Indigenous visions for Canadian post-secondary institutions: past, present, and future

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. These perverted Canadian education systems laid the foundation for many Indigenous people’s historical experiences with Western education; the genocidal repercussions from which we are healing today. Informed by this brutal history, Indigenous people employed by Canadian post-secondary institutions make decisions about how much of ourselves to bring to the academy, and how much to leave at its institutional gates. We enter Canada’s post-secondary educational spaces in tiny groups or singularly, with the knowledge that Canada used education as a weapon against generations of our families through its Indian Act and 120-year old Indian Residential School project. Students, nuns, and priests are pictured at St. Anthony's Indian Residential School in Onion Lake, Sask., in 1950. Photograph courtesy of Library and Archives Canada/the department of Indian and northern affairs The contemporary 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 in 2008 and 2019, respectively. Quite rightly, there is much more to heal in our relationship due to ongoing land theft, selective implementation of treaties, and instances where post-secondary institutions are built on unceded territories. The land inequities mean that benefits accrue to the institutions, rather than the rights-based or traditional Indigenous nations upon whose lands the institutions are built. For example, the majority of British Columbia’s post-secondary institutions are located on unceded territories. Yet, very few post-secondary institutions have developed or implemented an Indigenous Employment Strategy, Indigenous student tuition waiver or bursary, made spaces for Indigenous Elders as adjunct professors, Indigenous-specific recruitment or exit interview processes. All of these initiatives would support Indigenous poverty-reduction, student success, and Indigenous faculty and staff retention issues. Present Indigenous peoples navigate and negotiate a complex range of contemporary and historical physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual issues in ways that our non-Indigenous colleagues do not. Indigenous peoples are regularly reminded that our right to practice our spiritual ceremonies on campus is subject to policy approval by foreign educational institutions. Indigenous faculty are disproportionately expected to participate in university service work in ways not expected of non-Indigenous faculty, and it takes time away from research initiatives. The Indigenous-led First Nations University of Canada must operate without its own Senate, rather it must adhere to the rules of University of Regina Senate. There is much work to do, and there are too few Indigenous academics to do it. Future work must also be actively supported by all non-Indigenous academics, and administrators across the country. The Canadian Association of University Teachers' recent report, The Slow March Toward Equity, examines evidence from the 2016 long-form Canadian census and the University and College Academic Staff System. According to these reports, Indigenous academics account for only 1.4 per cent of all university professors, compared to one per cent in 2006. In colleges, the rate of Indigenous academics is just three per cent. This is much lower than the 3.8 per cent Indigenous representation in the Canadian labour force. In addition, the data shows that Indigenous faculty are paid less than their non-Indigenous colleagues, and are more often precariously employed, particularly if they are women. This must change and the growth must be sustained in new ways. Efforts to address inequities in research funding held by Indigenous faculty members include equity targets established in 2006 by the Canada Research Chairs program. Some progress is evident among the 76 Canadian post-secondary institutions that support 1,614 research chairs. However most have failed to reach the established target of one per cent for Indigenous scholars, currently allocated at only 0.59 per cent. Indigenous-led research projects may be the stated goal, yet the reality is much different. All research professors who work in these spaces have a debt to Indigenous values of responsibility, reciprocity, and respect to make their work relevant to Indigenous communities and peoples, and to be led by Indigenous peoples. Future In the 2018 article, Indigenization as inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonization: navigating the different visions for indigenizing the Canadian Academy by Adam Gaudry and Danielle Lorenz, the authors pose that indigenization exists on a three-part spectrum. Based on responses to an anonymous, online survey of 25 Indigenous faculty and allies, the authors identify that “on one end is Indigenous inclusion, in the middle reconciliation indigenization, and on the other end decolonial indigenization.” The concept of Indigenous inclusion is perhaps the most common policy espoused by Canadian institutions. It simply aims to increase the number of Indigenous students, faculty, and staff in the Canadian academy, and expects Indigenous peoples to adapt to the existing Western academic culture. The type of change envisioned by many Indigenous academics is not possible on this part of the spectrum, and simply maintains the status quo. Reconciliation indigenization locates indigenization on common ground between Indigenous and Canadian ideals. Finally, decolonial indigenization envisions the “wholesale overhaul of the academy to fundamentally reorient knowledge production based on balancing power relations between Indigenous peoples and Canadians,” and the creation of a new and dynamic institution, the authors write. 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. Together we must create plans with achievable and aspirational outcomes and completion dates. We must hold each other accountable to remain uncomfortable with disruptive and existing inequities. Our collective visionary work today is desperately needed to create a balanced educational future for those yet to come. Shelly Johnson is an associate professor at Thompson Rivers University and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenizing Higher Education. The Hill Times

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Indigenous visions for Canadian post-secondary institutions: past, present, and future

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.

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