President Han-Chieh Chao took a photo after awarding the first honorary alumni award to Professor Simon

National Dong Hwa University（NDHU）Center for Indigenous International Affairs（hereinafter referred to as CIIA）, in response to President Han-Chieh CHAO's（趙涵㨗）efforts to improve international competitiveness and ranking, actively participates in international industry-university cooperation and academic exchanges, jointly creating the school's social responsibility and deep vision in line with sustainable development indicators. Recently, through the full support of President Chao, the CIIA has facilitated the signing of a memorandum of cooperation between the College of Indigenous Studies and the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ottawa, Canada.

The University of Ottawa in Canada is the world 's largest bilingual（English, French）university, and has ranked among the top 2% of global universities in recent years. In recent years, the school has continued to seek the cooperation of outstanding international universities, committed to investing in basic research and talents, so that research institutions with common interests can participate together, and mobilize research knowledge of social and economic importance.

The College of Indigenous Studies signed an MOU with the University of Ottawa Faculty of Social Sciences

The NDHU College of Indigenous Studies, Taiwan 's first institute created for the development of indigenous subjectivity, has long been committed to strengthening the development of international cooperation. Through the implementation of the center 's international affairs tasks, it has experience of mutual interaction and cooperation with indigenous peoples around the world. Due to the special character of Indigenous research at the NDHU College of Indigenous Studies, the University of Ottawa, after substantial exchanges of achievements and feedback, decided to take the further step of signing an inter-university Memorandum of Understanding（MOU）to facilitate further substantive exchange and research cooperation.

The MOU was signed by Canada's representative Professor Scott Simon（史國良）to our school. It is worth mentioning that Professor Simon was also the first honorary alumni awarded by our school last year. During the celebration last year, he was unable to come to accept this award. This time, with the witness of Dean Pasuya 'e Poiconʉ（浦忠成）, President Chao personally awarded the honor to Professor Simon. Professor Simon's research area is the independence and development of Taiwan's Austronesian communities in the field of political anthropology.

Since 2014, the CIIA has assisted the University of Ottawa to jointly carry out ex-situ teaching courses. Professor Shi Guoliang believes that NDHU is a leader in the research of Taiwan 's indigenous peoples, so he devotes himself to the research exchange in indigenous studies. The director of the CIIA, Bavaragh Dagalomai（Jolan HSIEH, 謝若蘭）, also hopes to help expand to other units of the school in the future, including the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Environment, through the many years of cooperation experience, so as to enhance the possibility of diversified cooperation between Taiwan and Canada.

The common goal of this Taiwan-Canada memorandum of cooperation is to hope that the two sides will conduct cross-disciplinary and inter-institutional cooperation based in the College of Indigenous Studies, carry out substantive exchanges in research and graduate training, encourage scholars to cooperate in research projects, jointly seek the support of national and international institutions, and finally apply, disseminate, and exchange research results to provide researchers with international experience or training.

Professor Simon, at the invitation of the Indigenous Peoples International Affairs Center, gave a lecture on indigenous issues