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Abstract

This article emerges from an analysis of the data from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded research project that examined the ways two universities were taking up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its Calls to Action. This article focuses on reconciliaction as critical social action. A multi-levelled analysis of the data revealed that colonialism and violence in the academy was a theme of critical importance to research participants. This article concludes by making recommendations for ways universities can unpack and address violence and contestation to move reconciliation forward in meaningful and respectful ways.

Keywords

Universities indigenous resurgence reconciliation contestation

Introduction: Setting the context

With the Canadian spotlight currently shining on the ‘reconciliation’ project, Indigenous scholars have been consistently highlighting the importance of addressing treaty rights in any reconciliatory efforts, particularly in education. The 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report¹ identified education as a critical site for Indigenous resurgence with ministries of education and school boards pushing for teachers to implement its Calls to Action in their classrooms. The Ontario Ministry of Education (2016) echoes the TRC’s focus on education as a ‘key component’ of reconciliation (p. 19). While reconciliation remains a key focus, many educational institutions fall far short of implementing any of the 94 Calls to Action, with many institutional actors reporting that they do not know what to do, how to do it, what it is supposed to look like, who to talk to or appropriate ways to seek information. Thus, the reconciliation project also becomes spaces of contestation, and critical social action a necessary aspect in reconciliation.

Before we go any further, I think it is important to examine contestation and the ways it is connected to colonialism and violence. An analysis of the data from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded² research project (more about that in the method section of this article) revealed that contestation was expressed through various enactments of violence as experienced by the participants in this research – please see Styres et al. (2013) for a report on the overall research project. This article focuses on the relational analysis of colonialism and violence as a theme of critical importance to the participants. I conclude this article by drawing insights from an in-depth multi-levelled analysis of the data sets while making some recommendations for ways universities can unpack and address expressions of violence and contestation in order to move reconciliation forward in meaningful and respectful ways.

Contestation: Colonialism, Indigenous resurgence and reconciliaction

Contestation generally occurs in spaces where disparate worldviews collide. In the academy in general, and in specific faculties where education is provided in models that continue to marginalize Indigenous perspectives and silence Indigenous voices, contested spaces are constantly triggered and engaged in expressions of violence. Contestation is also about spaces of loss as Indigenous voices and perspectives, while generally acknowledged, are simultaneously erased from conversations and may be framed in deficit theorizing models and re-represented back as something unrecognizable and stripped of cultural integrity. Education as a key site of conflict and resistance is, therefore, also a place of contestation. An analysis of the data from the research demonstrates that unrecognized and unresolved contestation and expressions of violence within the academy perpetuate colonialism undermining change and Indigenous futurities. Colonialism continues to be an ongoing process that shapes both structure and quality of relationships between non-Indigenous Canadians and Indigenous peoples.

One pivotal example of colonialism is residential schools, which was also the focus of the TRC. Over 150,000 children were forcefully removed from their families and sent to residential schools. These children were isolated from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures. The TRC report documents stories of neglect, malnutrition and many other horrendous abuses. It was a legislated and institutionalized agenda of assimilation. In 1920, amendments to the 1876 Indian Act made it legally mandatory for every Indigenous child to attend residential school (Indian Act, R. S. C., 1985, c. 1–5). Parents who refused faced heavy legal penalties. There are an estimated 80,000 former residential school survivors living today. The ongoing impacts of Canada’s violent colonial history are experienced inter-generationally and have contributed to the various issues of pressing concern to Indigenous peoples and communities.

This really brings home the significance of Senator Murray Sinclair’s statement that ‘education got us into this mess … and education is the key to reconciliation’ (Watters, 2015: n.p.). We are at a time and place in Canada that is ripe for Indigenous resurgence, a concept that has been the subject of Indigenous scholarship for many years (Alfred, 2009, 2013; Alfred and Corntassel, 2005; Burrows, 2018; Corntassel, 2012; Coulthard, 2014, 2016; Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez, 2016; Kimmerer, 2013; Palmater, 2015; Simpson, 2011, 2014, 2016; Styres, 2017). Elliott (2018) writes that the prevailing scholarship on Indigenous resurgence in Canada is premised on three basic arguments: (1) colonialism is structural violence and racism; (2) environments, policies and practices that reflect violence and racism despite moves to address social injustices; and (3) Indigenous people deliberately moving away from these hostile structures and environments to focus on independent programmes of resurgence.

