The EDI Scholar-in-Residence, Dana-Lyn Mackenzie, shared insights into her experiences within various faculties implementing the Indigenous Strategic Plan (ISP), Canada’s first university-wide Indigenous strategic plan. She reflected on the challenges and successes of embedding Indigenous perspectives across UBC’s campuses and communities, and explored how the ISP calls on all faculties, units, and individuals to take meaningful action to support Indigenous self-determination and systemic transformation. The lecture offered meaningful insight into what reconciliation looks like in practice and invited us to consider our collective role in cultivating a more inclusive and respectful academic environment.
Speaker
Dana-Lyn Mackenzie is the Senior Manager of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Indigeneity, Faculties of Forestry, and Land and Food Systems, Lecturer, Bachelor of Indigenous Land Stewardship, Forestry, UBC. Dana-Lyn Mackenzie, a member of the Hwlitsum First Nation and lawyer, is an elected councillor of her Coast Salish nation. She co-created UBC’s Weaving Relations course, IDEAL program, and Cascades of Change program, among others, and has led the UBC Orange Shirt Day Intergenerational March since 2021. Dana-Lyn has worked in Indigenous programming and student affairs since 2012 and has spent the majority of her post-secondary career in four faculties at UBC, the Allard School of Law, Applied Sciences, Land and Food Systems and Forestry. She was recognized with the UBC President’s Staff Awards for Inclusion and Anti-Racism (2024) and Advancing Diversity and Inclusion (2016). Dana-Lyn works as an associate lawyer at Acumen Law, where she practices employment law, wills and estates and helps Indigenous clients. In 2024, Dana-Lyn ran for the BC Green Party as an MLA candidate for Vancouver Yaletown. A proud mother of two amazing young adults, Dana-Lyn dedicates her spare time to her family.