For many, the idea of scholarship and research, while a worthy undertaking in a society that values knowledge, sometimes seems stuck in an ivory tower, stuffy library or a university classroom removed from the greater community.
But, for folks like professor of history at the University of the Fraser Valley Keith Carlson, working in partnership with communities is by design, the key to what meaningful scholarship and research is all about: answering questions that are relevant to those communities.
Carlson, who grew up in qathet, was here recently for the presentation and culmination of a project called: Carving Lost Family History; a carving event and research project initiated by qathet-based Ukrainian-Heiltsuk artist Ivan Rosypskye, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, and University of the Fraser Valley.
"[With my research] I try to meet different nonprofits, Indigenous groups, but it could be municipalities or any sort of organization that's community anchored and looking to do research," said Carlson. "Then we'll set up a research team."
Instead of being contracted by a university, Carlson said they will look for a corporate or community sponsor for the project.
For Rosypskye's project, Carlson was the principal investigator and Alexis Klassen, a Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies student [now graduated] from the University of the Fraser Valley, was tasked to dig into Rosypskye's Ukrainian family history.
"We'll design a project so it's got the academic parameters to figure out how long it will take," said Carlson. "I provide through my [tier-one Canada research chair in Indigenous and community-engaged history] position, my time, because I'm federally funded, so I'm not having to generate a bunch of bums and seats for tuition dollars."
Carlson said he brainstormed for ideas on how to get the research his teams does with communities out into the public sphere and make it meaningful.
"There's two ways to make it meaningful, from my perspective: one is if you connect with artists, they can become knowledge translators and take that information [the research] and transform it into something artistic," said Carlson. "Also, if you can reach K-12 educators, it's actually going to be going somewhere [ students learning]."
The Peak reported previously that Carlson applied for a grant open to anyone studying Ukrainian-Indigenous relations, and that's when he thought of Rosypskye.
"I knew Ivan when I was a kid and knew he is now a carver, and so I contacted Ivan and we put together the idea for the project," said Carlson. "The research involved reading carefully, peer-reviewed sources, but then doing original research into Ivan's family's history."
Carlson said they accessed digitized European archives that led to finding tragic things out about the Nazi era and what happened to Rosypskye's [Ukrainian] grandparents.
"The idea was to help repatriate that family history back to Ivan,” added Carlson, “and then he could create a piece of art that would tell a story that would be thought-provoking to students and the general public about colonialism from both his mother's side in Canada [Heiltsuk] and what happened in Ukraine.”
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