Education must be one of the critical sites for Indigenous resurgence and reconciliaction (reconciliatory efforts based on critical social action), and this research took its cues from national conversations on the TRC’s Calls to Action. Reconciliaction must be engaged with the understanding that it will be complex and challenging rather than a feel good project – ‘reconciliation is about forging and maintaining respectful relationships – there are no shortcuts’ (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015: 18, 98, 160, 213). Wildcat et al. (2014) further claim that land and Indigenous resurgence are key in releasing the ‘stranglehold that colonial education currently has in Canada’ (p. iii). Indigenous resurgence and reconciliation have become one of the most trendy and vigorous scholarly paradigms in education. Alfred (2005) proposes a nuanced three-step process necessary for any movement towards reconciliation: (a) cultural regeneration; (b) outward restitution; and (c) resurgence through critical action against social injustices. Only this level of action can activate the moral and ethical basis for an Indigenous movement that can actually transform society through mindful and purposeful confrontation with colonialism (p. 151–152). Where is Canada in this process? As the ongoing violence against Indigenous peoples and current politics continue to demonstrate, we are nowhere.

Hamby (2017) writes that there is a great deal of literature on various aspects of violence and its impacts, but there are fewer articles that provide a comprehensive definition on the essential elements of violence. The American Psychology Association website characterizes violence as an ‘extreme form of aggression’ (American Psychological Association, n.d.) but does not define extreme intentionalities or perceptions. The World Health Organization defines violence as the ‘intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation’ (Krug et al., 2002: 5). Krug et al. states that any comprehensive definition of violence must also include psychological and social violences producing ‘substantial burdens on individuals, families and communities’ (p. 5). Hamby asserts that bullying behaviours, relational- and micro-aggressions are also now recognized as having severe long-lasting psychological harm. I would suggest that current approaches to defining violence do not sufficiently address the ways relations of power, privilege and patriarchy dictate understandings of harm. Furthermore, Krug et al. advises that intentional acts can have unintended consequences resulting in harm and that intentions do not make violence any less violent.

The need for reconciliaction is an urgent and pressing concern that is long overdue and has the potential to provoke the paradigm shift needed to address contestation within educational contexts. Resurgence through reconciliaction is being called for at a crucial time in Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples as governments and education institutions are prioritizing the TRC. Yet an analysis of the data show that the universities represented in this research, while open to considering the report, lag behind in implementing it. Czyzewski (2017) states that empathy is a necessary first step in initiating social change, but critical action is necessary for moving forward. She goes on to say that authentic truth-telling comes before reconciliation and requires a confrontation of complicity in colonial systemic racism, injustices and networks of power and privilege that are profoundly foundational in universities. Valji (2004), in talking about post-TRC in South Africa, writes that ‘denial of responsibility for the injustices of the past stands as an obstacle to the acceptance of any redress’ (p. 5), that societal ideologies were much more complex than initially believed and that systemic violence did not just suddenly vanish. Reconciliation requires broad rather than narrow truth-telling and critical social action or, as Valji suggests, it ‘risk[s] becoming merely vehicles for the legitimation of a mere symbolic apology and reconciliation that then stands as a substitute or excuse for actual and substantive transformation’ (p. 8).

Methodology: A word about the research

This article analyses data from a SSHRC-funded research project that examined the ways two universities in Ontario were taking up the TRC and its 94 Calls to Action through three key questions: (1) what do you think it means to be Indigenous in the University? (2) In what ways do you see the University taking up the principles and Calls to Action of the TRC? (3) What does reconciliation mean to you and what role do you think you have in the process? The method and theoretical framework guiding this Indigenous-led research is a Community-first and Land-centred (CFLC) framework (Styres et al., 2013) that brings together diverse groups into research conversations in order to listen to one another, share stories, acknowledge struggles and hold space for Indigenous futurities. CFLC is an emergent, responsive and culturally aligned research methodology and theoretical framework that has cross-culturally shared themes and place specific knowledges that acknowledge and respect the diversity among Indigenous peoples represented in the urban centres where the two universities in this research are located (see also Absolon, 2011; Archibald et al., 2019; Kovach, 2009; Smith, 2012; Tuck and McKenzie, 2015; Wilson, 2008; Windchief and San Pedro, 2019). Critical theoretical aspects of CFLC is that the research be Indigenous-led, community-driven, grounded in relationality and data analysis is iterative in nature.

