Austin, Gillian Margaret

Since the 1960s, post-secondary institutions (PSIs) across Chi'Mikinak (the Great Turtle) have been learning how to engage with Indigenous Knowledge Holders and their knowledges in academic programs and research, to decolonize, to support Indigenous-led initiatives, and make systemic, transformative, and reconciliatory change. This work explores what practices support and nurture Indigenous autonomy in relation to Indigenous Knowledge systems in four Canadian, Indigenous-focused post-secondary education (PSE) programs. It considers how to embody and activate these practices as individuals and institutionally, as well as the issues, tensions, opportunities, and prospects for doing so. Co-learning and co-creating are possible. However, Indigenous autonomy (often framed as control) demands rebalancing and restructuring of asymmetrical Indigenous/settler relations on the land, in governance, in the academy, and settler society. Indigenous inclusion in PSE does not result in structural, transformational, reconciliatory, or Indigenizing change, but rather, Indigenous Peoples say they are constrained within colonial governance structures and frameworks. Thriving prospects for upholding Indigenous relational autonomy and Indigenous Knowledge sovereignty in Indigenous programming is rooted in Indigenous governance, which inherently centres local Indigenous Peoples, their lands, knowledges, languages, histories, and spiritualities. It also requires settler peoples "to Treaty" their way forward using Treaty epistemologies and ontologies to uphold Treaty values, relationships, and responsibilities, and to create ethical spaces for Indigenous governance. The experiences, stories, and understandings of the Traditional Advisory Council of the Indigenous Studies Ph.D. program, plus 14 Indigenous Knowledge Holders and 20 settler people associated with three programs at the Chanie Wenjack School of Indigenous Studies at Trent University, as well as insights from Mi'kmaw Dr./Elders Murdena and Albert Marshall regarding the former Toqwa'tu'kl Kjijitaqnn/Integrative Science program at Cape Breton University, ground and guide this work. The work utilizes transdisciplinary and qualitative approaches, including co-learning, etuaptmumk (the gift of multiple perspectives), Indigenist, decolonizing and settler-colonial theory, within relational and Treaty-based accountability ethics. It draws from Indigenous-centred literature. It contributes to Indigenous, settler-colonial, reconciliation, and political studies; knowledge engagement, translation and mobilization; systemic change; Treaty education; co-learning; transdisciplinary and transcultural education and research; and Indigenous-settler alliances. The findings are relevant to PSIs across Chi'Mikinak.

Author Keywords: Albert and Murdena Marshall, Co-Learning and Two-Eyed Seeing, Indigenous Education, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Systemic Change in Settler-Colonial Education, Treaty Education in Canada