Indigenous
Presence
Experiencing and Envisioning Indigenous Knowledges Within
Canadian Post-Secondary Institutions from a Education and
Social Work Faculty Perspective
Saskatchewan - Land of
Living Skies
•
Saskatchewan population 1,080,000;
•
17% of population (146,000) Indigenous
ancestry (2006);
•
Majority of Indigenous populace
between 0-18;
•
By 2016, 45% of children entering
kindergarten Indigenous ancestry;
•
By 2045, 50% of population will have
Indigenous ancestry;
•
73 First Nations communities
(membership 300 - 25000), numerous
Métis settlements
•
35% of population reside on-reserve
• Numbered Treaties operationalized by
Indian Act
• Duty to Consult is affirmed
• Treaty Land Entitlement process
underway in Sask
• Definition of Indian (and who is covered
by Treaty) in flux
British Columbia Best Place on Earth
•
BC population 3,878,000;
•
~3% of population (196,075) Indigenous
ancestry (2006);
•
47% of Indigenous populace between 025 (vs. 29% non-Aboriginal);
•
26% live on-reserve;
•
Urban Aboriginal health and social
service programs in many large centres:
•
196 First Nations communities
(membership 10 - 5000);
•
Several Indigenous groups extirpated.
• Few pre-Confederation treaties
• Federal/Provincial Crown is indivisible
• Modern-day Treaty processes slowly
formalizing Indigenous-Crown
relationships
• Numerous self-Governance models.
Standard Research Grant,
Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council
(SSHRC) 2010-13
Proposal Title: Removing the Invisibility
Cloak: The impact of professional schools of
education and social work on the lives of
Aboriginal children and youth through their
instructional and curricular choices.
Research Team
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Margaret Kovach, University of Saskatchewan (P.I)
Jeannine Carriere, University of Victoria (C.I)
H. Monty Montgomery, University of Regina (Col)
MJ Barrett, University of Saskatchewan (Col)
Carmen Gilles, University of Saskatchewan
(Graduate Student)
Research Participants
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•
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Faculty Members
Social Work, Education
Indigenous, Non-Indigenous
Research Sites
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University of Saskatchewan (Education)
University of Regina (Social Work)
University of Victoria (Social Work)
University of British Columbia (Education)
Participants
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16 Participants in total
10 Social Work, 6 Education
14 Female, 2 Male
10 Non-Indigenous, 6 Indigenous
All tenured faculty
Methodology
• Qualitative
• Literature Review of General Policy in Social
Work and Education Policy Saskatchewan and
B.C by Graduate Students
• Indigenist Principles
• Thematic Analysis
• Individual Interviews
• Conversational Approach with each member of
the team participating in the interviews
• Collaborative
• Elder Consultation and Guidance
Research Question
What are the meta and mini-narratives that
are at work as educators attempt to integrate
Indigenous Knowledges into instruction and
curriculum within education and social work?
Focus of Sub-Questions
In context of engaging Indigenous
Knowledges we asked faculty about
• Personal Pedagogy
• Connection with Aboriginal
Communities
• Role as Facilitators
• Supports to Students
• Resources Required
• Institutional Support
• Connection with Colleagues
• Connections with Respective
Disciplines
In short we asked Faculty to reflect on
Indigenous Knowledges in their
academic life.
Five Key Themes:
• Indigenous Knowledges as a Presence
• Post-Colonial Context of the Academy and
Professional Disciplines
• Relationship between Indigenous Knowledges and
Social Justice generally
• Relationship between Indigenous knowledges and
Anti-colonialism specifically
• The Significance of Relationships, Intentions, and
Actions
Lodge
Indigenous Knowledges
Snow
Academy and Discipline
(Context)
Path
The inextricable relationship
with Social Justice generally
Fire
The significance of Anticolonial Work specific to
Indigenous People
Smoke
The Intentions, Relationships,
and Movement
Lodge - Indigenous Knowledges
Themes
– Different levels of understanding ,
relationship, and experience with
Indigenous Knowledges. Embodied and
performative, familial-shaped, community-shaped,
complicated/not complicated.