Participants were organized into research conversations. We use the term conversations to embody Indigenous research as a set of ethical relationships. These conversations were grouped into Indigenous and non-Indigenous gatherings (one session for each faculty and students) and were structured in a circle format designed to provide the maximum comfort for all participants and to create safe spaces for each group to freely share without worrying about the need for censure. Another element of CFLC is the inclusion of an Elder from each of the urban communities represented in this research. The Elders were involved in all aspects of the research process and provided critical support during the research.

Participants

Across both universities represented in this research, we interviewed 30 Indigenous faculty, students and senior administrators; and 40 non-Indigenous faculty, students and senior administrators. The gender ratio across both groups of participants was primarily women (approximately 90%). Research participants were recruited by word of mouth, targeted e-mails, invitations circulated on listserves and informal conversations.

Data analysis

CFLC was not only critical to conducing the research but was also key in analysing the data. Two critical theoretical assumptions that formed the basis for the research and were also inherent in the data analysis are: (i) that universities are not welcoming spaces for Indigenous people; and (ii) faculty and institutional actors are still struggling to meaningfully implement the TRC Calls to Action.

In order to generate deep and rich data from the research, we used a multi-levelled iterative approach to coding the data sets. In the first level, the data sets were coded using priori (explicit) coding – that is the research questions generated a surface level of coding. In the second and deeper level of coding, we used a thematic (implicit) approach to the analysis of the data that revealed five clear overarching but interconnected themes within the data: (1) violence; (2) clash of protocols; (3) relationships; (4) work/life balance; and (5) purposeful ignorance. Finally, the third level of data analysis (relational) brought us into an even deeper and richer level of the analysis by identifying and examining relationships of concepts both across and between the themes.

The relational analysis of the data sets revealed that violence was not only an overarching theme on its own (see above), but was also clearly identified as a specific enactment of the spaces of contestation within and across the other themes. This research opened spaces for Indigenous voices and experiences within the academy to be heard, respected and validated and it is those voices that are privileged here and are italicized where ever used. It is also important to note that in moving this discussion forward from a general report on the research project itself, this article reflects the tensions of exploring both the theoretical and practical aspects of the data analysis. First by exploring some of the relevant literature related to contestation and violence, and second by connecting the results of the data analysis to the literature. In many ways, this mirrors the tensions between what the universities say they are doing (theoretical) and the practical experiences of the participants related to what the universities represented in this research are actually doing.

The relational analysis of how two Ontario universities have been taking up the TRC within the confines of ongoing institutional barriers and structural racism revealed that universities continue to create unwelcoming and violent experiences for Indigenous people. The analysis of the data indicates large disconnects between Indigenous student and faculty experiences and how the university views their progress in answering the Calls to Action. Indigenous participants recounted stories of chronic fatigue and over-extension as they are immersed in these violent spaces in an institution that does not understand that and provides little or no support. Participants reported that, ‘the university has a long way to go to living out the TRC’s Calls to Action’. Others have stated that if universities ‘actually value the things that are said in the TRC then they’re going to go with those programs that aren’t huge money makers but build community and give back’ or that they ‘haven’t seen the Calls to Action addressed. It took them 4 or 5 years just to figure out whose territory they’re on’. Furthermore, ‘settlers are always looking to us [Indigenous people] asking “what can we do?” It needs to be put it back on them. What are your responsibilities? You need to think about this’.

