Alumni, artists and community members are using augmented reality to teach students about Indigenous culture and medicine at the University of Calgary’s Foothills campus.

The digital exhibit aims to bring Indigenous perspectives into the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine by bringing a large Indigenous mural to life. The mural, which currently overlooks the Health Sciences Centre atrium, features the Tsuut’ina medicine wheel and symbolizes the historical and spiritual significance of Indigenous health and medicine.

Four Indigenous artists from the Treaty 7 region worked on the mural, and each artist chose a quadrant of the medicine wheel and designed a season to go with it – east and yellow, south and red, west and black, and north and white.

Students, faculty and visitors can use the IndigiPRINTS app developed by the Urban Society for Aboriginal Youth (USAY) on their smartphones to learn about Indigenous perspectives on health and medicine. They can also interact with certain parts of the mural by clicking on a quadrant.

Jared Tailfeathers, one of the artists involved with the mural’s creation, said the medicine wheel is a basis for wayfinding and living life in harmony with a good relationship with the world in a lot of Indigenous cultures. The mural is a collaboration to try and navigate two different systems with two different views of health and medicine with the medicine wheel as the center point, he said.

“The concept of medicine for Indigenous people is quite a bit different than the idea of Western medicine. Western medicine is really about techniques, like things you can take orally or through a shot. Indigenous thoughts on medicine are more relational. It’s the relationship with the world around you, with everything around you,” said Tailfeathers.

“It’s the relationships that you have with the plants, what sort of things you get from the plants and what animals you can get medicine from. What you can learn from different people and different civilizations and things like that … We would call that medicine as well.”

Tailfeathers said he was excited when he was approached to add AR elements to the mural.

“I really want them to be able to see Indigenous points of view, because our medicines didn’t go anywhere. we use them all the time in between how we do things and how Western culture … We’re always connected,” he SAID.

“For Indigenous medical students, they can see their culture and also be able to easily share that with the community members. But also for newcomers or people who’ve lived in Canada their entire lives, not only to learn a little bit more about local history, but also local medicines that they can find they’re exploring.”

Laine Grace, a University of Calgary alumna, helped develop the project along with alumna Arzina Jaffer and USAY. She told LiveWire Calgary that the project took around a year to bring to fruition, and the team is now conducting research on how students feel about the mural.

“We interviewed a bunch of [medical] students on how the mural impacted them, and a lot of what we got was there was that initial wow factor and then it sort of became a background piece,” she said.

“Lectures are almost using it for their land acknowledgments. They have a picture of it, and I think that’s helping. But there’s more to the teachings around it, so [cultural events] I think are going to help keep it relevant.”

Grace added that the mural is a reminder for students that medicine in Indigenous cultures is more holistic compared with Western medicine. A lot of Indigenous youth she interviewed said it is a step in the right direction for reconciliation, but it’s not the end of the process.

“You have to sit with [the mural] and think about it. Really, every panel is medicine. Smudging is medicine. Pipe sharing and sitting in a circle and talking with friends is medicine. The DNA is, I think, passing stories, passing down through generations through storytelling, and that’s medicine. The bears walking in nature is medicine. [The outdoors] is medicine. All of those things are medicine. so, I think it does a really good job of showcasing that, whether everybody sees it or not,” she said.

Augmented reality is a tool for decolonization

Augmented reality and virtual reality technologies are also used as tools for decolonization and reconciliation while empowering Indigenous youth to explore STEM (science, technology, engineering, math).

LeeAnne Ireland, USAY’s executive director, said the organization wanted to get involved with the AR project at the University of Calgary because of the significance medicine plays in Indigenous culture.

“Often people don’t think about the influence of North American Indigenous culture and worldview on medicine … I think that we’re often removed from the idea that nature, connection, culture, ceremony are part of health, which makes this project super cool because it showcases that health is beyond your physical body,” she told LiveWire Calgary.

USAY is also using augmented reality and art as tools to engage in oral traditions, which is a key part of most Indigenous cultures throughout North America.

“The idea that [AR] engages a part of oral tradition really fits in with the cyclical nature of Indigenous storytelling and traditions and teachings. That medium really is a unique way to achieve that goal,” Ireland said.

“We’ve been working with augmented reality [since 2018]. I think it’s inspired me to tell not just a story about what’s on the page or wall. What’s the story behind that you want people to tell? What’s the oral tradition? What’s the teaching behind it?”

Augmented reality and art are also decolonized spaces for Indigenous people to express themselves, she said.

“Other forms of media, like film and printed newspapers, have at times been problematic for Indigenous people and telling their story … But you have new ways of storytelling, like virtual reality or augmented reality, that are sort of these decolonized spaces where we have an opportunity to tell stories that don’t have to uphold those systems of oppression that other forms of media maybe have fallen victim to at times,” Ireland said.

“We have opportunities to explore storytelling that can be different, that can tell stories in unique way, that can be inclusive and engaging. [We can] think about storytelling and mediums of storytelling in cool, unique ways and different ways and ways that we haven’t thought of before, and ways that don’t have to use, like the patriarchy and racism and all of these systems that maybe haven’t always served everyone.”

Ireland said USAY is currently working on several AR projects and she encourages Indigenous youth who may have an interest in computer science and different forms of experimental learning. USAY is currently expanding its four phone apps – IndigiMAPS, IndigiWORLD, IndigiTRAILS and IndigiPRINTS – to include new experiences and new learning opportunities. For example, six new languages are being added to IndigiMAPS and new walking tours are being added to IndigiTRAILS.

Some Indigenous youth in USAY are also using virtual reality headsets to create digital sculptures and exporting them into the apps so people can walk through a digital sculpture installation at a park in Calgary.

“One of our goals is to maybe create an open world VR game where you can go on missions and have learnings about traditional Indigenous teachings and how to apply them in a modern world through like an open world learning game, which I think is going to be a unique idea. Hopefully, we can get that funded,” she said.

“I think we’re naturally following where the Indigenous youth in our organization lead us. Whatever their interests are, we’re going to follow their lead … I would also like to build more skills for Indigenous youth in our programs, where we can have them like learn some of the coding and the game creation engines and the development of that, or even art creation.”