Julie Bull
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Slide - 50 Years, 50 Voices - Julie Bull - 0:00
My name is Julie Bull and I’m connected to UPEI for a couple of ways, I
was an undergraduate student here, I also completed my master’s here, and
I was the founding director of the Mawi’omi Aboriginal Student Centre.
Slide - Cultural Connections - 0:15
When I first came to UPEI as an undergraduate student, I came from a small
town in Labrador so back then Charlottetown and UPEI were huge to me. It
was a bit of a culture shock, but back then the saying for UPEI was a
great, small university and I felt like that was true when I came here, I
found my sense of community, I found other indigenous students who were
trying to do the same things that I were - trying to build a community here
on the campus and to be integrated within the bigger picture within
Mi’kma’ki and the Mi’kmaw communities here. And so in 2008, a few of
us volunteered with what was then I think very briefly the Student Advocacy
and Support Centre, you know, between the Women’s Centre and Diversity
Office time. We had a tiny budget of a hundred dollars and the ten of us
just worked real hard to have the first Cultural Connections event on
campus, and it was amazing. My memories of that are so vivid. It was eleven
years ago but I feel like it was just yesterday - and seeing especially the
non-indigenous people on campus really see indigenous people come together
in community - and I remember one person in particular was like, “Whoa,
at first I was so uneasy that the children were just all running around and
you couldn’t tell whose children they were.” Because everybody was
collectively taking care of each other and so having that, bringing
community onto the campus to show that there’s other ways of
understanding, there’s ways that we already built community with
ourselves and each other and so seeing that happen on campus was a really,
a really proud moment, I think, for all of us who were involved with that,
and then to see it still continue now, eleven years later, has been
fantastic.
Slide - Acknowledgments - 1:49
I think the great thing about a small place like UPEI is that we do kind of
all know each other, even if people are working in their individual
departments and disciplines and areas, that we all are connected in some
way, and so I’m happy to see that the movement is happening nationwide
around the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but I think a key message
that often gets missing is that, you know, people want to jump right to the
Reconciliation part - they just want to get to it without actually working
through the difficult parts, and so, I think before the truth part even
comes, we have to have trust. And so indigenous people need to feel
welcomed and acknowledged on the campus, and not just like acknowledged in
a tokenistic way, but to actually see themselves integrated and embedded
within the curriculum, within the way that the administration operates, and
even - you know I’ve seen a few things around campus in the last couple
of years that’ve been doing that, and I think UPEI has a great
opportunity to keep building on the things that have been developed here
over the last ten to fifteen years. And of course, even before that, before
I was a student here, before other people were students here, there was a
movement to do that but, like all things, it requires kind of like that
tipping point or the critical mass of people who are doing the work, and I
think what we need to do is make sure that we’re focusing not only on
what we think it should look like but to actually include indigenous people
in creating whatever this sense of integration and community looks like
here within the campus community.
Slide - Foundations - 3:14
I think my background here was really instrumental. I mean, my undergrad
was in philosophy so lots of people back then told me, like, “What the
heck are you going to do with a philosophy degree? Nobody pays people to
think about things.” And as a twenty-year-old, I couldn’t really answer
that question about what I would do with a philosophy degree. But then when
the Master’s of Applied Health Services Research came along as an option
for me to do my Master’s in, I was like, “Oh, this is a way that I can
apply all of that theoretical understanding of ethics and how we interact
with each other in a very applied way.” And so then the foundation that
started there in that graduate work has continued, so for the eleven years
since completing that master’s degree, I went on - I’ve done a PhD,
I’ve worked with communities all across the country and around the world
in demonstrating ways that institutions and communities can work together.
