By Lisa Gregoire
Katherine Minich, an urban Inuk with family ties to Pangnirtung, Nunavut, is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration. “Inuit have crafted and perfected technologies for centuries,” she said. “How Inuit organize and govern themselves, incorporate modern tools and adapt to a drastically changing Arctic climate are all worth teaching to students.”
Minich said Indigenous faculty tend toward pragmatic, results-driven research to benefit home communities and, more broadly, dismantle colonial systems that perpetuate inequality in Canada. Her research revolves around self-determination in Arctic public policy—moving decision-making closer to communities, for example, and qualifying life experiences as equivalent to formal education in northern towns to counteract southern transient hiring.
Minich is also involved in Carleton’s Graduate Diploma in Indigenous Policy and Administration, a program that accepts both grad students and workforce professionals. The latter are sometimes Indigenous—band members and administrators, for instance—but also non-Indigenous public servants and those who aspire to work with Indigenous partners or organizations but don’t know how best to do that.