Kundoqk, bringing Nuuyum

Kundoqk, the Indigenous name of the new director of UVic’s School of Social Work, means “journeying over the mountain with belongings on my back.” The name was gifted to her parents on their wedding day. In 1995, Jacquie Louise Green (Kundoqk’s European name) moved her two daughters and their household belongings from northern BC, over mountains and marine passages, to Victoria so she could pursue a BSW (1997) and MPA (2000) at UVic.

First Indigenous director of mainstream social-work program

In June 2013, Green received her PhD (Inter-disciplinary Studies) from UVic, and on July 1 was appointed to her new position and is the first Indigenous director of any mainstream post-secondary social-work program in Canada.

Early years

Green was born in Kitimaat Village, located at the head of Douglas Channel in traditional Haisla territory. She belongs to the Hailsa, Kemano and Tsmishian peoples.

Today’s Haisla Nation is an amalgamation of two historic bands—the Kitamaat of the Douglas and Devastation channels and the Kitlope of the upper Princess Royal Channel and Gardner Canal. Green’s gifted name originates from the Tsmishian nation.

For the Haisla, the yearly harvest of oolichan for food, medicine and grease is one of the most important cultural traditions and means of livelihood. In 2003, this “mystery fish” (no one knows when they will appear each year) stopped running and did not return to the region for two years.

“How will I ever learn to oolichan fish?” she remembers asking her father. He and her mother are both survivors of the Port Alberni Residential School.

Green says oolichan fishing “is survival” and, at the turn of the last century, “it remained the core of what strengthened our people despite the colonial influences trying to take over.”

She knows now that her parents, because they were recovering from the abuses and harms of residential school, tried to protect their children by encouraging them “to learn the white way, the white system. It wasn’t until I was studying history [at Northwest Community College in Terrace, BC] that I started asking questions.”

The answers have brought her full circle, home. And she intends to continue bringing traditional ways of knowing into the core of social work practice, post-secondary education and research.

Green now has “five grandbabies, and they’re my world.” She is also an avid sportsperson: she has run marathons, been a pitcher, played soccer and remains devoted to the game of basketball. One of her “biggest heroes” is NBA legend Michael Jordan. A small statue of Jordan stands atop a bookshelf in her new office at UVic, rubbing plastic elbows with a five-inch collectible doll—a special gift from her aunt for cultural purposes—dressed in a mini button blanket.

This same aunt, an Elder, is a button blanket maker and regularly shares her knowledge and stories in UVic classes on the cultural significance of First Nations button blankets.

Graduate research

Throughout her graduate work at UVic, Green continued to draw on Haisla Nuuyum (traditional way of life and laws), including knowledge about place, identity, seasons, weather, feasting and fishing.

Her goal is to grow the Indigenous spaces at UVic and beyond; she wants to see Nuuyum closely woven into contemporary policy-making processes and governance decisions. She uses the analogy of basket weaving to emphasize her point: “We need all of the knowledge in the community before any kind of work can be done. First, you need to know where and in which season to pick cedar bark, how long to leave it to rest, what exactly is involved in the weaving of the baskets and what to do once done.”

Green’s PhD thesis, Learning Haisla Nuuyum through stories about traditional territory, feasting and lifestyles, is an auto-ethnography and uses storying as research. It is a detailed account of her own community experiences as well as teachings from her parents, translated to inform policy development, practice and research frameworks.

It was important to Green that she defend her dissertation not only at UVic on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish and Straits Salish peoples, but in her own home community. On March 25, Green successfully defended her doctoral dissertation in Kitimaat Village. More than 100 people from the village and surrounding area were present.

Her full committee—co-supervisors Dr. Mary-Ellen Purkis, dean of UVic’s Faculty of Human and Social Development, and Lansdowne Professor of Social Policy Dr. Michael J. Prince (HSD); committee member and associate dean Dr. Leslie Brown (HSD), now director of UVic’s new Institute for Studies and Innovation in Community-University Engagement; and external examiner Dr. Peter Cole from the University of British Columbia—was in attendance at the defense, which was followed by a traditional community feast.

While undertaking graduate work, Green was project manager for the Indigenous Child Welfare Research Network at UVic—which facilitates the development of research practices utilizing the knowledge and teachings of Indigenous cultures throughout BC—and she also co-developed the Indigenous specializations program—for students to explore their own cultural knowledge and bring it to research and social work—in the school she now leads.

New role

“I’m really excited and very honoured,” Green says about her new role at UVic. “And it’s a lot of responsibility. I want to help our students get the education they signed up for.”

Green was a UVic undergraduate student in the mid 1990s and remembers only three Indigenous students in the overall PhD stream at the time. “I know what it feels like,” she says. “It is so important to have our people reflected in the leadership.”

Her vision for the school includes offering highly accessible information for all groups of people, with a focus on people with disabilities, queer, racialized and Indigenous students at an international level. She wants to explore additional opportunities for the virtual classroom and expanded exchange programs for faculty and students.

“I am sometimes amazed at how non-Indigenous people from other countries perceive Canadian Indigenous peoples,” she says, recounting an experience at a conference with delegates from Ethiopia, Jamaica and Slovakia. She also recalled being told by a high-school teacher that she “would never succeed.”

“That stayed in my head. But wow, was she wrong.”

“How do we relearn, ourselves? How do I take it forward?” she asks. “Rather than theorize or plan, we have to just do it.”

With friends and close colleagues, she now goes by her gifted name.  “That’s how I’m living it.”

UVic news tip (July 2013)
Faces of UVic Research Video (Oct. 2012)