Results: Expressions of violence in contested spaces

Foucault suggests that ‘[p]eople know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does’ (cited in Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983: 187). Lavallee stated that universities need to address Indigenous-specific racism in context. And further that, despite public policy, structures of violence that are operant to oppress Indigenous people remain alive and well at higher levels of the university and that individuals embedded in systemic structural violence and racism ‘do not have an understanding of how the racism presents itself’ (CrowSpreadingWings, 2019: n.p.). The analysis of the data indicates that colonial violence in the academy is expressed through micro-aggressions, purposeful ignorance, structural racism, lateral violence, isolation, along with representations and spaces.

Micro-aggressions

An analysis of the data clearly showed that Indigenous participants were experiencing various forms of micro-aggressions at all levels of the university. According to Sue (2010), micro-aggressions are everyday taken-for-granted verbal, non-verbal and environmental hostilities and negative messages (whether intentional or not) that are expressions of violence targeting individuals or groups based on racialized/marginalized status. Henry and Kobayashi (2017) also found that micro-aggressions were commonly experienced by racialized and Indigenous faculty (see also Grande, 2018; Tuck, 2018). Micro-aggressions cause a series of tiny harms leading to chronic social and psychological stresses which Smith et al. (2007) refers to as ‘racial battle fatigue’ (p. 551).

The relational analysis of the data revealed that micro-aggressions were an ongoing issue of concern in several key ways. Indigenous faculty and students reported experiencing micro-aggressions from mainstream faculty, administrators and other students who largely seem unaware of their own complicitness. Indigenous faculty and students also reported experiencing extreme push-back from mainstream faculty and students who question the advancement of Indigeneity within the academy. Indigenous students reported that they constantly battled stereotypical representations in classroom practices and course content and are shut down hard or targeted as disruptive when they attempt to speak up. Indigenous faculty and students report dealing with both blatant and polite forms of racism as they engage with a colonial institution designed to quash any resistance.

Micro-aggressions were experienced by both Indigenous faculty and students but in different ways. Indigenous students stated: ‘I was warned by the community that this institution was a hostile place’; ‘I was in a meeting with my Anishinaabe friend who was crying. They got shut down so hard they wanted to leave the university’; and that

a professor, a huge supporter of protests against Indigenous hunting rights, would personally drive students to and from the protests. That professor dropped an Indigenous student because they wanted to write about food sovereignty instead of the controversy around hunting rights targeting Indigenous people.

Indigenous faculty reported that ‘you’re fighting those stereotypes and those ideals of what they think Indigenous means’; and that ‘there’s a lot of polite racism. The climate on campus is really racist’.

Purposeful ignorance

In the relational analysis, I drew upon aspects of Dilley and Kirsch’s (2017) spaces of ignorance that produce and reproduce abuses of ignorance and relations of power in conceptualizing purposeful ignorance. They posit that ignorance in these contexts embraces various non-knowings that form ‘historically situated social ontologies’ (p. 2). Non-knowings can be intentional or unintentional ‘constituting an absence, epistemological gap, lacuna, the presence of which has social consequences’ (p. 1). In this context, purposeful ignorance is perpetuated by maintaining a series of intentions and avoidances that affirm settler futurities (Tuck and Yang, 2012: 1).

The analysis of the data revealed that Indigenous students had to endure, without question, course content containing racist, stereotypical and traumatic representations under the guise of academic freedom. Indigenous students in these hostile environments reported feeling they must either swallow the content and say nothing or take a stand and challenge these representations risking trauma as objects of these gross misrepresentations. A relational analysis of the data clearly demonstrated that instructors steeped in purposeful ignorance failed to comprehend the complex and nuanced stories of Indigenous people’s dispossession of lands and the continued impacts of colonization. Purposeful ignorance was also found to be connected to common expectations and practices of mainstream faculty using Indigenous students in their courses to educate the class about Indigenous perspectives and what it means to be Indigenous. Data analysis also found that purposeful ignorance was expressed in tokenistic land acknowledgements and superficial engagement with the issues of pressing concern to Indigenous people and their communities.

