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Location
155 College Street, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, First Floor.
Dates
  • March 19, 2019 from 9:00am to 4:00pm

In this interactive exhibition we engage visitors in conversations around Indigenous food crisis, global climate change, tensions created by human cultural systems and discuss how those concerns impact Indigenous individual and community health.

By exploring ways to innovate pedagogical practices of health education, the Wigwam Relatuhedron (relat = relation and hedra = face, shape; shaped and shaping relationships) questions research practices and “interventions” designed outside of Indigenous perspectives. The Wigwam Relatuhedron invites visitors to share how cultural practices, research approaches, big data and evidence-based research and public policy can better support healthier Indigenous food systems from multi disciplinary views and Indigenous perspectives of well-being. In a togetherness of health, a complex adaptive-dynamic system is paired with Indigenous Relationality to unveil the history and present of micro-macro systems in a continuum between simplicity and complexity of issues signaled as vital by Indigenous communities. As a way to deal with complexity, we use the power of abstract and representational art, graphs analysis and tools from complex health systems approaches to promote these conversations.

In this version, students from the course Indigenous Food Systems, Environment and Health informed by Seven Sacred Teachings, Medicine Wheel and Three Sisters teachings will present their in-progress perspectives on topics such as water, land, air pollution, industrial mono-agriculture, economic distributive networks of food chains, and Indigenous food security and sovereignty. This activity seeks to learn collaboratively and connect learning with local and distant realities. For students, the Wigwam Relatuhedron is an opportunity to develop and practice skills that recognize and respect the history and self-determination principle of Indigenous peoples. Additionally, this exhibition develops opportunities to share knowledge gained with health researchers, policy makers, students and visitors working in related fields. We will have the Wigwam Relatuhedron open for this purpose during a day for all faculty members, staff and students interested in these topics.

Miigwetch, ipqua, thank you

Juan Rodriguez