My journey as a student of Human Rights and Social Justice began 16 months ago as a person with legal background with experience working in the NGO sector. At that time I believed, I have good knowledge on Human rights as a law student. However, this program changed my assumptions and challenged me to think human rights and social justice from various perspective such as social, political, historical, psychological, and creative. I understood human rights and social justice from theoretical, experiential, practical perspective which broadened my knowledge on this matter immensely.
Program Learning Outcome 1: Articulate and apply advanced, interdisciplinary theories and practices of human rights and social justice.
This program taught me that human rights is not a matter of a particular sector of knowledge. As a student of law, I used to think and see human rights only as a matter of legal sector. This program changed this understanding and taught me to see human rights from various angle, such as political, historical, social, economic, psychological, anthropological, geographical, and philosophical. In brief, this is a division of knowledge where interdisciplinary theories and practices are to be applied. I attended courses where I had the opportunity to apply interdisciplinary frameworks, combining legal theory, anthropology, Indigenous studies, settler colonial aspect, and social justice movements.
I my course HRSJ 5110: Genocide in the 20th Century, I learnt about holocaust, critical point of view of bureaucracy during genocide, survivor’s testimonies of Holocaust, political theories, broad definition of genocide. All these helped me to understand the layered nature of violence in our life. At first I saw genocide from legal perspective, as international crime, (mens rea, actus rea, intention), but slowly this course broadened my perspective and I got to know about memory politics, selective remembrance, moral responsibility that pushed me think out of the box and to examine how our societies normalize these injustice in our everyday life. So, I applied my interdisciplinary thinking, moving among dimensions of legal, political, historical, testimonial, psychological and ethical perspectives.
I also applied my interdisciplinary theory and practice, on other courses as well, such as for HRSJ 5030, ‘Problem Solving in the field’ course, I wrote my grant proposal on Restorative justice, and for doing that I dealt with various sectors of knowledge, such as criminology, Indigenous studies, youth studies, community-based research method. Applying interdisciplinary theory, I argued about why more people should get aware about Restorative justice. Through this program I realized theories is a lens through which injustice, and resistance should be seen widely.
Program Learning Outcome 3: Demonstrate knowledge, through experiential learning, of key human rights and social justice issues locally, nationally, and globally.
One of the most impactful learning of this program for me is experiential learning. As an international student in Canada, I had lack of understanding local, national human rights and social justice issues of Canada. For example, during my study of this program, for the first time I learnt that parts of Canada is still suffering from colonial violence and they are fighting for decolonization. When I studied the Course HRSJ 5020, ‘Indigenous Ways of Knowing’, for the first time I learnt about Canadian history of colonization deeply. When I visited ‘ Indian Residential School of Kamloops’ as part of this course, I realized the depth of the sufferings, also understood the generational trauma, since the person who was showing us all the rooms, spaces, also struggled to hold back her emotions and as a human being, I could sense the trauma. This experience reshaped my moral responsibility as a guest on Indigenous land.
As part of my course, HRSJ 5120, ‘Settler colonialism: Decolonization and Responsibility’, I visited to NGO ‘Same sky’ and saw closely how resilience also can be raised through creative expression. This experience directly helped me and inspired me to take an creative attempt to paint a t-shirt, where I felt creative liberation to express my version of colonial violence on Indigenous communities. I also wrote a script for a stage play for my course HRSJ 5150, ‘Truth to Power’. In this script, my background location is Bangladesh, where a girl child is forced to get married by her family for social pressure and family reputation. I showed through story telling how this little girl finally overcome through resilience and proper support.
As part of my practicum, I worked at ‘Big Bear Child and Youth Advocacy Centre (CYAC), where I learnt about child abuse, cases, based on Kamloops. This experience also was a significant experiential learning for me. I learnt how a local NGO works, what the actual settings, I met real life professionals such as RCMP, other NGO officials, for this purpose. I interviewed Kamloops Immigrant Service (KIS) official for the purpose of y research who helped me to understand how in real life, immigrant mothers feel, what are their barriers and what can be helpful for them so that they can seek help in their need. Working at Big Bear as part of my practicum, gave me experience in the Canadian context, which is a global exposure of me.
So, as whole, this program taught me through experiential learning of key human rights and social justice issues locally, nationally and globally. Through this program I experimented, Canadian, Bangladeshi, South Asian human rights and social justice issues which broadened my knowledge and understanding immensely.
Program Learning Outcome 9: Demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of and respect for the values of a range of Indigenous knowledge and wisdom.
I developed sophisticated understanding of and respect for Indigenous knowledge and wisdom. First of all, I had no idea about ongoing colonial injustice against the Indigenous communities in Canada. Coming from Bangladesh, I thought Canada is a rich, developed country where everyone live happily. However, after starting this course, I was shocked to know the history of violence and the ongoing impact of it against Indigenous communities. The knowledge is sophisticated because, the oppression is not apparent but structural. The state designed the organizations, systems, policies, in such way, that it sustains oppression, racism very cleverly. When I studied courses HRSJ 5020 ‘Indigenous ways of knowing’ and HRSJ 5120 ‘Settler Colonialism: Decolonization and Responsibility’, I realized the oppression against Indigenous communities. These courses also taught me the Indigenous knowledge, wisdom, the relationship of Indigenous communities with their lands and overall the knowledge sharing aspect through their story telling method. I learnt a lot of Indigenous stories from the HRSJ 5020 course, and found that Indigenous communities have moral guide for almost all kinds of situation. Stories are their guides, and not only stories. They learn, allowed themselves to be guided according to the moral of Indigenous stories. This fact changed my perspective. Before, stories were mostly matters of time passing for me, I never imagined that stories can be as powerful as explained through Indigenous scholars. I also became surprised to know that Indigenous stories can be a effective method of academic research as well. So, all these factors expanded my overall knowledge Indigenous life. From the course, HRSJ 5250, ‘Risk, Place and Social Justice, I learnt about Indigenous agriculture and how this is an example of sustainable way of agriculture, and development. I also studied case studies, like ‘Indigenous food forests’ as an effective model to fight against food insecurity in Canada. All these aspects show Indigenous knowledge and wisdom that I learnt through this course.