https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2197-7780
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ABSTRACT
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) Calls to Action urge Canadian higher education (among other sectors of society) to learn the shameful truth about Indian Residential Schools and work towards reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.Footnote1 Through narrative inquiry, non-Indigenous academics shared their experiences of a faculty learning community on Indigenization of their teaching and curricular practices. They each, subsequently, co-composed with the researcher a narrative account based on those experiences. This paper presents one of the resonant threads that arose from the analysis of those narrative accounts, namely: Epistemological and Ontological Dissonance.
Acknowledgements
It is with deep thanks that I acknowledge the relational ways that Elder Francis Whiskeyjack accompanied me throughout this study, teaching me the value of stories in such a good way. I wish to express my sincere gratitude for Dr. Randolph Wimmer (doctoral supervisor), Dr. Evelyn Steinhauer, and Dr. Vera Caine, for your guidance and support throughout this narrative inquiry and my PhD learning journey. I also wish to thank the three research participants who went on this journey with me over a two-year period of time to share their profoundly personal and insightful experiences and to co-compose with me, their respective narrative accounts. I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn with and from each of you. I was also supported by response communities, comprised of both Indigenous and settler academics and colleagues, including weekly meetings at the Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development (CRTED), where I participated in the Research Issues Table, a gathering of narrative inquirers in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. I also extend my sincere thanks to the Editor, peer reviewers, and copyeditors at Settler Colonial Studies, who provided insightful feedback and suggestions in support of strengthening this written work.
Disclosure statement
The author reports no potential nor actual conflict of interest with this study and its publication.
Research ethics
This study was approved by the Research Ethics Board (REB 1) at the University of Alberta.
Notes
1 TRC, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (Winnipeg, MB: Publication of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf.
2 D. J. Clandinin and M. F. Connelly, Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2000).
3 Positionality statements are an important step towards decolonizing research. By making my non-Indigenous, settler identity visible, I am accounting for who I am in my research and the biases with which I may struggle. This practice aligns with Indigenous standpoint theory and the works of Indigenous scholars such as Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies and Moreton Robinson, ‘Towards an Australian Indigenous’. L. Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. 2nd Edition (London, UK: Zed Books, 2012). A. Moreton-Robinson, ‘Towards an Australian Indigenous Women's Standpoint Theory’, Australian Feminist Studies 28 no. 78 (2013): 331–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2013.876664.
4 Settler colonialism occurs when a colonizing nation or population arrives and stays, in a land that is not their ancestral homeland, with the intention of establishing their own political order and sovereignty over the place and its original inhabitants (Park, ‘Settler Colonialism, Decolonization’). Settler colonialism in Canada is oriented around four logic models: elimination, expansion, exceptionalism, and denial (Park, ‘Settler Colonialism, Decolonization’). ‘The imbrication of elimination, expansion, exceptionalism, and denial and their culmination in settler self-supersession renders a picture of settler colonialism as a totalizing, perfectionistic project that strives to extinguish Indigenous futurity and establish a settler future’ (Park, ‘Settler Colonialism, Decolonization’, 265). In Canada, settler colonialism is an ongoing, present tense reality, not a single event that occurred in the past (Carrillo Rowe and Tuck, 2016). A. SJ. Park, ‘Settler Colonialism, Decolonization, and Radicalizing Transitional Justice’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 14 (2020): 260–79. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijaa006. A. Carrillo Rowe and E. Tuck, ‘Settler Colonialism and Cultural Studies: Ongoing Settlement, Cultural Production, and Resistance’, Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 17 no. 1 (2016): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708616653693
5 Native Land, ‘Interactive Map’, Native Land Digital (2021). https://native-land.ca
6 Algonquins of Ontario, ‘Treaty Negotiations Update’, (2023). https://www.tanakiwin.com/ourtreaty-negotiations/treaty-negotiations-update/
7 Government of Ontario, ‘The Algonquin Land Claim’, (2023). https://www.ontario.ca/page/algonquin-land-claim; Algonquins of Ontario, ‘Treaty Negotiations Update’.
8 Government of Ontario, ‘The Algonquin Land Claim’.
9 C. T. George, ‘Decolonize, then Indigenize: Critical insights on decolonizing education and Indigenous resurgence in Canada’, Antistasis 9 no. 1 (2019): 73–95.
10 Native Land, ‘Interactive Map’.
11 J. Dewey, Experience and Education. The Kappa Delta Pi Lecture Series (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1938).
