‘Placing Indigenous ways of knowing at the centre of learning’

“Content warning: This article includes discussions on colonial violence against Indigenous peoples, including residential schools, institutional racism and the theft of Indigenous remains and ancestors. The content may be triggering for some. For support, please see the university’s resource page. Leading and emerging scholars of Indigenous education gathered at McMaster on May 7, for a day of reflection and insights on the changes in higher education since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report. The Indigenization Post Truth and Reconciliation Commission event was organized by Jarita Greyeyes, assistant professor at McMaster University; Candace Brunette-Debassige from Laurentian University; Stephanie Waterman from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto; and Adrianne Lickers-Xavier, assistant professor at McMaster. The organizers opened the event by honouring their grandparents and parents, sharing stories, photographs, and teachings, and demonstrating what culturally grounded research and education can look like in the post-TRC era. Over a hundred people were in attendance, including Indigenous leaders, scholars, and members of the academic and broader community. Professor Rick Monture, who led a traditional opening address in the Cayuga language and then English, spoke about the history of the Indigenous Studies department, and its beginnings at McMaster 30 years ago. “It was pretty mind-blowing to see our things happening in the university space.” Indigenous Studies and English & Cultural Studies professor Rick Monture. Today, the university has the largest number of Indigenous faculty members of any Indigenous Studies department in a Canadian university. Beverly Jacobs, McMaster’s inaugural vice-provost, Indigenous, also addressed the crowd, remarking on the decades of work that had been done at McMaster so far. “We still have a lot of work to do at the institution, but I feel so supported,” Jacobs said. “Supported by the administration, by all of the faculties, by all of the Indigenous peoples who are on campus in our community.” The event brought together Indigenous leaders, scholars, and members of the academic and broader community. In her opening remarks, Greyeyes recalled sitting on a cafeteria floor at the University of Winnipeg in 2015 to watch the closing ceremony of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with hundreds of other students, faculty, staff and community members. “As an intergenerational survivor, I really actually couldn’t believe that so many people cared, and I felt a really big shift that day,” she said. “It took the collective efforts of so many people to bring the final reports and call to action together. In the decades since the report was released, we’ve seen a lot of changes. Today we’ll focus on the Indigenous perspectives on those changes.” Students, student supports and Indigenization The full day of learning was split into three sessions, each with five to six speakers. Each speaker gave a rapid six-minute presentation on their research or area of expertise, followed by a panel discussion with all the speakers. The first session focused on students, supports and Indigenization. McMaster student Alexis Hachey-Brown presents her research. McMaster student Alexis Hachey-Brown shared her undergraduate thesis research, which explored barriers to accessing Indigenous student services in postsecondary education; she plans to continue next year in the Master of Indigenous Studies program. Jaime Lavallee, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Law, spoke about student evaluations and reconciliation, drawing on her personal experience at the receiving end of particularly harsh student feedback. “Our student evaluations often measure resistance to decolonization, not the teaching quality,” Lavallee said. “Without structural reform, these student evaluations function as colonial surveillance tools, disproportionately harming Indigenous faculty and reinforcing inequity in the guise of student voice.” Lickers-Xavier, who is also the lead of the Indigenous Mentorship Network of Ontario , spoke about her own journey in academia. Before getting her doctorate, she remembers hearing from a mentor, “Indigenous people should be in education, but it’s so lonely, and it’s so hard.” Assistant professor Lickers-Xavier speaks during a panel discussion on students, student supports and Indigenization. Indigenous leaders and Indigenization The second session focused on leadership and Indigenization. Greyeyes talked about how Indigenous leaders are getting into institutions, but being given power and authority that’s conditional on sorting out previous messes. For example, “the theft of Indigenous remains and ancestors by universities and sacred items is one of the clear indications of the deep mistreatment of Indigenous people,” she said. “Because we lack the federal legislative framework that exists in the United States, which is NAGPRA, the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, it’s up to Indigenous peoples who takes on these roles [as faculty members, staff and students] to figure out a process for how to rematriate and repatriate these items.” Greyeyes, assistant professor and event co-organizer, presents on university leadership and Indigenization. Kahente