Hoop 1

The institution

Policy, Procedure, Service, Institutional Betterment.

Explore Hoop 1

Why

Other U15 universities are making strong commitments in this area. To keep pace as a leading research institution, uOttawa must establish a competitive and comprehensive recruitment strategy for hiring Indigenous faculty members. This strategy is directly tied to national research funding, since Tri-Council allocations are increasingly dedicated to Indigenous-focused research led by Indigenous academics in partnership with Indigenous communities. For uOttawa to have access to these types of research funds, it must increase the numbers of Indigenous researchers. Such a strategy will ensure that uOttawa continues to be regarded as a leading research-intensive institution.

When

Short term

How

Select tactics to give us a competitive edge, such as:

Locate and offer tenure-track positions to Indigenous people from the local area (Quebec and Ontario) currently enrolled in doctoral programs and find ways to support them as they complete their programs before they take up these permanent positions.
Hire Indigenous scholars for positions, though they will not assume their responsibilities as faculty until year two. Instead, provide bridge funding in year one that supports them to finish their dissertations and start publishing. Their appointments as faculty members will be conditional on their completion of the dissertation.
The University (via the faculty or department they are hired into) must provide them with mentoring/assistance to be able to complete their studies.
Create more bursaries and scholarships for Indigenous graduate students. There is a lack of sufficient funding within communities to support First Nations, Inuit, and Metis students through graduate programming.

Cost

Departments and faculties need to commit resources to hiring a range of Indigenous scholars—tenure-track and part-time—in the interest of broader equity and diversity. This process will comply with the beyond self-ID Indigenous hiring policy (in draft form as yet):

Hiring Indigenous scholars regardless of whether or not they do “Indigenous-based” scholarship, in order to have a full and rich complement of professors from Indigenous societies.
Committing to hiring at all ranks: assistant, associate, and full professor.
Creating a complement of tenure-track professors requires central allocation of special funding for cluster hires.
Committing to hiring part-time instructors either with PhDs in the required discipline or MAs if they have the appropriate professional background and/or competencies in Indigenous knowledge.

Who

President | Provost | Deans | Chairs | Collective bargaining units

Update

Progress has been made toward developing a comprehensive policy and procedure for the hiring of Indigenous faculty members. Continuing to refine these frameworks through collaborative dialogue between academic units and the Provost’s office will help enhance FNMI representation among tenure-track and part-time professors within existing hiring processes.

Why

There is an insufficient number of Indigenous staff members.

When

Medium term

How

Faculties will need to prioritize the creation of an Indigenous coordinator position; Human Resources must prioritize the hiring of Indigenous staff; an appropriate environment fostering language support should be provided (see below).

Cost

Indigenous coordinators working with the Office of Indigenous Affairs will be able to effectively share resources with a goal toward increasing the overall campus PEFAL allocation as well as applying to external bodies for special event funding. However, each faculty will assume the salary cost for these positions. Additionally, each faculty will have its own budget, which its coordinator will manage. However, everyone should be aware of what is being spent and how it is spent in order to ensure faculties, the Indigenous Resource Centre and the director’s office are not working at cross purposes.

Budgets for staffing positions already exist within faculties and the hiring of Indigenous Peoples at all levels of the University workforce will not affect that process (although positions themselves may require reallocation).

Indigenous people tend to speak either English or French (not both) and, if they speak a second language, are more likely to speak their own mother tongue. Therefore, it will be necessary for the University to build into its Human Resources recruitment strategy a recognition of this linguistic barrier and identify strategies and means by which Indigenous staff can become bilingual in French and English at the same time that they are supported and encouraged to learn their own language (if they do not know it already). This is in the interests of reconciliation, which includes efforts to preserve Indigenous languages.

Who

Update

The development of a policy and procedure for FNMI staff recruitment is advancing. Human Resources and the Office of Indigenous Affairs are developing a framework that will enhance Indigenous representation across the University’s workforce.

Why

On March 22, 2017, uOttawa signed an MOU with the University of Manitoba in which we agreed to contribute materially to the purposes and objectives of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. While several faculties, including Law, Education, and Medicine, have begun implementing formal responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), uOttawa has not, as yet, developed its institutional response or determined how it will fulfill its obligations under the MOU.

We will begin a comprehensive survey and review what other faculties have done to support the Calls to Action, in order to determine the best plan to move forward as a university and address these calls, while reviewing the MOU to determine how to meet our commitments.

When

Short-term start, medium-term completion

How

This is a multi-staged, and multi-year process to take place between 2019 and 2024:

Hold a president’s town hall on the TRC and MOU to underscore and encourage University-wide participation.
Simultaneously, establish a process (appointment of a committee, etc.) by which we decide what Calls to Action uOttawa needs to/is best positioned to address given its institutional needs, capacity, and mission; initiate a survey of what each faculty, department and unit has undertaken, or what it currently has in terms of curriculum and supports, in order to determine what actions must be taken.
All senior managers, including VPs, AVPs, heads of services, deans, VDs, and department/institute chairs, should have their job descriptions amended to include responsibility for implementing the TRC Calls to Action.
Once the process is created and an assessment is undertaken, develop a response to these Calls to Action that makes the most sense in the context of uOttawa.
Until 2024, the University should require annual updates from all faculties, department, and units on their progress toward meeting the Calls to Action. These reports will be public documents, made available on the Indigenous Portal.

Cost

Faculties need to commit to determining how the Calls to Action are reflected in their curricula and then commit the appropriate resources to either developing new courses or ensuring that they have the appropriate staffing to ensure that courses that already exist are offered. In some instances, this will necessitate the hiring of Indigenous instructors.

