What Matters Most "Soulwork:"Decolonizing and Indigenizing the Curriculum: A Conversation with Dr. Judith Scholes and Dr. Nick Olkovich
Welcome to Episode 16 of Season 4! In this episode I speak with Dr. Judith Scholes and Dr. Nick Olkovich. This episode focuses on decolonizing curriculum and indigenizing curriculum, and what that means particularly at Catholic colleges on Musqueam land at a large public university, UBC. Today’s podcast introduces us to a Wabash grant that Judith and Nick are directing, Exploring Pedagogies of Social Justice, Decolonization, and Indigenization in a Canadian Catholic Context, that has been active at Corpus Christi College and St. Mark's College since 2024 and will be completed in 2026. This grant is from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. There are three overarching questions the grant seeks to engage:
- How can religion and theology faculty take a leadership role in articulating the pedagogical implications of the priorities in our Strategic Plan, especially the commitments to dialogue, social justice and civic engagement?
- How can we create opportunities for diverse voices across disciplines to come together, listen, and learn from one another?
- How might our unique context in Vancouver, British Columbia and on Coast Salish territory teach us how to listen and learn more openly, more reflexively, and more often?
Dr. Judith Scholes and Dr. Nick Olkovich introduce us to the complexity of these questions and why it is essential for all of us to engage these questions.
How do we understand decolonization, indigenization, and reconciliation? “We’re not trying to include the other on our own terms,” as Nick said. We want to move away from, indeed reject, ways of knowledge that in practice consider some people as inferior to others, as Pope Francis discussed in Laudato Si' and Querida Amazonia, and that consider there to be one, true culture in the world. We all need to be listening to and learning from others, especially in our context indigenous peoples.
This is a process that is constantly unfolding, undoing colonial practices and determining what we do in their place. Some of the things we can do is center indigenous voices, and learn from them on their land. And as Judith wisely said, schools are the place where we ought to indigenize, as schools were the primary though not the only place where this process of di-indigenization took place. She also referred to Daniel Heath Justice, professor in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at UBC, and his questioning as to what comprises knowledge in the academy. I will link to his webpage. I will also link to the article Judith mentioned, which is available for free online, by Adam Gaudry and Danielle Lorenz, Indigenization as inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonization: navigating the different visions for indigenizing the Canadian Academy.
This podcast emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC, a centre that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.
What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors.
A few thanks are in order. To Martin Strong, to Kevin Eng, and to Fang Fang Chandra, the team who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly.
I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas.
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Thanks again for listening and remember what matters most.
Director, Centre for Christian Engagement