Purposeful ignorance was particularly and blatantly experienced by Indigenous students in classrooms and reported that:

I was basically racially profiled, racially insulted, and humiliated by a professor. He went though four different stereotypes about Indigenous people directed at me in front of the whole class. In reference to my dancing, he made ‘woo woo’ sounds. I was so upset. I felt bad about myself because I’m this big bad activist, why didn’t I say anything? Why was I scared? Why did I leave the class without schooling him? I’m still dealing with the trauma’; ‘A couple of years ago there was a powwow that became just a demonstration of dancing with no community involvement. Just here we are to show off our feathers, that was about it’; ‘You feel like you need to be a teacher a lot. You feel everyone looks to you. I just want to learn, I don’t want that responsibility. It’s emotionally draining especially when you have a whole class of non-Indigenous people and the professor says to you, “colonization, it wasn’t that bad”. Right?’;

and that

most people will only do the nice stuff and won’t go past that. There is a lot of lip service, which I think is happening from above

The experiences of purposeful ignorance were more implicit for Indigenous faculty. An Indigenous faculty member told us ‘I’m part of a culture where people think I’m extinct’.

Structural racism

An analysis of the data revealed that for Indigenous participants, structural racism was visibly operant within the structures of the university. Structural racism refers to the ways that societal structures are designed to exclude targeted groups of racialized/minoritized people from being part of social institutions, such as universities, in order to serve, privilege and represent a select group of individuals (James, 1996).

In the deeper relational analysis, it became clear that structural racism was evident in several key ways. It was apparent in the absence of Indigenous ceremonies within religious accommodations clauses as part of university policies. It remains up to individual instructors to choose whether or not to accommodate an Indigenous student’s involvement in ceremony. It is also found reflected in policies informing representations in academic spaces like murals, statutes, photography and paintings that centrally position and romanticize colonialism by selectively privileging certain aspects of history. Furthermore, the data revealed that structural racism was also found in institutions that are only interested in reconciliatory efforts that feel good, are not too inconvenient or do not reallocate resources. It was also found within policies and practices that simultaneously acknowledge and erase Indigenous knowledges and perspectives.

Indigenous students were particularly vocal on their experiences with structural racism and reported that

‘both student union and one department had vegan only policies that excluded my traditional foods – that I cannot have my traditional foods here, my venison stew, my corn soup. It’s ridiculous.’; ‘What do you think about my moccasins? What do you think about my drum? So you want me to go up there and wear my feathers, have my drum and my moccasin. They’re made of deer, what do you think about that. So you think, “am I really wanted?”; “Should I really be here?” Because if they’re willing to fight you on food, they’re willing to fight you on other things, it’s underneath, you haven’t scratched that surfaced yet.’; ‘Students say I will support you. We’ll stand for Indigenous rights and missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. But when you go to food sovereignty, when you go to land sovereignty, when you go to get them to admit that they are settlers, that they are on your land, then it’s, whoa, that makes me feel uncomfortable. I don’t know if I can do that’.

Lateral violence

An analysis of the data revealed that Indigenous participants were experiencing lateral violence from peers and Indigenous support systems. Lateral violence is connected to issues of power and, according to the Native Women’s Association of Canada (2011), includes: work place/community bullying, usually by people in positions or perceived positions of authority; horizontal hostilities/violence; internalized colonialism; and relational aggression. Lateral violence happens when individuals and groups of individuals who, due to sustained colonial oppression, have long-term suppressed feelings of anger and shame. These feelings are expressed in behaviours like jealousy, resentment, blame and bitterness (n.p.).

Sadly, lateral violence is a reality in many universities; it was definitely a factor in this research in some interesting ways. The relational analysis revealed that lateral violence was occurring between Indigenous administration and Indigenous students – some students reported that they would not access certain Indigenous supports because of the lateral violence they experienced in those spaces and further, felt that the university did not understand or support them in navigating these issues or investigate complaints. The data revealed that Indigenous faculty and students were also experiencing lateral violence from peers who were struggling to survive and thrive in the competitive environment of a university culture that perpetuates colonialism. While many minoritized people experience institutional marginalization, Indigenous faculty and students have even less power and agency that anyone else in the university, are more isolated and, without safe Indigenous specific supports, are less likely to be able to push past administrative barriers to seek help or address racism.

