schwartz pointed to the quality of the journal. “We have a demanding editorial process,” he said. “Our material must pass two tiers of review: that of the faculty editors and external peer review. Having three successive SSHRC juries decide to give us this grant helps to confirm that the overall quality of our work is at least very good.”

Receiving a SSHRC for the third time indicates to Schwartz that the MLJ, while coming from a small law school and a small community, can still compete at a national and international level. “It suggests that theory and practice can reinforce each other in academic work, rather than being at odds,” Schwartz observed.  “We can address real-world events of interest to our own to a high standard in a way that involves a high level of critical reflection. It also shows that life of an academic community can be about colleagues supporting each other while maintaining the highest respect for genuine intellectual diversity.”

Canadian Association of Law Libraries member, Hannah Steeves, the Instruction and Reference Librarian at the Sir James Dunn Law Library at Dalhousie University in Halifax, recently published an article on “Visualizing the Landscape of Canadian Law School Journals” on Slaw.ca, April 6, 2022 in which Steeves identified the MLJ as publishing the highest volume of articles per year. This study, Schwartz said, cements the MLJ’s reputation as the most prolific.

The MLJ aims to bring diverse and multidisciplinary perspectives to the issues it studies, drawing on authors from Manitoba, Canada and beyond. Its studies are intended to contribute to understanding and reform not only in our community, but around the world.

The MLJ has multiple dimensions, each with its own regular special issues. These include:

• The Current Legal Landscape: developments in courts and tribunals
• Underneath the Golden Boy: developments in legislation and on parliamentary and democratic reform
• Criminal Law and Practice, and the social dimensions of criminal law
• The Legal Profession, including histories of major developments and figures in Manitoba law, and the rapid evolution of legal practice
• Indigenous Law
• Desautel Review: developments in business and private enterprise law
• Asper Review: developments in international and trade law

The MLJ is funded by the SSHRC grants in aid of scholarly publications, with additional support from the Legal Research Institute of the University of Manitoba, the Faculty of Law Endowment fund.

The issues of Volume 45 are now available to read on the MLJ website at themanitobalawjournal.com.

An official launch of the book will take place at McNally Robinson Booksellers on Wednesday, April 19 at 7:00 p.m. with host, James Daschuk.

Baskatawang is an Anishinaabe scholar from Lac Des Mille Lacs First Nation in Treaty #3 territory. He graduated with a PhD in Native Studies from the University of Manitoba in 2021. There, he taught online courses, and went on to hold an appointment in the Law and Society Program at York University, where he taught the courses “Indigenous Peoples and Law” and “Social Justice and Law.” Since joining the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Law at Robson Hall in 2022, he has taught “Indigenous Methodologies and Perspectives” to upper year law students along with colleagues Marc Kruse, Indigenous Legal Studies Coordinator, and Assistant Professor Daniel Diamond. He also teaches “Introduction to Law and Society,” and “Oral History, Indigenous People and the Law.”

Baskatawang’s primary research interests include: the processes of colonization, reconciliation, and decolonization; social justice; the history of Indigenous peoples (with particular attention to the Anishinaabe); Indigenous law and Canadian policy; treaty interpretation and implementation; Indigenous education; Indigenous resistance and activism; as well as Indigenous literature, art, and representation.

His SSHRC-funded doctoral dissertation “Kinamaadiwin Inaakonigewin: A Path to Reconciliation and Anishinaabe Cultural Resurgence” reflects on the development of the Treaty #3 Anishinaabe education law as it is known in the oral tradition, into a written form of law. As he explains in the following interview, this dissertation was the inspiration behind his new book.

In Reclaiming Anishinaabe Law Baskatawang traces the history of the neglected treaty relationship between the Crown and the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty #3, and the Canadian government’s egregious failings to administer effective education policy for Indigenous youth—failures epitomized by, but not limited to, the horrors of the residential school system.

