Following the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action, Canadian universities and colleges have felt pressured to indigenize their institutions. What “indigenization” has looked like, however, has varied significantly. Based on the input from an anonymous online survey of 25 Indigenous academics and their allies, we assert that indigenization is a three-part spectrum. On one end is Indigenous inclusion, in the middle reconciliation indigenization, and on the other end decolonial indigenization. We conclude that despite using reconciliatory language, post-secondary institutions in Canada focus predominantly on Indigenous inclusion. We offer two suggestions of policy and praxis— treaty-based decolonial indigenization and resurgence-based decolonial indigenization—to demonstrate a way toward more just Canadian academy.
In this commentary on Daniels v. Canada, we discuss the cultural power of legal discourse, and more specifically, we argue that the logics that various actors have drawn from Daniels work to marginalize, if not gut completely, policy logics that are based on a respect for Métis peoplehood. In doing so, we analyze one unintended yet predictable outcome of the decision: the growth of new self-declared Métis or Indian groups, such as the Mikinak Tribe of Québec, who see Daniels as an opportunity to capitalize on the perceived benefits of being Indigenous in Canada. We conclude that while Métis inclusion in s.35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 and now in s.91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867 due to the Daniels decision remains important, these developments should be understood and used, from a policy perspective, as building blocks for affirming Métis nationhood and the self-determining power of the Métis Nation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.