So I inherently come to this kind of work with multiple perspectives. I see
how institutions need and want to operate and I see how communities need
and want to operate, and I see this magical place in the middle where we
can actually come together to do it. That’s not to say that it’s as
romantic as that; there are challenges with it, but the work that we did in
Newfoundland and Labrador and continue to, is demonstrating ways that we
can build systems and structures that are based in institutions and
hospitals and these other colonial systems, but ensuring that we’re
embedding the indigenous components in there. Not an afterthought, not an
addition to, not something that is separate from. That’s not helpful like
building things that are separate is not where the answer is. So for me,
having that foundation here, getting to work with and meet people in
various levels of government, university people at different levels,
administrators - I got to sit on an ethics board here as an undergraduate
student, my first experience doing that, I think the first undergraduate
student to do so at this institution - but it was because I was doing
community-engaged work with indigenous people that back then there was no
policy to back up the way that I was co-designing that project. So when I
submitted my ethics application, they were like, “Hang on a second, it
looks like you’re doing things out of order.” And so then they invited
me to come because they recognized there was valuable knowledge in how
indigenous people conduct research that will not only benefit indigenous
people, it will benefit anybody who participates in research - if ethics
boards and people who are deciding what research happens and how it happens
- when we’re actually included in those decisions. And so, to me, UPEI
really has been the foundation that’s helped build a very exciting and
adventurous career for me thus far.
Slide - Responsibilities - 5:49
I think one of the things that I want everybody to do here is to learn
about the land that we’re on, what it is that their responsibility is to
the people here. We’re not in an area of the country that have numbered
treaties, so people think that, “Well, we don’t have the same kind of
relationship or responsibility to indigenous people.” But that’s not
true. We live in a place where there is Peace and Friendship Treaties, I
mean, how much more humane and wonderful could that be? That the point is
that we are all here, nobody’s going anywhere despite all the best
efforts of governments to get rid of indigenous people in this country, up
to and including now - this is not ancient history, there’s lots of
policies in place to try to dismantle the ways in which indigenous people
operate, but that’s not working. We are the fastest-growing demographic
in the country, with more than fifty percent of us under the age of
twenty-five, so that’s what gives me hope, is knowing that in my
generation, there were a few of us who were starting to come and get
degrees and do all of these advanced ways of being educated, but not losing
sight of where we come from, and that’s the part that - sometimes it can
be tricky for academics in particular. Even for me, I’ve finished a PhD,
but I’m not a professor and don’t want to be one, so that’s really
hard for academics to understand, that I’m really good at that and I
could do that, but there’s too many challenges and struggles for
indigenous people to do that right now. So my work is more in an activist
and an advocacy role where I’m working with systems to try to shift the
ways that we’re doing it, so that when other students and faculty come,
they actually feel like they belong here and that every day is not trying
to demonstrate and justify why the ways that they’re doing it is
important. So, I really encourage everybody to listen to the people who are
here, the elders, the young people, all of the indigenous people who
already live here and the ones who move here from other places. A wealth of
knowledge - you know, in a time now where climate change is like the hot
topic for everything - indigenous people see the brunt of that more than
anybody. Like, my ancestors who live in the Arctic, we know it better than
anybody, that this is shifting the ways in which the entire planet is
operating and indigenous knowledges across the world can actually help us
address some of these really big global issues. We just have to actually
listen and then apply and integrate the things that we learn and not just
think, “Oh, that’s hokey-pokey - ways of understanding. We can’t
measure or monitor or predict it the way that we do in Western science,
therefore it’s not real.” I don’t know how else to say it for people
other than to say, you know, that is not the only way. Western science is a
new way. Biomedical models of healthcare is the newest way. All of these
things that we do in Western ways of understanding are the newest if we
look historically. How did people survive before that? How did people live
before we had Western medicine? Oh right, Chinese medicine, Eastern
medicines, indigenous medicines. There’s all these other ways. And people
still practise that. It’s not an either/or situation. People can
integrate multiple ways. So I do that in my work and in my life, I try the
best that I can to take the thing that fits and works the best in that
model. So one of the Mi’kmaw teachings from Elder Albert Marshall is
around two-eyed seeing and this beautiful gift of seeing the world from
multiple perspectives, and when we do that it’s not about a competition,
and I think in institutions like universities in particular, that’s hard
because like the whole environment here is set up as a competition, right.
