大象传媒

The Research Hub at Faculty of Education is proud to announce that Dr. Cher Hill, along with co-authors Elder Rick Bailey, member of Chief and Council of the q虛铆c虛蓹y虛 First Nation, and contemporary Salish artist Carman McKay, have received the prestigious 2025 R. W. B. Jackson Award for the best English-language article published in the  (CJE) in 2024. The award-winning article, 鈥�,鈥� offers a transformative approach to decolonizing place-based education through meaningful collaboration with Indigenous community members.

Selected from all English language articles published in CJE in 2024, the paper was recognized for its interdisciplinary collaboration, its grounding in community relationships, and its critical engagement with colonial histories of place. In presenting the award, CJE Anglophone Editors, Jeannie Kerr and Ee-Seul Yoon, commented on the significance of Indigenous community-engaged and responsive research and the integrated voices of the authors speaking to important issues of land, relatives and responsibilities with young students in educational settings.

The project was inspired by Elder Rick Bailey鈥檚 vision to share knowledge in the community about the q虛铆c虛蓹y虛 (Katzie) Slough鈥攁 sacred cultural waterway altered by settler development. This vision became the catalyst for a powerful community-based inquiry initiative, inviting students, educators, artists, and Knowledge Keepers to illuminate the slough鈥檚 precontact history, the present environmental challenges, and to collaboratively re-story imagined futures for the Slough.

Supported by SSHRC funding, the team collaborated with M谩thxwi (Matsqui) artist Carman McKay, who created a mural at a local school that brought the voice of the slough into a broader pedagogical and artistic conversation. The mural integrated Elder Rick Bailey鈥檚 stories and embodied a rich, place-responsive curriculum grounded in truth-telling, ecological awareness, and Indigenous sovereignty. The children鈥檚 artwork of the Slough also inspired the creation of the mural and provided an opportunity to meaningfully engage with what they had learned from Elder Rick, and to offer a creative responses to the teachings. The mural, example of the students鈥� art and the story of the process is available on the Salmon as Family website, .

In her remarks upon receiving the award, Dr. Hill expressed gratitude to the editorial team for recognizing the value of this work and encouraged educators to connect with their own local waterways and histories. 鈥淲e hope this work inspires others to listen, learn, and act in relation to the places they inhabit,鈥� she said.

The is presented annually by the Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE) to honor excellence in educational scholarship. This recognition with her colleagues affirms the transformative potential of research that is ethically grounded, community-embedded, and committed to decolonial futures.