Robina Thomas wants the University of Victoria to be a place where Indigenous people can pursue an education without forgoing their values and beliefs to belong.
Working toward that goal will be part of Thomas’s new role as the university’s first associate vice-president Indigenous.
She will sit on the university’s executive council, providing an Indigenous lens to council, and is responsible for developing a strategy that integrates Indigenous cultures, histories and beliefs into the university’s work.
In her more than two decades at the university, Thomas has seen improvement in the number of Indigenous students and faculty at UVic, as well as courses that include Indigenous content, but she knows there’s more work ahead to remove barriers for Indigenous students.
Thomas points to the university’s use of exams as a main assessment method as one way in which the institution is not designed for Indigenous learners.
“A lot of our folks also come from oral traditions and storytelling traditions, and there’s not always a lot of space for that way of knowing,” she said.
A lack of collective understanding of the history of colonization and its continued effects on Indigenous people in Canada also acts as a barrier, Thomas said.
“It’s really different when you’re an Indigenous person … and you’re always the student putting up your hand saying, well, that’s not how I see the world. That’s not how I understand it. And eventually, you start to shut down,” she said.
Thomas wants to ensure as many students as possible learn the history of Indigenous people in Canada and the impact of colonization during their time at UVic. “It would be wonderful if every student that got an education, who got their degrees through UVic, would leave with a real basic understanding of the history of Indigenous people in Canada,” Thomas said.
Thomas, an associate professor in the school of social work, was the inaugural executive director of the university’s Office of Indigenous Academic and Community Engagement, where she helped to roll out UVic’s first Indigenous plan in 2017 to guide the university’s work in building relationships with Indigenous communities.
She said with the creation of her new role, the university is sending a strong signal that it’s committed to creating a welcoming space for Indigenous students and faculty.
UVic president Kevin Hall said the university has worked hard to support Indigenous students, but he knows there’s more the institution can do to drive truth and reconciliation.
Hall said a similar position existed at the University of Newcastle in Australia, where he held a senior leadership position before coming to UVic last fall, and having someone look at all of the university’s work through an Indigenous lens was critical.
“Many of the things that we set out to do, we were able to do because this role took on this prominent profile at the university and the person in the role was given the mandate to think big and think of ideas that will really make a difference, which is exactly what we’ve asked Robina to do,” he said.
