Pushor, Debbie2024-01-042024-01-0420232023-122024-01-02December 2https://hdl.handle.net/10388/15407I am from Onion Lake Cree Nation. I am a nêhiyaw-iskwêw (Cree woman). My first language is nêhiyawêwin/Cree. I lived with my great-grandparents until I started residential school in 1956. My PhD research is based on my belief in healing, reconciling, and reclaiming Indigenous education to benefit students, families, and communities. There is a critical need to explore the role of Elders in schools. How are they used and positioned, by whom, and why? How can the education system move away from inviting Elders to check box-type activities and progress to having Elders acknowledged as having integral and continuous roles in schools where their knowledge is central to shaping and informing the unfolding curriculum being lived out with children and families? These are the questions that you will find explored and discussed in the videos that comprise the core of this dissertation, focused on discussions of the commodification and changing role of Elders; cultural trauma; artivism and reparation; and healing, reconciling, and reclaiming Indigenous education for the benefit of students, families, and communities. As a methodological approach, I followed the teachings shared by my mother, who is central to this work. What I did, and how and when I did it, was led by following protocol, prayer/prayer songs, and the offering of tobacco; it guided every aspect of my journey. My daily work began with smudging and prayers, the tobacco led me to invite thought leaders for the four conversations, it inspired my bookwork, and it guided my thought processes and decision making throughout my doctoral journey. Each conversation began with smudging, prayer/prayer song, and the offering of protocol to the thought leaders so that our conversation would unfold in a good way, with open eyes, ears, minds, and hearts. From January through December 2022, I spent one year in the field as an Elder/kêhtê-aya. I kept a journal of my Elder/Knowledge/Keeper requests and recorded my research to prepare for the commitment and my experience. This fieldwork was integral to planning and preparing for four video conversations with invited thought leaders. To fully understand the work asked of Elders it was necessary for me to immerse myself in the work of an Elder/Knowledge Keeper. I made a commitment to accept up to three protocol requests per week. Topics were varied from sharing opening prayers and comments, presenting on residential school history or treaties, and sitting on cultural advisory committees. To prompt each conversation, I created a bookwork arising out of the conceptualization that became the focus. A bookwork is a non-book that relies on the viewer’s interaction with the object to make meaning. Each installation is a narrative that tells a story. Artists’ books, or bookworks, first emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as an expression of social and political activism, a way to “talk back” to mass production and mass media. Creating the bookworks required extensive research on the focus topic, including consulting with artists, art professors, curators and visiting art exhibits. Each bookwork took six months to a year to complete. My video dissertation is a compilation of 10 videos: my introduction to the research journey, the four core conversations with thought leaders conducted in a talking circle format, each with a separate video introduction by me, and a culminating video that shares my research reflections. The videos have an accompanying transcript, in which I included the spoken Cree and I translated the Cree language into English. My doctoral work also includes an eleventh video which captures the gallery show I arranged and hosted at AKA Gallery in the Saskatoon community to profile the four bookworks and showcase the video dissertation. In summary, the videos, the transcripts, the bookworks, and the gallery show are all integral pieces to my doctoral dissertation. Further, I have included a glossary of terms to accompany the viewing/reading of the videos and transcripts, and a bibliography for those individuals who want to pursue aspects of this work more deeply or for purposes that move forward their own work and thinking.application/pdfenkehtê-aya, elder knowledge, TKK, Cree, Indigenous ways of knowing, Onion Lake, residential school survivors, narrative inquiry, storytelling, First Nations protocol, artivism, reparative act, kinship, school reform, cultural traumaThesis2024-01-04