– Values situated discourse. Reference to
Indigenous Knowledges within a discussion of
respect, reciprocity, protocol, purpose, intention.
– Place-based understandings. Indigenous
Knowledges as connected to place as land, water,
and community.
– Historical evolution. Indigenous Knowledge
culture in the academy over a period of time.
– Relationship with Indigenous Knowledges
including role and responsibility.
What do I know? What should I do?
What can I do? What do I want to do?
“…I don’t know if Indigenous Knowledge is a specific kind of thing. I move away from
that. I mean, I know there is particular kinds of histories and protocols and traditions
that are Indigenous. But to me, whatever I do – research, teaching – is motivated by
my Indigenous history, experience, life. So I don’t mark it out as this kind of thing
over here. It’s what I live and breathe and it’s who I am.”
“Your connections with the land, your connection with
other people, and moving up from there, so that basic
concept I think is core in Indigenous Knowledges. Have
that respect and acknowledgement at the beginning.”
“There’s something about just being
there, being there, being there, but not
just for a long time, but when they
want, and not between nine and five,
but being there”
Snow - Academic &
Disciplinary Context
Themes
– Indigenous Flag Bearers. Experience of
Indigenous peoples and the the multiple roles
they play. Oscapawace (Helper), Go-betweens,
Conduits.
– Commodification and Double Duty.
Tokenism. Public relations project. Overwork,
community expectations.
– Support Required. Finding Balance.
Recognition and Acknowledgement of
demands of community. Service is defined as
presence in community in a variety of ways.
– Organizational Culture. Orthodoxy, active
exclusion, individualism, exploitation
encouraged. As one participant stated “the
University talks about equity and diversity but
really the boardroom looks no different than
the Donald Trump boardroom.”
“I ended up here and I didn’t realize being here
would take me away … from Indigenous programs,
and people.” “… the structure of the University is
hostile in many ways. I mean they leave their
community behind. I think the level of alienation
and distress that this place creates for Indigenous
students is stunning.”
“I can’t see how you can keep your energy to do it
because the rewards for doing it are different. It’s
on a different merit system than the university has.
And so trying to put them together is sometimes like
trying to put restorative justice in a regular criminal
system. You have to blow one up to have the other
one work.”
“I would argue that for the most part the
profession has been impermeable to the critiques…
We’re really good at internal, you know, we get
some criticism and we do a little internal tweaking
but the mission never changes, the fundamental
mission doesn’t change”.
Path - Social Justice
Themes
– Critical Consciousness Generally. Critical thinking, anti-oppression, power, “What is
justice?”
– Social Justice and Equity Orientation in Teaching. Pedagogy, content, assignments
that go beyond teaching the status quo.
– Social Justice Orientation in Research and Scholarship. Use of Social Justice
–
research and scholarship as a way into thinking about IK. Research with marginalized
peoples, research that focuses on unpacking whiteness.
Relationship with Community and Discipline. Connections between a social
justice approach within the scholarly community/discipline and the ability to consider IK.
Fire - Anti-colonialism, Decolonization
Themes
– Self and Identity as Anti-colonial.
How individuals see themselves as
disrupting or being contrained by
normative processes. Making conscious
efforts not to problematize Indigenous
peoples.
– Anti-colonial Teaching. Facing student
resistance; the painful work of
decolonizing classrooms; white resistance;
deconstructing one’s own eurocentric
pedagogies.
– Ally Positioning. Creating space.
Recognizing disparities. Assisting.
– Anti-colonialism within Discipline.
Acknowledging colonialism happened.
Respecting Indigenous people and
presence.
“Like Fanon says it in his ‘Wretched of the Earth’. He says no amount of us showing our
cultural treasures to the colonist is going to impress them. I mean that’s sort of like trying
to convince them of our humanity. And sometimes I find like that’s the position that
Indigenous people often get placed in. It’s to convince non-Native people that we’re
human beings. Because that’s the degree to which we’ve been dehumanized.”
