Intellectual Property Considerations

Ethics and Community Approvals

Through a proposal process, FNUniv selected the Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies, Trent University, (Peterborough, ON) to coordinate the story-gathering process during the first two years of NCCIE and the development of teaching resources in the project’s third year. Both Trent’s Aboriginal Education Council and Research Ethics Board approved the NCCIE project. Each Region, where applicable, obtained ethics approval from a lead university, college, or research institute. When approaching a community, school, or organization, the Region sought the requisite approvals to proceed.

NCCIE’s work has been subject to community approvals. Community approval may be:

• written or verbal approval by the educator directly;
• written or verbal approval by a principal and/or education authority/school board chair;
• written or verbal approval by Chief and Council;
• if a community had an ethics process and NCCIE had been requested to follow it, applications were submitted and approval sought.

This project is not ‘research’ as the term is conventionally understood. No data analysis was conducted, and no summary of findings were prepared. Also, NCCIE’s website is not intended to be a complete library of all the diverse Indigenous education initiatives and programs in Canada. The digitally-recorded stories offer a snapshot of Indigenous education across the country.

Intellectual Property: Taking Care of the Knowledge Being Shared

All original content – the digital interviews and any other material shared during interviews – remains the property of the person or organization who consented to the interview. The content has been archived with and password protected by First Nations University of Canada. If anyone who was interviewed wishes for their material to be amended or removed from the website, they may contact NCCIE and submit their request (click on “Contact Us“).