It’s all about me, how I achieve individually, and that can be really
hard for indigenous people where we inherently see the world as connected,
and it’s collaborative, the point is for us to work together and define
the best of both worlds, not to have a competition that, well, “This way
is better than this way.” It’s about how we take the two and then work
together in a way that’s actually quite meaningful.
Slide - A Safe Space - 9:44
It’s a disservice I think that most institutions are doing and getting
rid of women’s centres and women’s studies and all of these different
things because, again, just like with indigenous issues and education is
not like an ancient history thing, these things still happen, there is
still lots of male-dominant disciplines where women have to work twice as
hard as the men to do half as good, which is, that’s a problem that we
still see here. And I remember when I went to the Women’s Centre that
first time as a really shy, young 18-year-old, I didn’t know anybody and
I just walked in and I like immediately felt this sense of belonging
because there were other people that are like me who were interested in
similar things, even though we’re all from different backgrounds and
we’re doing different degrees, different disciplines, we all share this
common interest in building a safe place for women in particular, but for
all people. It wasn’t just women that came to the Women’s Centre,
people of all genders visited the Women’s Centre and found a place there
for themselves and I know that for me, it was a place that I was really, I
was encouraged to grow my leadership and back then I hated public speaking,
it was like the most terrifying thing in the world for me, but people said,
like, “Whoa, you’re good at this, so like let’s encourage you to find
ways to do this in a safe space,” and so we would host lecture series, we
would have weekly gatherings, we’d have monthly events where we would
just come together. These weren’t huge things that cost a lot of money.
It was just people who were passionate and who saw injustice and wanted to
do something to be able to address those - I mean some of those were
systemic issues and some of them were like interpersonal issues that people
were having around campus and in the larger community in general. And so
having that place, then, provided us all the opportunity to really kind of
find our best self and to support each other, because you know everybody
has difficulties when we’re going through university, when we’re
students, and when we’re staff and faculty. There are lots of challenges
that can present themselves and having those places that were not academic
- it wasn’t about how well you did on a test or how great your paper was,
it was a place that you could just come and be yourself, all parts of
yourself, and that was probably one of the most amazing things to me. It
was seeing people, myself included, who showed up as the really quiet, shy
18-year-old who then within a couple of years, I could just see how that
kind of community and support helped encourage me to use this big, loud
voice that I have in a way that made more sense than just, you know, being
by myself and complaining about things.
Slide - Final Thoughts - 12:19
For me, I mean a lot of - and I think for many indigenous people, it’s
that we have to remember the land that we’re on. And so we sit here on
this campus, it’s a beautiful campus, it’s nice and contained in this
small space, but I’m sure that most students, staff and faculty here have
no idea about the history of this land before these buildings were put
here. Even now that the buildings are here, what is our relationship and
our responsibility to the indigenous people who are here? And so, we talk a
lot, of course, about the Truth and Reconciliation Report, but then what
happens is that people tend to feel like, “Oh, well I don’t want to
give up anything in this pursuit of being inclusive for indigenous
people.” And, I guess what’s hard as an indigenous person is that
nobody’s asking for that. Nobody’s asking that then other people have
to give up their rights or give up their freedoms so that indigenous people
can also have that. We actually want this space to be welcoming and
inviting for everybody, so when we had that event back in 2008, and I saw -
like some of the kids who were just kids then, it’s their first time ever
on a university campus, and they would run around, they would come to the
library, they’d do all the things, and now many of those have since
become students here because they felt a sense of belonging. And that
really is it. When I first came here in 2001, I didn’t know anybody in
PEI. I didn’t have any connections, any relationships. But then you start
to build that, and if the campus is really committed to doing that work of
making this space inclusive, then it has to make sure that it’s including
indigenous people in doing that. My hope for the future for UPEI is that we
build on all of this work and effort that’s been done over the course of,
I mean, many, many years but especially in the last ten to fifteen years,
and really be a leader in that. I mean, PEI is such a great, small province
and we’re all connected, and I do feel like this is a place where we can
show the rest of Atlantic Canada in particular, but also the rest of the
country how we can do it when we actually work together with all of the
right people at the table.