Due to power imbalances, issues of lateral violence were particularly daunting for Indigenous students who reported: ‘I was basically racially profiled, racially insulted, and humiliated by a professor in class.’; ‘I started an Indigenous solidarity coalition. At first we got support from [Indigenous student organization] to do a bunch of awareness raising activities. Then the backlash started.’; ‘I’m being targeted by the head of [Indigenous student organization] because they think I’m taking the thunder away from them because we are doing all of these Aboriginal centered events without their permission. Instead of encouraging us we were reprimanded and threatened.’; and one student felt their identity was questioned when ‘the Elder at [Indigenous student organization] said to my face that because my mother is white I will never be Indigenous.’

Isolation

An in-depth relational analysis of the data sets from Indigenous faculty, student and administrator participants revealed that they felt isolated from their peers because of exhaustion and over-extension as they are immersed in the spiritual and emotional work of trying to ‘be and do’ within these spaces. Ott et al. (2017) write that educators can experience silencing through the constraints and limitations placed on different kinds of resources and that this type of silencing is an ‘act of discounting – and to be discounted is disheartening’ (p. 9). Our research shows that this type of silencing includes the deliberate and insistent extraction of the spiritual and emotional reserves of Indigenous faculty which, along with constant time demands, creates undue and overwhelming hardships resulting in demoralization, isolation from colleagues and ‘compassion fatigue’ (Ott et al., 2017: 10). Santoro (2018) writes that, ‘demoralization is a form of professional dissatisfaction that occurs when teachers encounter consistent and pervasive challenges to enacting the values that motivate their work’ (p. 10).

Indigenous participants reported carrying exceedingly heavier service loads than their mainstream counterparts. The analysis revealed that Indigenous faculty were not protected in terms of tenure and promotion processes and did not always receive appropriate guidance in navigating the colonized realities of academia. The analysis also showed that Indigenous faculty are burdened by an intensely pervasive expectation that they do the hard work of reconciliation for others while simultaneously trying to do their own work and strive for those necessary tenure milestones. Scholars such as Henry and Kobayashi (2017), James (2017), and James and Chapman-Nyaho (2017) also explored similar experiences with Indigenous and racialized faculty. Indigenous students reported that for them, isolation is experienced by the challenges around access to faculty who understand and support their work.

Isolation (intentional or unintentional) while encountered by both Indigenous faculty and students was experienced differently. Indigenous students told us that:

You don’t understand how hard it is for an Indigenous student to have to live both ways. If you’re a good student and don’t say anything, you’ll be successful. But if you stand up for your rights then you’re penalized in a lot of ways.

I actually had a professor of mine in Indigenous studies tell me that they wouldn’t write me a reference letter because I was too political.

and one student cried out in an interview ‘Am I just here alone? Am I making it up? Does no one else see what’s happening?’ Indigenous faculty experienced isolation as emotional and spiritual fatigue:

I open up my heart, I do this all the time, and that’s where that emotional labour comes from. But it’s so much emotional labour all the time, like telling people when they just don’t understand about Indigenous people. They just don’t understand how much it hurts.

and

everyone’s so scared. They don’t want to lose their job. Because they said, if you stop doing the things you do, then I’ll support you. And I thought that’s blackmail.

Representation and spaces

The relational analysis of the data revealed the pervasiveness and traumatizing effects of colonial representations and spaces in universities for Indigenous participants. Some representations are general reflections of structural racism taking the form of paintings hung in important places that reflect white male dominance that perpetuate and reinforce colonial relations of power, privilege and patriarchy. Other representations such as murals, statues and configurations of space and/or buildings are violent due to their depictions, contexts and encroachment into existing Indigenous spaces. Other examples noted in the research included plaques that are erected into the ground in green spaces, planted like flags that reinforce myths of colonial claims, along with statues placed in pivotal areas glorifying historical colonial violence.

Data analysis revealed that Indigenous students were going well out of their way to avoid some artwork and murals they found traumatizing – finding alternative routes to class and access to services in order to avoid the harm and violence they experienced in coming into contact with the artwork. Many Indigenous students told us of the impossibility of completely avoiding the harmful artwork due to the immense pervasiveness of the artwork extoling colonial violence throughout the university. A deeper analysis of the data uncovered other forms of violence in spaces related to the constant encroachment that further marginalize Indigenous people with the university by placing them on the periphery particularly by those who resent spaces set aside for Indigenous students. In a relational analysis of the data, it was found that non-Indigenous faculty and students were largely unaware of the challenges presented by the various artworks installed around the university and rarely mentioned art as an issue of concern. In the few instances that it was identified as an issue, conversations focused on those pieces that Indigenous participants experienced as extremely violent.

