Working in good ways
The Working in Good Ways project offers thoughtful principles and practical strategies that community engaged practitioners can apply at different stages of their work with Indigenous communities.
Launched by the office of Community Engaged Learning in May 2021, Working in Good Ways provides an Indigenous-informed framework and resources grounded in consultations with Anishinaabe, Cree, Kichwa, Mapuche, Maya, and Williche community partners in Manitoba, Belize, Ecuador, and Chile, as well as Indigenous and non-Indigenous faculty, staff, and students at the University of Manitoba.
The framework was originally developed by Community Engaged Learning to guide their own work in facilitating community engaged learning and social justice-oriented programming for students, in partnership with systemically marginalized communities. Knowing that community engaged learning practitioners and students often cause hard to Indigenous communities when they approach them with a settler colonial mindset, this project was an effort to reduce these potential harms within their field of practice by providing an alternative to western, institutional, and colonial ways of thinking.
The reach of Working in Good Ways has since expanded to research, teaching and learning, self-advocacy, professional development, and other community engagement contexts, as well as work with other systemically marginalized communities.
Working in Good Ways is generously supported by the Indigenous Initiatives Fund.
Working in Good Ways Symposium
Date: May 28, 2026
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Fort Garry campus, University of Manitoba
Please register online at Eventbrite.
Join us on May 28, 2026 for the Working in Good Ways Symposium – a celebration of the five-year anniversary of the launch of Working in Good Ways, an Indigenous-informed framework and resources for working with Indigenous and other systemically marginalized communities.
The WIGW Symposium offers you an opportunity to explore the Working in Good Ways framework and related resources, and to learn how the UM community has applied them to transform community-engaged research, teaching, advocacy and more.
The symposium will:
- Highlight the impact of Working in Good Ways
- Introduce the new Researching in Good Ways framework
- Showcase practical applications of Working in Good Ways across UM
- Demonstrate how you can use these approaches in your own community engagement, decolonization and reconciliation work.
Working in Good Ways Five-Year Celebration & Symposium Schedule
Emcee: Nicki Ferland, Kathleen Wilson
Welcoming and Opening Remarks
9:30 a.m. - 210-214 MPR, UMSU
Dr. Diane Hiebert-Murphy, Provost and Vice-President (Academic)
Christine Cyr, Associate Vice-President (Indigenous) - Students, Community and Cultural Integration
Working in Good Ways Project Team: Anny Chen, Nicki Ferland, Kathleen Wilson, and Gerardo Villagrán
Break 10:30 a.m.
Working in Good Ways at the UM: Teaching, Research, and Administration
10:45 a.m. - 210-214 MPR, UMSU
Jeff Leclerc, University Secretary
Dr. Heidi Marx, Dean, Faculty of Arts
Dr. Javier Mignone, Professor, College of Community and Global Health
Moderator: Gerardo Villagrán
Lunch
11:45 a.m. - 210-214 MPR, UMSU
Concurrent Sessions 12:45 p.m. - various locations
Working in Good Ways with the Land
210-214 MPR, UMSU
Ben Linnick
Dr. Brian Rice
AJ Spence
Moderator: Nicki Ferland
Working in Good Ways in Research
543-544 5th floor, UMSU
Come take part in roundtable discussions about how to research in good ways.
Working in Good Ways with Inuit Communities
Visiting Fire, Buller Lawn or 224B - 224C MPR, UMSU (weather pending)
Elder Martha Peet
Adapting Working in Good Ways for UM Human Resources, The Manitoba Teachers’ Society, and Poverty Awareness & Community Action
217 GSA Lounge, UMSU
Shauna Bell
Lindsay Brown
Anny Chen
Break 1:45 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions 2:00 p.m. - various locations
Creating and teaching a Working in Good Ways Course: EDUA 3500
210-214 MPR, UMSU
Dr. Lucy Delgado
Gerardo Villagrán
Kathleen Wilson
Supporting Students in Learning How to Work in Good Ways with Community
543-544, 5th floor, UMSU
Kaamil Baksh
Dr. Lancelot Coar
Dr. Sarah Cooper
Elder’s Perspective: What does it mean to work in good ways with community?
Visiting Fire, Buller Lawn or 224B - 224C MPR, UMSU (weather pending)
Elder Norman Meade
Visiting on a Pathway for Indigenous Community Engagement
217 GSA Lounge, UMSU
Lauren Hallett
Melanie Hamilton
Sonja Stone
Meghan Young
Break 3:00 p.m.
Preview: Researching in Good Ways with Kathleen Wilson
3:15 p.m. - 210-214 MPR, UMSU
Closing Remarks with Dr. Angie Bruce, Vice-President (Indigenous)
3:45 p.m. - 210-214 MPR, UMSU
Self-Directed Spaces
Low Sensory Room
9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. - Bistro two o five, 2nd floor, UMSU
Natural lighting, scent-free
Quiet (no talking)
Visiting Fire with Scaabes from the Oskâpêwis Training Program (Scaabe School)
9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. - Buller Lawn
Hay bales and camping chairs
Tea
Visiting Room (with Kookum Karen Courchene from 11:45 a.m. - 1:45 p.m.)
11:45 a.m. - 3:15 p.m. - 224A MPR, UMSU
Snacks, tea and coffee, crafts
Smudge available
Researching in Good Ways
Researching in Good Ways will support faculty, graduate students, and others who are engaged in or plan to engage in research with Indigenous and other systemically marginalized communities. Consultations with community partners and members of the UM community will capture good and bad practices, experiences, and stories about conducting research with Indigenous and other partners to distill what we hear and learn into a set of principles and good practices that guide the ways we build relationships and conduct research with Indigenous and other systemically marginalized communities at the UM and beyond.
Researching in Good Ways is part of the second phase of the Working in Good Ways initiative, generously supported by the Offices of the Vice-President (Indigenous) and the Vice-President (Research and International).
Working in Good Ways: a framework and resources for Indigenous community engagement
In support of the University of Manitoba’s commitment to reconciliation, the Working in Good Ways framework and resources offer a set of principles and practical strategies that community engaged learning practitioners can apply at different stages of their work with Indigenous communities. Each principle is informed by the values and practices that we learned about in our comprehensive consultations.
Download the Framework Guide
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Contact us
Community Engaged Learning
203 - 55 Chancellor's Circle
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2 Canada