12 M. Sinclair, ‘Chancellor Murray Sinclair Shares Thoughts on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation’, Queen's Gazette (2021). Rideout, D. (Senior Communications Officer) September 29, 2021. Retrieved from https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/chancellor-murray-sinclair-shares-thoughts-ahead-national-day-truth-and-reconciliation
13 The terms decolonizing, Indigenizing, and reconciliation have been defined and deconstructed by Gaudry and Lorenz, ‘Indigenization as Inclusion, Reconciliation, and Decolonization’, however, at the time of the research participants’ faculty learning community experiences (2016–2018), these terms were not well defined in scholarly literature related to Canadian higher education. Even later, during data collection (2020–2021) and to this day, these terms continue to be contested among scholars and Indigenous community members as to whether and how they can best serve the work of transforming Canadian higher education. Nevertheless, they are the terms that the Canadian higher education sector has adopted to refer to the work of settler colonial educational institutions engaging in systemic changes to benefit Indigenous people. As Gaudry and Lorenz, ‘Indigenization as Inclusion, Reconciliation, and Decolonization’ demonstrated, the degree to which a range of institutional policies and actions actually are beneficial to Indigenous people and communities is debatable.
A. Gaudry and D. Lorenz, ‘Indigenization as Inclusion, Reconciliation, and Decolonization: Navigating the Different Visions for Indigenizing the Canadian Academy’ (2018).
14 L. Andrews, ‘Indigenization as Part of Decolonization and Reconciliation: IDR Interconnected. A Venn Diagram presented in a slide presentation at the Indigenous Curriculum Specialists Network (ICSN) Gathering’, October 13, 2023, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
15 Gaudry and Lorenz, ‘Indigenization as Inclusion, Reconciliation, and Decolonization’.
16 R. Cote, J. Denis, V. Watts, and R. Wilkes, ‘Indigenization, institutions, and imperatives: Perspectives on reconciliation from the CSA Decolonization Sub-committee’, Canadian Review of Sociology 58 no. 1 (2021): 105–18. (cited 2)
17 R. Saini and N. Begum, ‘Demarcation and Definition: Explicating the Meaning and Scope of ‘Decolonisation’ in the Social and Political Sciences’, The Political Quarterly 91 no. 1 (2020): 217–21. (cited 218)
18 E. Grafton and J. Melançon, ‘Chapter 8: The Dynamics of Decolonization and Indigenization in an Era of Academic “Reconciliation”’, in Decolonizing and indigenizing education in Canada, eds. S. Cote-Meek and T. Moeke-Pickering (Canadian Scholars eBook, 2020), 135–54. (cited 135)
19 S. Pasternak, ‘Jurisdiction and Settler Colonialism: Where Do Laws Meet?’ Canadian Journal of Law and Society 29 no. 2 (2014): 145–61. doi:10.1017/cls.2014.5 (cited 146)
20 M. Hart, ‘Personal communication with Dr. Michael Hart, Director of Indigenous Engagement’ (2023). University of Calgary.
21 Andrews, ‘Indigenization as Part of Decolonization and Reconciliation’.
22 Grafton and Melançon, ‘Chapter 8: The Dynamics of Decolonization’.
23 Andrews, ‘Indigenization as Part of Decolonization and Reconciliation’; TRC, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
24 Andrews, ‘Indigenization as Part of Decolonization and Reconciliation’.
25 George, ‘Decolonize, then Indigenize’.
26 TRC, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
27 Universities Canada, Universities Canada Survey (2017). Retrieved from https://www.univcan.ca/priorities/indigenous-education/
28 Union of Ontario Indians, An Overview of the Indian Residential School System (2013). Retrieved from https://www.anishinabek.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/An-Overview-of-the-IRS-System-Booklet.pdf
29 M. Battiste, Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit (Vancouver, BC: Purich Publishing, UBC Press, 2013). Austen, I, ‘How Thousands of Indigenous Children Vanished in Canada’, The New York Times, June 7, 2021, Updated March 28, 2022 (2021/2022). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/world/canada/mass-graves-residential-schools.html
30 V. Kirkness and R. Barnhardt, ‘First Nations and Higher Education: The Four Rs – Respect, Relevance, Reciprocity, and Responsibility’, Journal of American Indian Education 30 no. 3 (1991): 1–16.
31 M. Marker, ‘The Four Rs Revisited: Some Reflections on First Nations and Higher Education’, in Student Affairs Experiencing Higher Education, eds. L. Andres and F. Finlay (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2004).
32 Z. Todd, ‘A Note to Tenured Faculty*’, in Urbane Adventurer: Amishkwacî – thoughts of an urban Métis scholar (and Sometimes a Mouthy Michif, PhD). December 28, 2017: Uncategorized (2017). Retrieved from https://zoestodd.com/2017/12/28/a-note-to-tenured-faculty/
33 R. Kuokkanen, Reshaping the University: Responsibility, Indigenous Epistemes, and the Logic of the Gift (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2007).
