This year’s DARE recipients produced meaningful work across all disciplines offered in LA&PS. Over the summer, each student played an integral role in coordinating projects that added valuable scholarly inquiry to the social sciences, humanities, and professional studies.

Each recipient was awarded $5,000 and paired with faculty members to explore urgent research subjects, including health care, work policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, digital data collection practices, issues impacting diaspora communities and more.

To commemorate the experiences from this year’s competition, LA&PS developed a virtual gallery showcasing each student and the DARE Project descriptions of the instructor-led research objectives.

“DARE is a wonderful opportunity to nurture mentorship and collaboration between instructors and students,” says Ravi de Costa, associate dean of Research & Graduate Studies. “This year’s research projects demonstrate the range and quality of the work taking place in LA&PS. Our faculty is dedicated to supporting creative and impactful work across all of our disciplines, and the DARE competition continues to expand on these efforts.”

For the award recipients, the projects serve as key stepping stones to future endeavours – whether in their respective fields beyond the university setting or continued academic research. Through their reflections, many of this year’s winners cited the unique hands-on experience as their favourite aspect of the process.

Fourth-year political science student, Kiana Therrien-Tomas, was pleased with the practical skills she acquired.

Looking back on the time spent working with Department of Politics Professor Simone Bohn on a project titled, “Collaborating with the state: a double-edged sword? The Brazilian Women’s Movement under the Workers’ Party administrations,” Therrien-Tomas explains, “this experience has been a great addition to my learning and professional development. It is an honour to receive this award. I can now proudly state that I have taken part in all stages of the research process, and apply the knowledge gained from this experience towards the completion of my undergraduate degree and my endeavours in law school.”

Fourth-year Disaster and Emergency Management student, Tiana Putric, echoed these positive sentiments when detailing the experience working with Department of Communication & Media Studies Professor Jonathan Obar on the DARE project, “The Future of Big Data: Understanding Digital Service Data Retention Policies and Implications for Online Privacy.”

“DARE was a transformative experience that left me with several new skills and insights,” said Putric. “I gained experience collecting, analyzing, and summarizing data retention policies and contracts from global digital service providers, learned how to evaluate policies against privacy laws and normative regulatory philosophies, and contributed to the data retention body of knowledge.”

In congratulating this year’s recipients, LA&PS Dean J.J. McMurtry was delighted to see how far the award has come.

“This competition offers an excellent opportunity for students to examine, discover, critique and create with leading researchers in their fields,” he said. “Over the past four years, DARE has exemplified the truly diverse and global scope of the research being done in LA&PS. Once again, our students have exceeded expectations.”

The 2021 DARE gallery can be viewed on the LA&PS website.

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Not much had been written about that part of the Gaspé Peninsula and northern New Brunswick, the seventh district of the Mi’gmaw Grand Council, until Metallic turned his eye to it, but that didn’t explain the feeling he had.

Above: Alfred Metallic, centre, defending his dissertation

It wasn’t until after he had written his comprehensive exams and was back in his community that he realized what was missing was the Mi’gmaw language – its connection to the spirit of the people, their ways of life and the land – and the way stories are presented back to the people, his people. Metallic’s dissertation was his story, and he needed to tell it using the oral traditions of his people in the Mi’gmaw language of his community and district, to share the knowledge and learning he’d accumulated, but also to help preserve his native language, which is at risk of disappearing.

“Our language, it’s how we maintain our relations and how we understand where we come from. It gives you access to your place in the world,” says Metallic. In the Mi’gmaw language, the action comes first, then the person. It’s the opposite with the English language.

Above: From left, Anders Sandberg, supervisor, Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES); Ravi de Costa, dean's representative, FES; Diane Mitchell, master's of environmental studies Mi'gmaw student in FES; Deborah Barndt, committee member, FES; Alfred Metallic, PhD candidate, FES; Ian Martin, internal examiner of the Department of English at Glendon.

91��ɫ environmental studies Professor Anders Sandberg, Metallic’s PhD supervisor, helped put the process in place with the support of Professor Barbara Rahder, dean of the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) and FES Professors Robin Cavanagh, Mora Campbell, Stefan Kipfer and Peter Cole, among others. 91��ɫ became the first Canadian postsecondary institution to officially sanction the use of a language other than English or French in graduate work, and Metallic the first PhD candidate at 91��ɫ to defend his thesis in an Aboriginal language – it was written and spoken in the Mi’gmaw language.

“There’s a circle that needed to be expanded a bit by including others for a more holistic circle,” says Metallic. He says both Aboriginal and academic representatives needed to come together to form the circle. “That circle wouldn’t be complete until that story is defended in a way that includes all the knowledge-holders. We needed to expand the usual paradigm on how that knowledge is transferred and how that knowledge could be preserved. We needed to anchor it closer to where the people live, and that would give it added value.”

Left: Members of the Listuguj community join with members of the academic community at Alfred Metallic's PhD dissertation defence

It’s very hard to miscommunicate in the Mi’gmaw language, unlike English, he says. “One purpose of the circle is to reinstate the value of the relationships to make that circle tighter and stronger, so the people’s voices become clearer.”

And so in October, some 1,300 kilometres from Toronto, Metallic orally defended his dissertation in a ceremony that included a sweetgrass smudging, singing, a feast, a give away and the inclusion of the Aboriginal community as well as the academic one.

The external examiner Stephen Augustine, a Mi’gmaw and curator at the Museum of Civilization, was joined by Katherine Sorby, an elder from Listuguj; Keira Ladner, a Cree scholar and constitutional expert from the University of Manitoba; Leanne Simpson, an Nishnaabeg scholar from Trent University; Ian Martin, 91��ɫ internal examiner and language expert; Ravi de Costa, the dean’s representative and FES professor of Indigenous Peoples & Globalization; FES Professor Deborah Barndt; Sandberg and many members of the Mi’gmaw community.

Right: Community members, young and old, came to the dissertation defence

The community is still talking about it. “The idea was to strengthen the relationship between Aboriginals and the academic community,” says Metallic. “It is possible to co-exist, to have an environment where those different ways can co-exist without having to compete for voice.” For him the coming together of the people was just as important as the dissertation. “A lot of people at the table had an interest in how this would go.”

It is necessary, says Metallic, if bigger issues such as treaty rights and residential schools are to be resolved, that the First Nation’s more collaborative way of coming to an understanding be preserved. In addition, it is his belief that the Mi’gmaw need to tell a different story than the one of impact.

“Our history goes way back before the Europeans arrived.” There is a different story to tell and to do that “we have to trust our own people,” says Metallic. “Communities can work together; we can participate in these stories through the dissertation.”

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer. Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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