Assistant Professor Omeasoo Wahpasiw is among four recipients of the first annual Racialized and Indigenous Faculty Alliance Research Grant at Carleton University.

Dr. Wahpasiw is cross-appointed to the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism and the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies. Her proposal is titled Tla’amin Architecture in Language and Education: Preparing a SSHRC Connection Grant.

“We are excited to announce that the awards will be going to four candidates, all of whom are emerging scholars and are in their first year at Carleton,” says a statement from the grant steering committee.

“Despite the difficult circumstances of both teaching and researching during their first term in a pandemic, all four put together cohesive, innovative, and critical research proposals with the intent of applying for larger Tri-Council grants.”

The newly established grant provides $4,000 to self-identified BIPOC emerging scholars or early-career faculty members and instructors in their applications to external granting agencies.

Wahpasiw is a nehiyaw person from Treaty 6 territory gratefully and happily living on Algonquin territory. Prior to joining Carleton University in 2021, she worked on Mi’kma’ki at the University of Prince Edward Island in Arts and Education.

These positions indicate her diverse and transdisciplinary research and teaching interests, including following up with knowledge translation and mobilization based upon her work with the Tla’amin Nation on the West Coast of Turtle Island.

“The Tla’amin people were kind enough to share their experiences and stories regarding a transitional moment in Indigenous architecture from about 1890-1970 and describe how Indigenous knowledge continued to be shared and disseminated within remaining environments,” she says.

Wahpasiw is committed to the stories of Elders who have built and shaped the intellectual, philosophical, physical, and spiritual worldviews that help define Indigenous trajectories in the current colonial context.

The other RIFA grant winners are:

– Leila Angod, assistant professor in the Childhood and Youth Studies Program at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies, “Youth-Anti-Racism Accelerator (YARA): BIPOC Youth Transforming School Inequities Through Research.”

– Nana aba Duncan, associate professor and Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies at the School for Journalism and Communications, “Researching Black Canadians and Journalism for the Mary Ann Shadd Centre for Journalism and Belonging.”

– Fady Shanouda, assistant professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, The Pauline Jewett Institute, “Student Suicides at Canadian Universities.”