Decolonizing the Academy: Trans-systemic Transformations in Reconciliation and Indigenization

This presentation will focus on the mandates, challenges and tensions of Indigenization and reconciliation arising from what counts as knowledge, how Indigenous knowledges differ from Eurocentric disciplinary knowledges, and how Indigenous faculty, staff and students must navigate diverse knowledges and systems in universities often to their detriment. Dr. Battiste will explain the diverse ways Indigenization is practiced across Canada in universities and offer promising practices for reconciliation and decolonial Indigenization.

Dr. Marie Battiste is Mi’kmaw, a member of the Potlotek First Nation, and a member of the Aroostook Band of Micmacs in Maine. Marie has just completed three years as a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellow and is currently a Special Advisor to the Vice President (Academic), Provost and to the Dean of Unama’ki College at Cape Breton University on Decolonizing the Academy. After graduating from Harvard and Stanford Universities, she has been passionately working on research and scholarly work about decolonizing education, cognitive justice through balancing diverse knowledge systems and languages, and protecting Indigenous knowledges. She has published widely, over 80 chapters in books, journals and reports, and 6 books in those areas.

Discussants: Sheila Embleton (Former Provost of York University); Jessica Riddell (Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence at Bishop’s University and the Executive Director of the Maple League of Universities); and Dawn Whitehead (Vice President of the Office of Global Citizenship for Campus, Community, and Careers, American Association of Colleges and Universities)

This event is free and is open for all to attend.

L(iberalArts) ED(ucation) Lecture Series 2022-2023

This public lecture series is initiated and sponsored by a SSHRC Partnership Grant Stage 2 application, led by Qiang Zha (Project Director), Sheila Embleton, Ruth Hayhoe and Glen Jones (Project Co-Directors) at York University and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.

The project aims to draw from the synergy of a research network connecting over 20 eminent partner organizations in North America, East Asia and Western Europe to create a trans-continental/traditional liberal arts education (LAE) knowledge consortium and address the  following study objectives: identifying, piloting and evaluating new aims and emerging stakeholders for LAE in contemporary and future contexts; extending LAE to address Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization needs and the learning styles of students in light of evolving priorities in higher education (e.g., massification, digitization, and interdisciplinary requirements for STEM and professional students); and discerning innovations required to reinvent LAE in contemporary universities, particularly those responding to the need to foster flexibility, resilience and sustainability in times of uncertainty.