What is “Indigenization”? The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) called on governments, funding agencies, universities and Canadians to redress the legacy of colonization and residential schools in Canadian history.

Canada signed on to embrace the 94 Calls to Action that asked all Canadians [individually, collectively and collaboratively] to read, adopt, and change behaviour and practices in the ongoing process of truth finding and reconciliation with Indigenous people in this country. Professionally, I am committed to a three-step process (CSLA 2018) which informs how I approach teaching, learning, scholarship, and research:

Acknowledgement: Recognize and respect the rights of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples of Canada; learn and amplify the Truth that has been and continues to be lived by every First Nations, Inuit or Métis person and community. Every Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadian has a responsibility to our shared state of reconciliation. The burden is on settlers to learn more about Indigenous ways and knowledge, and engage with an open heart and mind, with Indigenous ways of knowing.

Awareness:  The cultural perspectives of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples of Canada are vital to the process of reconciliation. We have a responsibility to prepare all students to be capable partners supporting Indigenous peoples of Canada and to listen and learn from them in turn. From a KPU perspective that would mean all students (faculty + staff) should take INDIG 1000 and get woke.

Engagement:  Actions to change behaviour. Individually, professionally, institutionally. See also the first 63 suggestions in Dunster (2018).

The Challenge:  How do you Indigenize an institution, let alone a curriculum, when the institution was created from Colonial structures that truthfully have negative associations with Canadian relationships with Indigenous people? The way it currently stands, we are essentially asking Indigenous students and faculty and staff to conform to the Eurocentric education system when to be truthful in reconciliation, the system itself needs to change.

Gaudry and Lorenz (2018) say post-secondary academies are muddled about “Indigenization”. They identify three concepts that frame Indigenization, which sit on a continuum (or pathway to reconciliation) that for most institutions merely means Indigenous Inclusion (promoting equity and working to ensure there is a more representative number of Indigenous faculty, staff and students within the university community).

They note that another step on the Reconciliation path leads to Reconciliation Indigenization, which is about power sharing within the academy, consensus-based decision-making, creating honest open working relationships with Indigenous communities, and essentially incorporating more Indigenous knowledge and worldviews into the curriculum. Which is all well-intentioned but we need to keep moving along the Reconciliation path to Decolonial Indigenization which “envisions the wholesale overhaul of the academy to fundamentally reorient knowledge production based on balancing power relations between Indigenous peoples and Canadians, transforming the academy into something dynamic and new.”  See University of Alberta, which has established an autonomously-governed Faculty of Native Studies https://www.ualberta.ca/native-studies/about-us/vision-goals

Can we do this? Of course, we can, and we must (Kuokkanen 2007). The Province of BC is set to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP 2007), now is the time to ask to be the first to apply Article 14 to Indigenizing KPU. University of Alberta has shown leadership here. Peet (2016) has condensed 100 suggestions from her experience at the University of Regina. See also Saskamoose and Peet (2015) for useful ideas on indigenizing university policy.