“...because for a non-Indigenous person
going in to grounds as an ally, its sensitive
work personally for me, and it’s also work I
don’t want to fuck up and so I need
feedback.”
“…the thing that I struggle with is that I
really really, really want every student
to understand the history of First
Peoples in Canada and understand the
incredible sense of shame and guilt and
blame that my profession deserves
because of being complicit in all of
those experiences.”
Smoke - Choices,
Relationships, and Movement
Themes
– Choosing to Integrate IK into
Teaching. Hesitancies and choices
about personal action.
– Teaching Relationships.
Thoughts on teaching Indigenous,
non-Indigenous and mixed
classrooms. Considering extra
efforts demanded.
– Collegial Relationships. Politics
of surviving Academia (nonIndigenous champions, duck and
cover, tensions)
– Community Relationships.
Connecting with & sustaining
relationship with community.
– Self-in-relation to it all.
Personal Knowledge, opportunities
for connection,challenges.
“ I was talking to a friend of mine who’s an Indigenous
scholar and I was saying ‘I have tenure, now I can start
raising hell.’ And she said ‘Well but will you?’ She said
‘You know what my supervisor told me? Once you get
tenure you’re so socialized to be compliant, that you
won’t.’ I went home and cried and thought ‘Okay.’ I
thought that I actually want to start raising some hell.”
“It’s to be an ally but it’s still keeping our distance, being an ally
from a distance, the heart distance, and the head distance, it’s
really complicated... I just don’t feel like I deserve to be in the
centre. I would love to teach in the Indigenous specialization but I
just don’t feel like I deserve that.”
“…like it’s every year going in and
knowing that you’re starting from the
very beginning again. You kind of
wish people were coming with a little
more knowledge... it’s exhausting and
it’s to try to look at the bigger picture
that you’re creating space to learn,
but at the same time there are so
many people that have no idea.”
Preliminary
Recommendations
These are in no particular order.
Recommendations ought to be
contextualized to departmental (local),
mid and highest levels of administration.
– Examine Motivations. Why does an
Indigenous presence matter? Examine
both understanding of IK and the multilayered, often disparate, motivations for
engaging Indigenous Knowledges
– Capacity. Recognize and respond to
capacity issues (i.e. limited Indigenous
bodies). Know the capacity of allies.
– Resist Exploiting the Existing Capacity.
Be conscious of where exploitation is
occurring and why. Plan to rectify.
– Commit - and show evidence of
commitment - to Indigenous presence.
In physical spaces to intellectual,
ceremonial, relational, pedagogical, and
embodied presence.
Preliminary
Recommendations
– Formalize. Through policy on
curriculum, human resources (i.e.
equity hiring), evaluation (tenure) to
keep an Indigenous presence included.
– Organizational Assessments. IK in the
academy isn’t new. What has changed,
what hasn’t, where does change stall.
Why? What can be done?
– Acknowledge Hostilities but Don’t Get
Stuck in Them. There is a history of
distrust, contradictions, ambiguities,
tensions, inconsistencies. There is also
a history of allegiances and friendships.
– Resist the ad hoc/One Off approach:
Formally find concrete ways to show
that incorporating Indigenous
Knowledges in academia or discipline is
not a project to be ‘done’ but rather a
relationship to be nurtured.
There is no Magical Finding or
solution that will get us
there.
“I believe that you can’t bring in
anything like Indigenous ways of
knowing and thinking and believing or
animating - any of that - until people
have an idea or an understanding
about what it is and why it is that we
even have to ask the question - what is
Indigenous knowledge?”
“So I think it’s having a positive
attitude and persistence. Like I said I’ve
been here well over thirty years and so
I’ve seen the days, the days when we
weren’t really visible to now where our
programs, and various ones are
known, being supported in some
ways.”