While encroachment can be violent and discriminatory, an analysis of the data revealed that at other times, people just ‘settled’ into spaces set aside for Indigenous students and eventually by sheer numbers took over those spaces. Analysis also divulged that even when there is not a physical encroachment, there is an encroachment of policy and practices – yes you can have the space but there are all sorts of restrictions attached to it and then it then becomes a very uncomfortable space. Indigenous students reported being made to feel they always need to apologize for ‘taking up space’. Encroachment also occurred when colonial representations were placed immediately outside Indigenous student support services. The data demonstrated that encroachment was also evident when non-Indigenous people led Indigenous driven initiatives. An in-depth relational analysis of the data also revealed a general overall apathy and lack of respect for Indigeneity across the university.

Indigenous students told us that:

Basically my ancestor looks like he wants to jump out of the painting and kill you. That’s not what we’re about. He should have a beautiful expression on his face and be offering the Two Row in a gesture of peace because that’s what we offered. You wouldn’t know that by the representations you see around the university

It’s like a colonized, whitewashed view of the history but there is so much more history there that is not shown

and

in order to go into Indigenous student services you have to walk by it [the painting]. Every time I walk by that thing it makes me angry.

Indigenous faculty reported to us that:

how can people see us as living human beings with needs if the only representation you have on campus is from 200 years ago

The head of the Indigenous center is white and in the ten years since it was made it has never had an Indigenous director. We don’t have a full-time tenured Indigenous professor, so we will never have an Indigenous director. This is a huge deal, and the community is really tired. We were promised when the center was developed that there was only going to be an interim white person in there until they found someone

and

I think the basis of what’s happening here is that respect is not there

Conclusion: Insights and recommendations

What the relational analysis of the data sets revealed is that despite institutional intentionalities in addressing the TRC and its Calls to Action, Indigenous faculty, students and institutional actors continue to see little movement towards transformative critical social action in reconciliatory efforts. Their experiences within the universities continue to be traumatizing, harmful and marked in contestation with daily struggles to carve out spaces to be. The data clearly showed that inconsistent funding that relies on government money continues to have a significant impact in being able to provide supportive programming for Indigenous students. Violence and expressions of violence are one of many aspects related to colonialism and the systems that support and perpetuate relations of power and privilege. This is particularly so for education as one of the key sites of colonial violence since the history of contact. Insights gained from this research clearly affirm that any reconciliatory efforts must first recognize and then actively and critically unpack and address violence in education in order to move forward.

While it is generally agreed that education, as it currently exists, is problematic and a site of re-occurring expressions of violence, many Indigenous scholars believe that education is the way forward – but not just any education – Indigenous scholarship stresses the importance of Indigenous resurgence in education across diverse contexts. There is a growing and pressing need to consider cultural contexts, disrupt mainstream approaches and centrally position Indigenous perspectives within mainstream educational spaces. The success of Indigenous learners in higher-educational contexts is of key importance in closing current employment and educational attainment gaps and, therefore, is critical to this country’s social and economic well-being both nationally and globally and as such should be of vital interest to all of Canada – ‘Reconciliation is not an Aboriginal problem it’s a Canadian problem’ (Senator Murray Sinclair). Regan (2010) writes that ‘colonial violence is woven into the fabric of Canadian history in an unbroken thread from past to present, which we must now unravel, unsettling our comfortable assumptions about the past.’ (p. 6). ‘Reconciliation is not about closing a sad chapter of Canada’s past, but about opening new healing pathways of reconciliation that are forged in truth and justice’ (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Final Report Volume 6: Reconciliation, 2015: 7). Yet, the analysis of the data indicated that many non-Indigenous faculty and senior administrator participants in this research did not know what reconciliation meant to them, what their respective responsibilities were in reconciling or how to reconcile their own complicitness with a violent colonial history – a history that is still very much present.

