A new book written by a Canadian academic highlights the persistent racism experienced by Indigenous students in university classrooms.
Sheila Cote-Meek, associate vice-president of academic and Indigenous programs at Laurentian University, wrote Colonized Classrooms: Racism, Trauma and Resistance in Post-Secondary Education after conducting research for her PhD.
“When I started out doing my doctoral work, I was looking for pedagogies that would assist learning for Indigenous students, who were confronting difficult narratives around residential schools and the Sixties Scoop in classrooms,” Cote-Meek said. “Once I started interviewing students and Indigenous faculty members, I came to the realization that they didn’t really want to talk about what the strategies were, but they relayed a lot of experiences they were having in the classroom.”
Cote-Meek said she wanted to share the stories she heard to further a conversation about racism in Canadian classrooms.
“Oftentimes people don’t want to talk about racism,” she said. “We couch it in other things like saying that there are financial barriers, or there are cultural barriers about why Indigenous peoples have difficulty in systems, and we’re actually blaming Indigenous people for systemic issues that exist, rather than confronting head-on that racism does exist.”
She said Indigenous students told her about being asked to answer any and all questions about Indigenous cultures during class or not being taken seriously by their non-Indigenous peers when presenting on a topic of importance to them.
“When you’re confronted with racism time and time again, it wears you down,” Cote-Meek said. “If you’re looking at an Indigenous student who already experiences a lot of marginalization and oppression in general society, having to deal on top of that with all of the racism while they’re trying to learn in a post-secondary system can actually lead to re-traumatization and more trauma.”
To combat racism on university campuses, Cote-Meek highlighted the importance of having Indigenous faculty members teaching a variety of classes, so that Indigenous students can see themselves represented. She also stressed the need for on-campus support services for Indigenous students.
“Indigenous students and faculty need places on campus where they feel accepted and safe, but also where they can get the support that they need to deal with some of the issues that they’re confronting in society,” Cote-Meek said.
One such place at Carleton University is the Mawandoseg Centre. Run by the Carleton University Students’ Association, the service centre “aims to be a safe(r) space for Indigenous students at Carleton,” according to its webpage.
Summer-Harmony Twenish, co-ordinator of the Mawandoseg Centre, said racism towards Indigenous students is common in Carleton classrooms.
“I have a lot of friends that take Indigenous studies classes with me, and every time we walk into the class, we’re always holding our breath,” Twenish said. “It’s super common, at least for me, to cry in class, to get stressed out, to walk out.”
Twenish said Indigenous students are often asked to educate their non-Indigenous peers on Indigenous issues or to recount traumatic past experiences.
“You have non-Indigenous professors that think they somehow have a free pass because they teach these subjects,” Twenish said. “They’ll do things like bring talking sticks into the classroom or refer to themselves or each other as elders or try to correct Indigenous students on what we should know versus what they know, and acting as if they’re these cultural gatekeepers when in reality they’re almost like culture vultures.”
Both Twenish and Cote-Meek highlighted the importance of cultural competency training for teaching staff at universities.
“Professors have to get uncomfortable in order to make the classroom more comfortable,” Twenish said. “That means addressing issues like colonialism.”
Cote-Meek was scheduled to speak at Carleton on March 5 for the annual Rheal Brant-Hall memorial lecture, but said her speech was postponed due to the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 2424 strike.