34 P. Regan, Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2010).
35 Regan, Unsettling the Settler Within.
36 M. Zembylas and C. McGlynn, ‘Discomforting Pedagogies: Emotional Tensions, Ethical Dilemmas, and Transformative Possibilities’, British Educational Research Journal 38 no. 1 (2012): 41–59.
37 E. Tuck and K. Y. Yang, ‘Decolonization is Not a Metaphor’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1 no. 1 (2012): 1–40. Retrieved from https://www.materialculture.nl/sites/default/files/201902/Decolonization_Is_Not_a_Metaphor.pdf
38 S. D. Dion, Braided Histories: Learning from Aboriginal People's Experiences and Perspectives (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2009).
39 L. Easton, R. Lexier, G. Lindstrom & M. Yeo, ‘Uncovering the Complicit: The Decoding Interview as a Decolonising Practice’, in Reimagining curriculum: Spaces for disruption, eds. L. Quinn (Stellenbosch, South Africa: African Sun Media, 2019), 149–70.
40 H. Michell, ‘Nēhîthâwâk of Reindeer Lake, Canada: Worldviews, Epistemology, and Relationships with the Natural World’, The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 34 (2005): 33–43. (cited 39)
41 M. I. Young, L. Joe, J. Lamoureux, L. Marshall, S. D. Moore, J. Orr, B. M. Parisian, K. Paul, F. Paynter, and J. Huber, in M. I. Young, L. Joe, J. Lamoureux, L. Marshall, S. D. Moore, J. Orr, B. M. Parisian, K. Paul, F. Paynter and J. Huber (Eds.) Warrior Women: Remaking Postsecondary Places through Relational Narrative Inquiry (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 17) (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2012).
42 W. Ermine, ‘The Ethical Space of Engagement’, Indigenous Law Journal 6 no. 1 (2007): 193–203. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ilj/article/view/27669/20400 (cited 194).
43 D. Lessing, Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB. (2007). Retrieved from https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2007/lessing/25434-doris-lessing-nobel-lecture-2007/
44 J. Clandinin, Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2007); J. Clandinin, Engaging in Narrative Inquiry (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press Inc., 2013); J. Huber, V. Caine, M. Huber, and P. Steeves, ‘Narrative Inquiry as Pedagogy in Education: The Extraordinary Potential of Living, Telling, Retelling, and Reliving Stories of Experience’, Review of Research in Education 37 no. 1 (2013): 212–42; T. King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. CBC Massey Lectures (Toronto, ON: House of Anansi Press, 2003).
45 D. J. Clandinin, and M. F. Connelly, Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2000).
46 Clandinin and Connelly, Narrative Inquiry.
47 Clandinin, Engaging in Narrative Inquiry.
48 A more fulsome exploration of John's, Anthony's, and Molly's experiences are shared in the complete narrative accounts, available through the author's doctoral dissertation (Mooney, Towards Decolonizing and Indigenizing’). J. Mooney, ‘Towards Decolonizing and Indigenizing Teaching and Curricular Practices in Canadian Higher Education: A Narrative Inquiry into Settler Academics’ Experiences’, Doctoral Dissertation. University of Alberta (2022). https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/8c2ea1ee-ee9d-4dc2-8e68-3a6a8cf54712
49 ‘A First Nations Elder’ has been selected to respectfully anonymize the Elder's identity and his community's identity, since this Elder was not involved in the research study. Similarly, names of individuals – both Indigenous people and settlers – throughout this paper, have been replaced with descriptions of their roles in relationship to John. While we recognize the limitations of this anonymizing process, in that it does not give credit to the individuals and communities who play key roles in John's stories of experience, we have nevertheless decided to anonymize both Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals and communities out of respect for their privacy.
50 Affinity bias is a type of unconscious bias in which preference is given to people similar to oneself (McCormick, The Real Effects of Unconscious Bias). H. McCormick, The Real Effects of Unconscious Bias in the Workplace (UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, 2016), 1–12.
51 Louie, ‘Aligning Universities’ Recruitment’ presents their Dakelh (First Nation) scholar's experiences and research findings on tenure-track hiring practices within the university system in Canada. Rather than indicting universities for the learning curve these institutions experience when they engage in strategic Indigenous hiring, Louie, ‘Aligning Universities’ Recruitment’ focuses on what academic leaders can do to support Indigenous scholars’ success in the academy. Louie's, ‘Aligning Universities’ Recruitment’ recommendations challenge institutional norms, decentring colonial ways, to make space for diverse Indigenous Ways within the university. Louie, D., ‘Aligning Universities’ Recruitment of Indigenous Academics with the Tools Used to Evaluate Scholarly Performance and Grant Tenure and Promotion’, Canadian Journal of Education 42 no. 3 (2019): 791–815.