Horn-Miller spoke about tracking calls to action and guiding the strategic directions of Carleton University. “I’ve never called it Indigenization. I’ve just called it the work that we do as Indigenous people,” she said. Other presenters in this session spoke of the emotional labour and reconciliation fatigue among Indigenous peoples working in Canadian universities; Indigenous resurgent practice in higher education; the impossibility of decolonization; and lived experience as a community leader and land steward educator. Transforming the academy The third session looked at transforming the institutions themselves. Presenter Krista Ulujuk Zawadski, an advocate and land-based educator from Nunavut, spoke about Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning , an Indigenous land-based initiative delivering accredited post-secondary education through a partnership with UBC. “It places Indigenous ways of knowing at the centre of learning,” she said. “It’s rooted in where we are.” Rather than separating theory and practice, the courses intentionally allow students to earn academic credit while developing practical skills, cultural knowledge, and deeper relationships with land and community. The land isn’t just a backdrop but a teacher, and it can be transformative for students. “I think when we’re talking about transforming the academy, it’s land-use education that offers a really good starting point.” Marie Battiste, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and member of the Royal Society of Canada, spoke about how the society had historically gathered scholarship that was used against Indigenous people and ignored Indigenous knowledge systems. The other presenters in that session included Jennie Anderson, who presented her research on Indigenous intellectual labour in the context of faculty collective agreements in Ontario; and Mskwaankwad Rice, who uses linguistics as a tool for Indigenous Language Reclamation. Educator Stephanie Waterman challenged the notion of a “sense of belonging” for Indigenous students – highlighting that it ignores the complexity of Indigenous identity, relies on the assumption that Indigenous students must adapt, and that students were successful when they had a sense of belonging to their community, not institution. Conference attendees chat between sessions. Duygu Ertemin, a research assistant in the Greyeyes Indigenizing Research Lab, said that as someone whose doctoral work focuses on Indigenous collaborative heritage research, the event deeply impacted the way she thinks about the community-grounded dimensions of Indigenous-led education and relational learning within higher education institutions. ‘A path for those who want to stand beside us’ Laura Lawson is a Master of Indigenous Studies student at McMaster who helped event organizers. “As a Haudenosaunee woman and graduate student, I came away with a sense that Indigenization is not an institutional checklist, but a relational, Indigenous-led process that requires both repre sentation and transformation across all levels of the academy,” she said. “But these changes are not simple nor guaranteed. What we heard from the speakers is that Indigenous leaders in higher ed are stretched both in terms of their administrative burden but also in navigating systems that still pressure us to leave parts of ourselves at the door.” Conference attendees could take a self-guided tour of the former Mohawk Institute Residential School, which reopened last year as an Interpretive Historic Site and Educational Resource. Following the day’s presentations, groups took a bus to the Woodland Cultural Centre, where they could take a self-guided tour of the Mohawk Institute Residential School, take a self-guided tour of the Woodland Gallery featuring an exhibit on family histories by the Genealogy Society, or visit with one another. At first, PhD candidate Ertemin said that attending a dinner gathering in a place where Indigenous children had once been intentionally starved and abused felt emotionally heavy, but “as the evening progressed, I realized the deeper significance of the gathering was about reclamation, survivance, and care,” she said. “The event demonstrated that Indigenous peoples are still here, continuing to thrive, teach, lead, and create loving community spaces despite historical and ongoing colonial actions.’” PhD candidate Duygu Ertemin at the Woodland Cultural Centre. In her closing remarks at the conference, Greyeyes thanked all of the presenters for not just their brilliance, but their generosity, kindness and devotion to their people. “As the late Honourable Murray Sinclair said, ‘getting to the truth was hard, but getting to the reconciliation is going to be harder,’” Greyeyes said. “We know that the work isn’t done… but I am leaving today very inspired by all the things that we’ve heard.” “I’m really looking forward to continuing to work together as we reaffirm our commitment to honouring survivors through the work of Indigenizing the Academy.” This event was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, McMaster University’s Indigenous Priority Fund and the Faculty of Social Sciences, Laurentian University and the Indigenous Mentorship Network of Ontario. The post ‘Placing Indigenous ways of knowing at the centre of learning’ appeared first on McMaster News .

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