Invited keynote lecturer: A/Prof. Edward Doolittle, First Nations University of Canada (9:30am Wednesday 22 July).

Other presenters include

• Dr Henry Fowler, Navajo Technical University (12:20pm Tuesday 21 July)
• Dr Judy-anne Osborn, CARMA (3:40pm Wednesday 22 July)

I will use Indigenous knowledge to teach mathematical thinking through traditional string designs. According to Diné/Navajo teachings, spiders taught people how to create string designs, and these activities are traditionally practiced during the winter when insects are hibernating. The lesson will incorporate Navajo winter storytelling, including the teachings of Spider Woman, who represents creativity, problem-solving, and perseverance.

The game Spot-It, played with 55 cards each pair of which is known to have exactly 1 symbol in common (of the 8 symbols printed on the cards), is well-known for its design via a projective plane of order 7. A similar game can be constructed with words, each pair of which has a single letter in common, provided we can find the configuration of a projective plane within a graph constructed of words. In this talk, Professor Edward Doolittle of First Nations University of Canada will demonstrate an efficient method for searching for projective plane configurations and related configurations in graphs obtained from dictionaries in various languages, including English, French, and some of the Indigenous languages of Canada, in particular Plains Cree written in Standard Roman Orthography (SRO) and Plains Cree written in Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics.

Ten years ago, I was asked to Indigenise curriculum in Mathematics at the University that I worked for at the time. Since I didn’t know how to go about that, I began a project exploring this, supported by the mathematics research centre CARMA. We started with small teams of two or three leaders around each of half a dozen themes, with each team including at least one Indigenous person and at least one University-based Mathematician; and the IUM (Indigenising University Maths) project and knowledge community has grown from there: see https://carmamaths.org/iumproject/. I will reflect on my learnings within this journey.

The Peach Stone Bowl Game is a game played during the Midwinter Ceremonies of the Rotinonhsonni (Iroquois) people of Ontario, Quebec, and New York State. The design of the Peach Stone Bowl Game is some interest to mathematicians, in particular the design issues related to the fairness of the game and the expected stopping time of the game. In this talk, Dr Edward Doolittle will present the game and analysis of a simplified version of the game using Markov theory and computer simulations to support the assertion that the game was carefully designed through experimental means in order to meet the ceremonial and social requirements of the game. The work is joint with his graduate student, Mr Layne Burns from James Smith Cree Nation in Saskatchewan.

Speaker Biography: Associate Professor Edward Doolittle is Kanyen’kehake (Mohawk) from Six Nations in southern Ontario. He earned a PhD in pure mathematics (partial differential equations) from the University of Toronto in 1997. From then until 2001 he worked for Queen’s University’s Aboriginal Teacher Education Program, helping to administer the program and teaching Indigenous Mathematics Education, and from 2000 to 2001 he studied the Mohawk language in immersion with Onkwewenna Kentsyohkwa (Our Language Group) on Six Nations. From 2001 he has been on the faculty of First Nations University and the University of Regina, currently as Associate Professor of Mathematics and Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS), a recipient of the Adrien Pouliot Award from the CMS, and a recipient of a Governor General’s Gold Medal from the Governor General of Canada.