This is evident in the quotes from the non-Indigenous participants when queried about reconciliation and reconciliatory processes in the university. ‘Maybe I’m being naive but you said that reconciliation is a Canadian problem, which I guess, doesn’t mean particular individuals.’; ‘I’m hung up on what reconcile means. What it is supposed to mean?’; ‘Reconcile to your responsibility? I never understood why it was called that – it didn’t hang together for me’; ‘I do think it is the responsibility of white settlers to educate themselves, but that is asking for extra work from people’; ‘I don’t know that I believe in the word reconciliation, I don’t know if I’m down with reconciliation, quite frankly. What am I reconciling with? I’m not reconciled with anything in the TRC.’

The research conversations opened opportunities for Indigenous faculty and students to mobilize, speak out and talk back to the university and to require the university to critically engage in a process of reconciliaction. As we opened spaces for Indigenous voices to be heard and respected – the research became ceremony – the research became medicine. Indigenous participants talked about how this research promoted healing – they felt heard and validated. This was evident in the debriefing when Indigenous participants commented that ‘we need more of this community dialogue and talk’ and ‘you won’t sugar coat our words in the report will you?’

An in-depth analysis of the data revealed that, despite intentionalities, the university continues to be a place of violence. Furthermore that if universities are going to mobilize meaningful and transformative change, there needs to be a concerted effort to move away from reaching only for the low-risk reconciliatory efforts, such as reciting token land acknowledgements and reach higher towards reconciliaction. Drawing from an in-depth multi-layered analysis of the various data sets in this research, recommendations for reconciliaction include:

Placing Indigenous faculty into leadership positions – particularly those in higher administration within the academy;

Moving away from reliance on the precarious labour of Indigenous people by opening up Indigenous faculty positions across departments/faculties in the university;

Actively engaging with the Indigenous community in decision-making processes informing policies, practices and programming related to Indigeneity within the university;

Actively engaging in authentic and respectful consultative processes that adhere to the protocols and voices of Indigenous faculty, students and community in addressing Indigenous futurities within the academy;

Actively committed to ensuring that Indigenous governance structures are Indigenous driven, led and securely resourced;

Implementing ongoing professional development for all institutional actors, faculty, staff and contract instructors related to issues of pressing concern to Indigenous people and their communities – including orientation workshops for new faculty hires;

Implementation of compulsory Indigenous focused courses for all degree programs as an important first step and that these courses be taught only by Indigenous course instructors;

Removal of colonially violent representations and create spaces that represent Indigenous contributions to local history and the diversity of Indigenous perspectives in meaningful and respectful ways;

Creation and protection of Indigenous specific spaces;

Creation and implementation of policies and practices that support and protect Indigenous faculty and students.

It is important to point out that the recommendations arising from an analysis of the data in this research are not new but build upon and reinforce decades of scholarship. This research stresses the importance of reconciliaction and Indigenous resurgence within the academy in ways that disrupt and challenge colonial violence and secure Indigenous futurities. Indigenous resurgence in the academy can only happen if it is Indigenous-driven and Indigenous-led together with the support of those individuals who understand how to be effective and supportive allies. Additionally, it is also important to critically remember that in striving for reconciliaction who is supposed to be reconciling to whom and then to engage reconciliatory efforts accordingly. Reconciliaction is a complex and challenging endeavour that necessitates first identifying the effects of settler colonialism on the ways we think about and do education and then finding ways to decolonize those practices with purposeful and respectful intentionalities. The problem with current reconciliatory efforts is that they remain positioned within colonial discourses and the persistent re-entrenchment of settler futurities. It is time to move away from reconciliation as an unrelenting colonial project and to engage reconciliaction and Indigenous resurgence as the path forward to transformative social change.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

ORCID iD

Sandra Styres

Notes

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Reconcili action : Reconciling contestation in the academy

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction: Setting the context

Contestation: Colonialism, Indigenous resurgence and reconciliaction

Methodology: A word about the research

Participants

Data analysis

Results: Expressions of violence in contested spaces

Micro-aggressions

Purposeful ignorance

Structural racism

Lateral violence

Isolation

Representation and spaces

Conclusion: Insights and recommendations

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

References