Rooted in the belief that Indigenous education should be governed and administered by Indigenous peoples, the future Baskatawang envisions is hopeful for Indigenous nations where their traditional laws are formally recognized and affirmed by the governments of Canada. He details the efforts being made in Treaty #3 territory to revitalize and codify the Anishinaabe education law, kinamaadiwin inaakonigewin. Kinamaadiwin inaakonigewin considers education wholistically, describing ways of knowing, being, doing, relating, and connecting to the land that are grounded in tradition, while also positioning its learners for success in life, both on and off the reserve.

As the backbone of an Indigenous-led education system, kinamaadiwin inaakonigewin enacts Anishinaabe self-determination, and has the potential to bring about cultural resurgence, language revitalization, and a new era of Crown-Indigenous relations in Canada. Reclaiming Anishinaabe Law challenges policy makers to push beyond apologies and performative politics, and to engage in meaningful reconciliation practices by recognizing and affirming the laws that the Anishinaabeg have always used to govern themselves.

What was your motivation for writing this book?

The motivation for writing this book was inspired from my doctoral research. I initially intended to write my dissertation on the Canadian government’s failure to adequately implement the treaty right to education. However, the focus of my research shifted when I learned about the Grand Council Treaty #3’s desire to codify a Treaty #3 Education Law. Being that the Canadian government has historically failed to develop an education policy that is respectful of Indigenous cultures, it seemed to me that having them recognize and affirm the authority of Indigenous nations’ own laws on education was a good way to test the government’s commitment to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s “Calls to Action” and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Who should read this book?

This book was written with the intention of being immediately accessible to all Canadians, whether they are Indigenous or not. As such, I hope the information I provide in the book will be of interest to government officials, policy makers, community leaders, educators, administrators, and students of various disciplines, including law, education, history, political science, and Indigenous studies, as well as to those conducting research on the processes of reconciliation and cultural resurgence. As I say in the book’s introduction, if my book can help to advance any of these matters in the glorious pursuit of social justice, all the better.

What do you most hope readers will take away from this book?

I think there are two important overlapping principles to take away from the book. One is that Canada has a long history of neglecting the treaties it signed with Indigenous nations, which is exacerbated by imposing policies on Indigenous peoples and communities that have been extremely harmful to their overall health and well-being.  The second important message of the book is that all Indigenous nations have their own laws and governance systems that are capable of designing policies for the betterment of their communities and people. These laws and governance systems are formally recognized by UNDRIP, and need to be recognized and affirmed by the Canadian government as well.

What gap in knowledge do you know will be filled with this work?

The fact that Indigenous nations have their own laws and governance systems is only beginning to be recognized by Canadian society in general. This awareness is growing, due in large part by the work of Indigenous legal scholars such as John Borrows, as well as cultural resurgence scholars such as Leanne Simpson and Glen Coulthard. My research builds on the work of these scholars, with the hope that it will be useful to other scholars, as well as community leaders who have an interest in developing laws and policies that will better serve their nations and people.

To what extent can the information in this book be used to help communities in other Treaty areas?

I am conscious of the fact that my research is primarily dedicated to the people of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty #3. In the book, I am careful to consider that every Indigenous nation, or community for that matter, has different needs and interests that relates to education. That said, I hope the information that I provide in the book will be relevant to any Indigenous government that is considering undertaking a process of codifying some of its laws, particularly those that relate to education, since as I previously mentioned, Canadian education laws and policies have not adequately served Indigenous nations as they ought to.

What research project will you next be working on?

I am currently in the process, with the help of a few colleagues, of developing an annual volume of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Indigenous Inaakonigewin, in association with the Manitoba Law Journal.  As part of this process, we are looking to recruit, both early-career and established scholars, community leaders, Elders, and artists, who have knowledge to share on how Canadian laws and policies can be amended to better serve Indigenous communities and people. Such knowledge mobilization is an integral part of the reconciliation process, and will be reflected in our journal in the form of academic papers, interviews, and artistic expression. In addition to the journal volume, my colleagues and I, are also planning to host an annual conference at the University of Manitoba which will be open and accessible to all, where these ideas can be shared, discussed, and included as part of our journal.