52 Clandinin, Engaging in Narrative Inquiry.
53 Clandinin, Engaging in Narrative Inquiry. (cited 132)
54 M. Pidgeon, ‘More Than a Checklist: Meaningful Indigenous Inclusion in Higher Education’, Social Inclusion 4 no. 1 (2016): 77–91. Doi: 10.17645/si.v4i1.436
55 Gaudry and Lorenz, ‘Indigenization as Inclusion, Reconciliation, and Decolonization’.
56 Ibid.
57 Gaudry and Lorenz, ‘Indigenization as Inclusion, Reconciliation, and Decolonization’. (cited 224)
58 K. Bhattacharya & J-H. Kim, ‘Reworking Prejudice in Qualitative Inquiry with Gadamer and De/Colonizing Onto-Epistemologies’, Qualitative Inquiry 26 no. 10 (2020): 1174–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418767201
59 L. M. Silko, ‘Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination’, Antaeus. 57 no. Autumn (1986): 1003–14.
60 Silko, ‘Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination’.
61 A. Bonds and J. Inwood, ‘Beyond White Privilege: Geographies of White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism’, Progress in Human Geography 40 no. 6 (2015): 715–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132515613166. G. Dorrien, Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel (Yale University Press, 2018); A. Smith, ‘Chapter 4: Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy’, in Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, eds. D. Martinez HoSang, O. LaBennett, and L. Pulido (University of California Press, 2012), 66–90. Retrieved from https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=VFj15NlQUS0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA66&dq=white+supremacy+colonialism&ots=G8bcLmlf-U&sig=IFkcvbHCt-DtvtcqvXiClbv3DNE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=white%20supremacy%20colonialism&f=false
62 J. Green, ‘Taking More Account of Indigenous Feminism: An Introduction. “Colonialism and Patriarchy”’ in Making Space for Indigenous Feminism. 2nd Edition, ed. J. Green (Black Point, NS: Fernwood Publishing, 2017), 1–20; B. Hooks, Feminism is for EVERYBODY: Passionate Politics (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000); E. Lyle, ‘Sisterhood and Solidarity: Fostering Equitable Spaces for Women in Academia’, in Sister Scholars: Untangling Issues of Identity as Women in Academe, eds. E. Lyle & S. Mahani (New York, NY: DIO Press, 2021), 1–10.
63 G. Tuari Stewart, ‘A Typology of Pākehā ‘Whiteness’ in Education’, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 42 no. 4 (2020): 296–310. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2020.1773177 (cited 296)
64 M. Boler and M. Zembylas, ‘Chapter 5: Discomforting Truths: The Emotional Terrain of Understanding Difference,’ in Pedagogies of Difference: Rethinking Education for Social Justice, ed. P. Perciles Trifonas (NY: Routledge, 2003), 107–30.
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66 S. Styres, C. Haig-Brown, and M. Blimkie, ‘Towards a Pedagogy of Land: The Urban Context’, Canadian Journal of Education 36 no. 2 (2013): 34–67.
67 S. Camilleri and A. Bezzina, ‘Learning in a Circle – Apparent Simplicity,’ Pastoral Care in Education: An International Journal of Personal, Social, and Emotional Development (2021). Open access online 17 June 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643944.2021.1938645
68 M. MacLean and L. Wason-Ellam, When Aboriginal and Métis Teachers use Storytelling as an Instructional Practice: A Grant Report to the Aboriginal Education Research Network, Saskatchewan Learning (2006), 1–60.
69 R. Van Camp, Gather: On the Joy of Storytelling (Regina, SK: University of Regina Press, 2021) (cited 16).
70 Van Camp, Gather.
71 K. Laurila, ‘Reconciliation in Social Work: Creating Ethical Space Through a Relational Approach to Circle Pedagogy’, The Canadian Journal of Native Education 40 no. 1 (2019): 92–110.
72 Laurila, ‘Reconciliation in Social Work’.
73 Camilleri and Bezzina, ‘Learning in a Circle’. S. Peltier, ‘Demonstrating Anishinaabe Storywork Circle Pedagogy: Creating Conceptual Space for Ecological Relational Knowledge in the Classroom’, Doctoral thesis (2016). Laurentian University.
74 Peltier, ‘Demonstrating Anishinaabe Storywork Circle Pedagogy’.