The 2023 Program (22 May to 9 June 2023) was successfully completed on June 9th. The Program is organized by Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights and co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. It enjoys the cosponsorship and collaboration of the University of British Columbia in Canada and the University of Auckland in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Twenty-seven participants from fifteen countries and seventeen Indigenous nations participated in this year’s Program, which took place in a remote format.
This is an immersion program and participants were expected to devote about four hours daily to the Program. The course encourages team learning and synergy by creating a community atmosphere among participants. The online components consisted of mostly synchronous and some asynchronous lectures; discussions with lecturers; discussions among participants; participant panels; and a virtual platform for contacts among participants.
There were twenty-three lectures and workshops in a three-week period, including sessions with officials of a Native American Nation and sessions with UN officials. In addition, there were nine participants’ panels. The Program provides an overview and analysis of the major questions in Indigenous affairs today, as they have emerged globally in the last decades and as they have been put forward by the Indigenous Peoples’ movement, culminating in the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and efforts towards its implementation.
