We are a member team of Understanding the Past to Build the Future, a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) studying Southern Labrador’s cultural history. Our purpose as part of the Labrador Metis Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) is to make available to Southeastern Labrador schools materials generated by the research. Our aim is to make the materials engaging and accessible for both students and teachers in the schools community. To this end, we have elected to use a virtual world format in order to enhance interactivity with the materials in a gaming-like environment. We are developing a Labrador-enhanced virtual world portal using an open source version of SecondLife, called OpenSimulation. We have named our virtual realm portal LabradorLife (or LabLife for short).
The rest of this web page is designed to provide detailed information, progress reports and updates on LabradorLife. In the segments below, we will provide:
We are:
Dr. Evelyn Plaice
Dr Evie Plaice has studied land restitution processes in both Canadaand South Africa, with specific interests in subsistence land use activities and how these shape ways of living and ethnic identity. Her most extensive ethnographic fieldwork has been on land claims and identity management with the Aboriginal people of Labrador, particularly the Metis of central Labrador (Plaice 1990, 2006, 2009 and 2010).
In Education, Evie’s interests include Aboriginal knowledge systems, multicultural teaching, and post colonialism in education. She has been involved in establishing two new areas in Education: the Masters programme in Critical Studies in Education, developed and taught in conjunction with a working-group of colleagues; and the area of the Anthropology of Education, which she teaches through courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
Dr Plaice is the Principal Investigator on ‘Before the Dam: Documenting Spoken Maliseet in Spiritual, Educational, and Cultural Context,’ a four-year SSHRC funded research partnership with colleagues at the Wolastoq Language and Culture Centres in Tobique and Saint Mary’s First Nations. Evie and her colleagues are collecting, translating and translating interviews conducted in Maliseet with Elder-speakers from the six Maliseet communities along the Saint John River valley. Materials from the data bank of interviews will be used by schools and communities to reinforce language use and revitalization (beforethedam.com).
As part of ‘Understanding the Past to Build the Future’ Evie and
her graduate student, Will McGrath, are creating a virtual world portal through which to present Southern Labrador archaeological, historical, and ethnographic research materials for use in the school curricula.
Selected Publications:
2010 ‘“Making Indians”:Debating Indigeneity in Canada and South Africa.’ In Culture Wars. Contexts, Models and Anthropologists’ Accounts (Deborah James, Evie Plaice and Christina Toren, editors).Oxford: Berghahn.
2010 ‘Culture and Ethics in First Nations Education Research’ by Josiah Taylor, Evie Plaice and Imelda Perley. In CELT. Collected Essays on Teaching and Learning: Between the Tides. Volume III, pp.94-99.
2009 ‘The Lie of the Land: Identity politics and the Canadian Land Claims Process in Labrador.’ In The Rights and Wrongs of Land Restitution: ‘Restoring What Was Ours’ (Deborah James and Derek Fay, editors). Abingdon:Routledge-Cavendish.
2006 ‘A Comparative History of “Cultural Rights” in Canada and South Africa.’ In Historicizing Canadian Anthropology (Julia Harrison and Regna Darnell, editors) Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
1990 The Native Game: Settler Perceptions of Indian/Settler Relations in Central Labrador.St John’s: ISER.
Conferences, Workshops and Seminars:
2011 ‘LabradorLife: Virtual Worlds as Educational Environments.’ Works In Progress Seminar by Evie Plaice and Will McGrath, Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick, October 26th.
2011 ‘LabradorLife: Virtual Worlds as Educational Environments.’ Presented by Evie Plaice and Will McGrath at the Atlantic Educators Conference, Moncton October 27th-29th.
2012 ‘The Ponderosa Pine Problem : Accuracy and authenticity in virtual world educational environments’ Presented by Evie Plaice and Will McGrath at the International Symposium on ICT in Education, Montreal May 3rd – 4th
2012 ‘Virtually Unexpected: Authenticity and Accuracy in Creating a Cirtual World Educational Environments’ Presented by Evie Plaice at CASCA 2012: The Unexpected, Edmonton May 8th-12th.
William McGrath, MPhil Candidate, UNB
My graduate work is through the Interdisciplinary Studies program at the University of New Brunswick, where I am enrolled as an MPhil candidate. In my
program, I aim to combine the fields of Anthropology, Education and Information Technology. The purpose of my research is to explore the possibilities for presenting materials produced by the “Understanding The Past to Build The Future” project in an educational format for school use. To do this I will be collaborating with educators in south eastern Labrador in order to help develop a suitable method for transmitting these materials. The focus of my research is to create a virtual environment within which learners will be able to explore and interact with manifestations of the materials that emerge from this project.
Conferences, Workshops and Seminars:
2011 ‘LabradorLife: Virtual Worlds as Educational Environments.’ Works In Progress Seminar by Evie Plaice and Will McGrath, Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick, October 26th.
2011 ‘LabradorLife: Virtual Worlds as Educational Environments.’ Presented by Evie Plaice and Will McGrath at the Atlantic Educators Conference, Moncton October 27th-29th.
2012 ‘The Ponderosa Pine Problem : Accuracy and authenticity in virtual world educational environments’ Presented by Evie Plaice and Will McGrath at the International Symposium on ICT in Education, Montreal May 3rd – 4th.