Opinion
Indigenous visions for Canadian post-secondary institutions: past, present, and future
By Shelly Johnson September 16, 2020
The relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canadian post-secondary institutions remains wary, despite Canada’s apologies and financial settlements for its Indian Residential School or Sixties Scoop projects.
Elders and youth watch the commissioners of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls during its closing ceremonies and report handover on June 3, 2019. All change-makers must continue to ask hard questions of ourselves, and others, about what ethically and respectfully must be done to create a new dynamic that combines the strengths of Indigenous and Western educational systems, writes Shelly Johnson. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade
For thousands of years, sovereign and thriving Indigenous nations sustained Indigenous education, health, and governance systems. The settler colonial Canadian government, along with Christian churches, forcibly replaced Indigenous education systems with its Indian Residential School project. Widespread substandard instruction, violence, forced starvation, nutritional experimentation, ethnic cleansing, trauma, and fear followed.
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