Indigenous Knowledges and Higher Education in Canada

“How does my own colonial legacy, shape, enable, and yet hinder my engagement with the processes of reconciliation and decolonization within Canadian higher education? Tamtik’s earnest and stellar account as a non-Indigenous academic, constructs a unique path forward to work ethically and in relationship with Indigenous peoples, knowledges, and aspirations to reconcile higher education in Canada. A must read for all scholars, policy makers, and practitioners of higher education!” -- Roopa Desai Trilokekar, Associate Professor of Postsecondary Education, York University
“This book provides deep insights on difficult topics. Merli Tamtik's writing is honest, insightful, and straightforward. This book is a call to action to Canadian higher education institutions to improve and evolve.” -- Sarah Elaine Eaton, Professor and Research Chair in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary
“This important book provides a carefully positioned and thoughtful exploration of how Indigenous knowledges are transforming higher education in Canada. The journey towards decolonization and reconciliation is winding and rocky but Tamtik, drawing on the insights of Indigenous voices, looks back to see how far we have come and ahead to see the possibilities of learning, humility, and kinship.” -- Glen A. Jones, Professor of Higher Education and former dean, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
“In this wonderfully written text, Tamtik offers a simultaneously deeply personal and widely important book with far ranging implications for how higher education institutions in Canada function. She shares unique insights as a white immigrant settler in Canada seeking to understand the complexity of the relationships between Indigenous people, land, and higher education. Tamtik presents the testimonies of Indigenous scholars as grounding for the work, inviting us to begin with their reflections. This text provides foundational background about the participation of Indigenous students and faculty in higher education to date, and insight into prevailing questions that higher education practitioners and scholars are grappling with about how to think about, recognize, celebrate, and lift-up and incorporate Indigenous knowledges into their institutions. She offers pragmatic steps that institutions and faculty can take towards more inclusive governance, relationality, and programming and gives us all a chance to imagine a more welcoming, honouring, and robust higher education environment.” -- Michelle Nilson, Associate Professor of Education, Simon Fraser University