Content area
Full Text
Abstract / Résumé
This paper critically explores the recent trend across many Canadian universities towards 'Indigenization' as the infusing of Indigenous knowledge and faculty into minority positions within disciplines across the university. In applying a 'White Paper' individualism / assimilation test within the context of structural and post-structural academic power relations, this paper argues that the 'Indigenization' of university disciplines runs the very real risk of usurping Indigenous knowledge from its basis in Aboriginal communities, Elders, and Native Studies departments and de-contextualizing it into various objects of Western knowledge expansion.
L'article explore de manière critique Ia tendance récente de nombreuses universités canadiennes à l'indigénisation, soit l'injection de connaissances indigènes et le placement d'enseignants autochtones dans des postes minoritaires au sein des disciplines universitaires. En appliquant un test d'individualisme et d'assimilation du « Livre blanc » dans le contexte des relations de pouvoir universitaires structurelles et poststructurelles, l'article avance que l'indigénisation des disciplines universitaires court le risque très réel d'usurper les connaissances indigènes en les détachant de leur base dans les collectivités autochtones, chez les aînés autochtones et dans les départements d'études autochtones et de les décontextualiser pour produire divers objets de l'expansion connaissance occidentale.
As part of efforts to diversify and create more inclusive curriculum while responding to increasing Aboriginal student enrolment, many universities across Canada have recently engaged in a process of 'Indigenizing' disciplines outside of existing Native Studies departments and programs. Through the hiring of Aboriginal faculty and the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge into course content, this process is most apparent today in the areas of Education, Nursing, Social Work, Law, and Medicine.
Overall as a manner of fostering greater Aboriginal access to university education, 'Indigenizing' the university in this way has been popularly received as a positive development that will help alleviate Aboriginal unemployment and related social problems within Aboriginal communities. When considered within the larger context of treaty relations, however, this is a trend which reflects ongoing colonial / postcolonial tensions surrounding the shared desire for good relations of peaceful co-existence, which are nonetheless grounded in the state's long-standing assumption of colonial control.
It is a trend that can potentially lead to the fragmentation of Native Studies scholarly communities through the destabilization of existing methods of Aboriginal governance in universities...