2022 Distinguished Alumni Award recipient Vivian Giang, Bachelor of Applied Communications in Professional Writing ’07, Professional Writing ’05, University Transfer, Bachelor of Arts ’02, has travelled the world in pursuit of learning. She’s bringing that knowledge home and helping connect Indigenous communities involved in natural resource management on their traditional lands.

In addition to her multiple accreditations from MacEwan, Giang studied at Royal Roads University, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Germany and Kyushu Women’s University in Japan. She’s currently pursuing a PhD through the University of Alberta, with her doctoral research focusing on risk communications with Indigenous communities in natural resource management, specifically in geothermal energy.

“There’s an opportunity for Canada to respond to the need for a low-carbon future,” says Giang. “However, we are actually one of the last – if not the last – country on the ring of fire to develop geothermal. Every other country has explored it and has been developing it, but in Canada we are just starting.”

That lack of experience on Canadian soil meant Giang had to look elsewhere for some of her research. She received a Fulbright scholarship and a Canada Graduate Scholarships – Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement and spent nine months working with Native Hawaiians (Kānaka Maoli), creating a base knowledge of how Indigenous communities can be involved in the development of geothermal energy.

“I had a wonderful opportunity to work with Ka Papa Loʻi O Kānewai at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa,” says Giang. “I learned a lot about Native Hawaiian culture, their worldview and how natural resources are supposed to be protected and used properly. I started finding similarities between how Indigenous communities in Canada and Native Hawaiians view resource development.”

Following her time in Hawaiʻi, Giang received a National Geographic Explorer grant which took her research to Aotearoa – New Zealand. There, she took a more focused look at how some Indigenous communities were actively involved in developing geothermal energy.

“The Māori communities that I visited told me a lot about their history with geothermal and how that history informs the way they care for the resource today.”

Now, Giang is bringing back the stories she has heard from Indigenous communities abroad in hopes of co-creating knowledge with communities in Canada regarding potential geothermal development on Indigenous traditional lands. Further, she hopes that the community youth will be able to participate in the research itself. Once the knowledge base is created, each community will self-determine if they are interested in pursuing geothermal energy development.

“We need to look at natural resource development and geothermal energy with a lens of making sure that it's an equitable process, that all voices – especially those who are most affected by these projects – are at the table to ensure that communities understand what's happening in the areas that they're living in and whether they are ok with it. Risk communication plays a huge part in that.”

Giang says that her research and collaboration with Indigenous communities is a part of reconciliaction and a part of reciprocity. Her parents were both refugees who came to Canada after the Vietnam War, and she sees the significance of treaties in allowing her family safe passage to a new home.

“If it weren't for treaties, my family wouldn't have had an opportunity to be here today. It's a realization I came to much later as an adult. When I was younger, we had some education about First Nations cultures but not a lot. I would say the first time I heard about residential schools was when I came to university here at MacEwan,” she says.

Originally, she chose MacEwan for the small class sizes, but she found that the personal relationships she formed with professors and peers kept her coming back. She’s currently working on campus as a sessional instructor, teaching writing and grammar; interpersonal communication and human interaction; and advanced business communication.

“The professors at MacEwan really care about students and take the time to help them get to the next part of their career,” says Giang. “It was an honour to be asked to come back and to contribute to that mission.”

One of those caring professors helped her get involved with the United Nations Association in Canada. As a former student in one of Dr. Chaldeans Mensah’s political science classes, she received his recommendation to be a short-term consultant with the organization. She went on to become the Alberta Project Officer for the national Multimedia & Multiculturalism Programme, which focused on increasing diversity in Canada’s media landscape. During her time with the organization, Giang also worked on a project examining what it means to be a pluralistic society, and the FIFA Football for Hope/Sports Unites Programme, which taught children about healthy living and staying active.

She was also an Action Canada Fellow in 2019-20, where her cohort was tasked with researching and making recommendations on the topic of “the future of work”. Giang’s taskforce chose to focus on Indigenous inclusion in the workforce, and her cohort travelled across Canada to meet with policy makers, government officials, non-profit organizations and innovators to learn about their experiences and thoughts about the future of work in their part of the country.

Even with all of those impressive accolades under her belt, Giang was both surprised and thrilled to be named a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award.

“It was a complete surprise but a huge honour. It is a great way to recognize the struggles and sacrifices my parents made so that I could do the things that they weren’t able to do, such as go to school. But more importantly, it honours their values and the things that they had selflessly taught me and my siblings: to give back to the community, to do your best to contribute to society and to make change for the better.”