With a deep sense of genealogy and kinship, Dr Dara Kelly-Roy of the Leq'amel First Nation people of the Stolo Coast Salish, Pacific North-West Coast Canada, anchors her life with a deep passion for her people and a reverence for her ancestors and their wisdom of generations past.
Dr Kelly-Roy, an Associate Professor at the Beedie School of Business in Vancouver of Simon Fraser University in Canada and a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair, was recently in Naarm/Melbourne participating as a Visiting Scholar at the Dilin Duwa Centre for Indigenous Business Leadership.
Dilin Duwa, meaning 'everlasting flow' in the Woi-Wurrung language of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations in Victoria, is a dynamic centre established some four years ago through the Melbourne Business School (MBS) and the University of Melbourne.
Dilin Duwa operates with a staunch focus on progressing and Indigenising Business education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians nation-wide.
Similarly, Dr Kelly-Roy is profoundly committed to the progression, maintenance and decolonisation of Business education for First Nations entrepreneurs and students of Business in Canada.
"Your descendants need you, the pathway you're going to carve out matters deeply to the next generation," she said.
"The ancestors, and your ancestors are always flowing through you."
The lectures she gave through Dilin Duwa, saw a sizable attendance both in house and online. They were Indigenous Economic Wellbeing and Freedom and Indigenising Business Curriculum.
Within her lectures Dr Kelly-Roy mentions that there is "nothing Indigenous about participating in the global market, yet those links exist".
"There is something else that is an Indigenous economy underneath all these colonised structures," she said.
"The old ways we (as First Nations) engaged economically, they're still there."
As a child, Dara says she was both introverted and imaginative, she would read Fantasy novels of faraway kingdoms with mythical creatures, perhaps not unlike deep stories of Indigenous mythology, she also enjoyed stories of the science fiction genre. Her outlet was soccer, she maintained a sporting life in her teen years and continues to play soccer to this day.
"I also love paddling in canoes and being on the water as much as possible," she said.
Her journey within academia began young too. With her reticent calm energy allowing a laser sharp focus, a young Dara was in an accelerated High School program and worked hard to achieve good grades. This pathway, however, was not without major hurdles and bumps in the road.
"When I got to University, I did not do as well as I hoped, I did not do well in the Science courses. I deferred. I took time off and decided to travel to India. It was an amazing experience and a culture shock, it was worth it", Dr Kelly-Roy said.
When she returned to university in Canada, she transferred to a First Nations Study program at UBC (University of British Columbia), were she excelled in her studies.
The study program was through the Faculty of Arts as an undergraduate degree.
"Indigenous pedagogies and ways of learning and soaking in information makes a big difference to Indigenous students."
"In that program, I was exposed to research processes and conducted mini data collection projects, and I learned about Indigenous research methodologies and the work of renowned Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith," she said.
This led Dara to pursue further study far from home in Aotearoa (New Zealand), where she would ultimately stay for nine years, ending in completing a Phd through The University of Auckland Business School.
"That sparked my curiosity to pursue graduate studies in Aotearoa-New Zealand which is where I studied Indigenous leadership to gain a Master of Commerce …I stayed to complete my doctoral studies there as well, focusing on the philosophy of Indigenous economy of my own tribal region, the Coast Salish peoples in Canada."
"I studied for as long as possible until I reached the end," Dr Kelly-Roy said.
Dara became Dr Dara Kelly after nine years in Aotearoa, completing her doctoral studies in Business culminating in a Phd, through the University of Auckland. Dara's thesis drew on her strong connection to her Indigenous roots and looking deeply at Coast Salish philosophies to improve economic development outcomes. She looked at how 'Coast Salish economic freedom is expressed withing the spiritual and ceremonial institution of gatherings'.
After Aotearoa, she moved home to Canada to do a post-doctoral fellowship at the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
"I learned that the landscape of business schools in Canada was shifting in 2018 to begin to create space for Indigenous knowledge in the discipline," she said.
"I ended up getting my first job as an academic at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University allowed me to shape both research and teaching in new ways."
One of those new, yet old ways of teaching was moving key teaching modules of the Indigenous Business Leadership Executive MBA to a Long House (a traditional First Nation communal gathering space and house of learning where she and other teachers, were able to gather First Nations students and teach, where circular learning and sitting where one is comfortable to learn took priority.
The Long House was an initiative born of her dream of teaching in one, that was realised through the Aboriginal Strategic Commissioning Fund in Canada.
"There (at the Long House) everybody is welcome to bring their own spiritual self," she said, "Students are able to bring their full selves into the space and learn in a comfortable environment to engage with wisdom and knowledge," Dr Kelly-Roy said.
She says that sometimes, for some students, the learning impact is not necessarily felt in the moment but can be something that reverberates later in life.
With the breadth of knowledge, Dr Kelly-Roy imparts an expertise that indeed echoes her ancestors and reverberates an ancient legacy that lends itself to adaption for First Nations people in this now modern world of business and economics.
"For me, research is storytelling, and from Indigenous perspectives, storytelling is everything. It is law, governance, business and economics. Storytelling also transcends time and space, so it allows for much creativity and imagination about the world we need and want to live in.
"This links to some of my early childhood interests in science fiction, imaginative work, and world-building."
Her teachings centre on Indigenous connections of belonging, relationships, ceremony, local protocols, family, belonging, leadership and a different way of thinking to the Western schools of thought.
"Within our work we have a knowledge keeper, that's vital to the sector, looking at learning and healing with a trauma informed knowledge keeper."
Dr Kelly-Roy speaks of relationships to 'local nations,' and to each other corelating with a genuine sense of belonging – where an individual and tribe's relationship to culture plays a vital part in connection.
"My approach to research is best informed by the voices of the ancestors. This means that I think of my role as an Indigenous scholar to use story-telling methods to highlight those voices from all kinds of ancestral spaces and places, and allow them to speak to us and to future generations," she said.
"Everything I do then, is grounded in a certain ability to listen well, and be literate in the cultural ways of being, knowing and doing according to my ancestors, and allowing that lens to help me understand and connect with other Indigenous peoples globally."
Dr Kelly-Roy is serious about her cultural obligations, and obligations to community referring to ancient and correct knowledge of ancestors being passed down through generations to the next generation of knowledge keepers, that will both honour and protect these 'strings of knowledge', that will be vital progression tools for future generations.
Dr Dara is working on research for a renewed economic plan that accounts for the aspirations of future generations of Indigenous peoples across the world and works towards Indigenous Economic Wellbeing and Freedom (IEWF).
