12:15pm to 2:00pm
HEC Montréal
Salon Deloitte, 4th Floor
The need for Indigenous-led social innovation has likely never been greater than it is today. This need is equaled only by the systemic opportunities that appear to be available to foster such systemic change. As a result of nearly 400 years of colonization in Canada, Indigenous communities in Canada occupy marginalized political-economic spaces that perpetuate inequalities in education, health care, income and opportunities, etc. The need for Indigenous communities to effectively assert their Aboriginal and Treaty rights as well as build potential for autonomy and self-governance are imperative.
In the face of these realities, a new window of opportunity for systemic change created by among other things, Supreme Court decisions, the Idle No More movement, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a new federal government appear to be providing opportunities to foster Indigenous-led innovation and social change. This talk will draw on the author’s research and experience over the past decade in the fields of social-ecological complexity, social innovation, decolonizing and critical Indigenous research and Indigenous research collaborations to explore the potential for fostering Indigenous-led social innovations in context of corporate/government/Indigenous relations, especially in the extractive resources sector.
A case study of an Indigenous Research Collaboration and an emerging, Indigenous-led social enterprise funded by a major mining company and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant will be used to demonstrate the profound challenges and real opportunities associated with Indigenous-led social innovation.
Register now by contacting crises at uqam.ca
Presenter:
Dan McCarthy is the interim Director of the Waterloo Institute of Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) as well as an Associate Professor and Associate Director Undergraduate Studies in the School of Environment and Resource Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. Dan’s transdisciplinary academic background has focused on exploring the utility of complex systems-based approaches to understanding and intervening in linked social, ecological, epistemological systems. Dan has strong research interests and partnerships that relate to fostering adaptive capacity, social and environmental justice and social innovation in the context of linked socialecological systems. Dan has worked very closely with conservation and environmental movement organizations in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario as well as more recently, with several First Nations groups in both northern and southern Ontario.
