The Indigenous Graduate Student Symposium Journal is a student-led volunteer initiative founded in 2021 by Supporting Aboriginal Graduate Enhancement (SAGE) at The University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. This volume features twenty-nine abstracts of students who presented virtually and in-person during the 20th Annual Indigenous Graduate Student Symposium (IGSS) hosted at UBC’s Vancouver campus on March 17-18, 2023.

Students represented in this volume are affiliated with Indigenous nations and academic institutions largely in western Canada and spanning across Turtle Island (Indigenous North America) with representation also from Latin America. They include students pursuing masters and doctoral degrees in a diversity of disciplines and fields including Architecture, Biology, Counselling, Dental Hygiene, Educational Studies, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geography, Health Sciences, Indigenous Museology, Interdisciplinary Studies, Kinesiology, Law, Library & Information Studies, Medicine, Nursing, Psychology, Public Health, and Rehabilitation Sciences. All with an interwoven commitment to employing research and Indigenous methodologies in ways that honour community.

The 20th Annual IGSS theme was Honouring Research, Honouring Community. 

Student abstracts in this volume exemplify four interrelated sub-themes:

1. Centering Indigenous Paradigms, Knowledges & Research Practices
2. Renewing & Reimagining Knowledge Transmission: Past, Present, Future
3. Nurturing the Relationship between Community & Research
4. Embodying & Actioning Interventions through Indigenous Research

Student-led and co-sponsored by UBC and SFU, the annual IGSS seeks to provide Indigenous graduate students a supportive and empowering environment grounded in Indigenous cultural values in which to share multidisciplinary research. It fosters peer-to-peer mentoring and supportive connections with emerging and established Indigenous scholars in the SAGE network. Students are invited to present finished and in-progress work connecting to annual symposium themes and sub-themes.