Decolonizing Education in Canadian Universities: An Interdisciplinary, International, Indigenous Research Project

Abstract

Despite several decades of work on educational equity in curriculum and research and bridging and access projects, Aboriginal peoples' achievements, knowledge, histories, and perspectives remain too often ignored, rejected, suppressed, marginalized, or underutilized in universities across Canada and beyond. Although promising to make post-secondary education accessible to Aboriginal peoples, universities express an Aboriginal agenda in mission statements, priorities, and projects that reaffirm Eurocentric and colonial encounters in the name of excellence, integration, and modernity. Addressing these challenges is the purpose of a research project undertaken by a team of investigators at the University of Saskatchewan, building or: the theoretical foundations of postcolonial Indigenous consciousness emerging from Canadian Aboriginal scholars and from Aotearoa (New Zealand) in the scholarly work of Graham and Linda Smith. This article offers a process of animating postsecondary education that can generate methods and practices for the more thorough decolonization o  research and policy development and the experience of aboriginal students and teachers.