The University of Ottawa will commit to ensuring that the commitments of the MOU are met. As a partner, we’ve agreed to a number of actions, including ensuring that the Centre’s archives are more accessible and used, contributing additional holdings to the Centre’s archives and supporting a broad scope of public education, research and other reconciliation activities. As an institution founded by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Catholic male religious order, uOttawa has a direct historical link to the residential schools themselves. With its ongoing relationship to Saint Paul University, and, as a result, the Deschâtelets Archive of the Oblates, along with its own institutional archive, uOttawa must task its archivists and librarians to work with Saint Paul and the Oblate archive to build an institutional history of the University that reflects its connection to the establishment and operation of Indian residential schools.

Who

President | Provost | Secretary General

Update

Since 2019, some faculties have taken significant steps toward responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Calls to Action and advancing the commitments outlined in the 2017 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. An opportunity exists to consolidate these faculty-level initiatives through a coordinated institutional approach.

Why

All faculty and staff will be required to complete a First Nations, Metis and Inuit (FNMI) 101 workshop including competency modules related to their specific employment sector. For instance, the finance teams should understand the many different ways by which Indigenous students are funded to attend postsecondary institutions. At the same time, all staff should know the legal and socio-cultural differences between FNMI peoples, and be aware of treaties, scrip, UNDRIP, the Indian Act, and other colonial laws and policies that continue to affect all Canadians, in order to have a better understanding of the contexts in which the University’s Indigenous students, faculty, and staff live.

When

Medium term

How

The FNMI 101 competency course and attendant modules will initially be offered in face-to-face sessions to current employees by the staff from Indigenous Affairs and/or faculty and staff with expertise, but they will also be transformed into a hybrid offering with a combined in-person and online interface that will be used by future employees as a part of their onboarding. This is already done with the University at a Glance workshops, so we have a framework for such onboarding practices already in place.

It is especially critical for the University to create a network (in French and English) of expertise in Indigenous realities and issues. This involves training deans to train deans, professors to train professors, department chairs to train department chairs, and key leaders in services to train others in service sectors. An online module can provide general content knowledge, but these modules must be followed up by in-person action planning workshops led by experts within the realm of those taking the competency training in order to bridge the two realities of Indigenization and the particular position, discipline and/or service area.

Cost

A central budgetary commitment to develop the FNMI 101 and specific modules related to each employment sector:

Current FNMI faculty could be provided with course relief to begin building Indigenous 101 in consultation with the Indigenous Affairs team and the TLSS, to develop the modules for an online interface.
The Teaching and Learning Support Service (TLSS) will hire content specialists (on contract/module) when necessary in order to work with Indigenous Affairs on the faculty, department and unit-specific modules.

The TLSS has the resource capacity to manage much of this work. Each faculty may need to assist in the development of its own modules via financial or in-kind contributions.

Who

Vice-Provost, Academic Affairs

Update

The Office of Indigenous Affairs (OIA) staff has participated in various annual onboarding events for new employees and university leadership teams. They have also initiated the development of a mandatory onboarding training module with the help of an external Indigenous-owned consultancy. This onboarding module will be delivered through Human Resources to all new employees. Furthermore, separate French and English book clubs—Real Natives vs. Pretendians: Indigeneity in Canada, A Book Club—are fostering deeper dialogue around Indigenous identity, sovereignty, and authenticity in academic and institutional contexts. These existing platforms provide a foundation for gradually expanding opportunities through collaborative approaches with campus partners.

Learn more

Hoop 2: Faculties, departments, and programs

Hoop 3: The physical space

Hoop 4: Indigenous community

Hoop 1

Explore Hoop 1

1.1: Ensure and maintain a minimum of two Indigenous members on the Board of Governors and Senate arrow_drop_down

1.2: Develop Indigenous faculty recruitment and hiring policy for tenure-track and part-time positions arrow_drop_down

1.2.1: Address barriers to recruiting and retaining Indigenous professors arrow_drop_down

1.2.2: Address barriers to recruiting Indigenous part-time professors specifically for Indigenous content-specific courses arrow_drop_down

1.3: Develop an Indigenous staff recruitment plan to ensure that Indigenous staff are represented throughout the University of Ottawa workforce arrow_drop_down

1.3.1: Develop dedicated Indigenous recruitment expertise within Human Resources (HR) arrow_drop_down

1.4: Respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and fulfill our commitment to the Memorandum of Understanding signed with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in 2017 arrow_drop_down

1.5: Develop Indigenous competency courses for faculty, staff, Board of Governors members and members of the Senate from outside uOttawa arrow_drop_down

1.5.1: Onboarding for all professors and staff regarding Indigenous cultures and traditions, including languages arrow_drop_down

1.6: Identify Indigenous advocates in each faculty arrow_drop_down

1.7: Dedicate funding to support one or more Indigenous counsellors within Mashkawazìwogamig: Indigenous Resource Centre arrow_drop_down

1.8: Ensure that the Student Health, Wellness and Support team include mental health resources to support Indigenous students arrow_drop_down

1.9: Indigenous student financial support arrow_drop_down

1.10: Indigenous-focused finance and payment guidelines arrow_drop_down

1.11: Communications and media strategy for the Indigenous Action Plan arrow_drop_down

1.12: Enhance the Indigenous Affairs team arrow_drop_down

1.13: Indigenization of Collective Agreements arrow_drop_down

Learn more