Indigenous Units

These Indigenous academic and administrative units are located at UBC Vancouver:


Centre for Excellence in Indigenous Health

CEIH is a single coordinating point for Indigenous health initiatives within UBC and acts as a contact for communities and organizations external to UBC. The Centre is dedicated to advancing Indigenous people’s health through education, innovative thinking, research, and traditional practice. It works to improve wellness, health care and patient outcomes, and promote self-determination that includes increasing Indigenous leadership in all aspects of health and health care.
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CTLT Indigenous Initiatives

Indigenous Initiatives at the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology develops and offers programming, resources, and consultations focused on Indigenous engagement in curriculum, pedagogy, classroom climate, and professional development. To facilitate respectful and meaningful dialogue in learning spaces on campus and within the communities it works, it provides support and professional development for faculty, teaching assistants, and graduate students who are teaching in face-to-face, blended, or online classes.
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Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre

RSHDC is a Survivor-centred and trauma informed space, facilitating access to records related to Canada’s Indian Residential School System. Drawing on community engagement, emergent technologies, and creative and collaborative structures, the RSHDC aims to facilitate a variety of engagements and support informed dialogue and more transparent information practices, research and pedagogy. Explore exhibitions, browse the collections, listen to Survivors, attend an event and learn about on-going legacy of residential schools in Canada.
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Indigenous Research Support Initiative

IRSI works to enable collaborative research with Indigenous communities, university researchers and other partners. Its vision is to provide professional research support and services to Indigenous communities and university researchers to undertake collaborative projects based on community-led interests and grounded in principles of reciprocal accountability. IRSI serves as an interface for communities that approach UBC with research needs and undertakes to transform UBC culture to build, maintain and strengthen long-term research relationships with Indigenous communities.
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Indigitization Program

The Indigitization Program is a B.C.-based collaboration between Indigenous communities and organizations, the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, the Museum of Anthropology, Northern BC Archives (UNBC), and the School for Library, Archival and Information Studies, to facilitate capacity building in Indigenous information management.
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Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies

Housed within the Faculty of Arts and committed to robust Indigenous-focused scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, this research and teaching Institute brings into closer collaboration two growing and internationally recognized academic units—the First Nations and Indigenous Studies and the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program—and various affiliate faculty and staff from across the Faculty and University.
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First Nations House of Learning

The First Nations House of Learning works to make the University’s vast resources more accessible to Indigenous people and to improve its ability to meet their needs. It does this by organizing and maintaining Longhouse student services and spaces; overseeing public and academic programming at the Longhouse; leading and supporting strategic planning and communications on UBC Indigenous initiatives; and finally providing a point of contact for Indigenous communities. It also answers frequent inquiries from the public, media outlets, and UBC personnel.
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Office of Indigenous Strategic Initiatives

The Office of Indigenous Strategic Initiatives (OISI) was created in February, 2021 to coordinate the implementation of UBC’s 2020 Indigenous Strategic Plan across UBC. Part of an innovative, Indigenous-led and Indigenous human rights-based implementation structure, OISI provides guidance to faculties, departments, operational units and student groups across UBC’s Vancouver and Okanagan campuses in their alignment with the eight goals and 43 actions of the ISP. It also provides advice to UBC leadership on how best to improve the experiences of Indigenous students, faculty and staff across the university.

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xwćićəsəm Health Research and Education Garden

Located at UBC Farm, the xwćićəsəm Health Research and Education Garden supports land-based teaching, research, and community engagement on food security and traditional plant knowledge.
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Xwi7xwa Library

Xwi7xwa Library is a branch of the UBC Library with a large collection of materials focusing on First Nations in British Columbia, including Aboriginal people in Canada as a whole. In addition to special collections, Xwi7xwa has research librarians expert in Indigenous areas, and is an international leader in Indigenous classification research.
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