By Rose Roberts, Educational Development Specialist (Indigenous Engagement and Education) and Heather M. Ross, Educational Developer; University of Saskatchewan
The intersection between OER and Indigenization is a new area within academia. OER is about opening up the world of knowledge to as many people as possible. Indigenization is about opening up the world of Indigenous reality to as many people as possible.
The University of Saskatchewan (U of S) has identified Indigenization as one of its 4 pillars in its Institutional Strategic Framework. As an Indigenous person (Rose) who has worked within a western based educational institution for most of my work life, virtually everything that I do is indigenization. However, Indigenization as an academic institutional endeavor is a new phenomenon, and because it is relatively new, we are in many ways continuing to figure out what it is and how to go about it in a good way.
What is Indigenization?
First a bit of explanation of where we are coming from. Indigenous is an overarching term used for the original inhabitants of a territory; in Saskatchewan those original peoples are known as First Nations and Metis. The third indigenous group in Canada are the Inuit, however, since Saskatchewan was not their traditional territory, there are relatively few living in the province. Approximately 16% of the Saskatchewan population self identified as either First Nations or Metis (2016 stats). The University of Saskatchewan has a student population of roughly 25,000, 12% of them are First Nations or Metis. Indigenization is not only about creating safe spaces (inclusion and diversity) for Indigenous students, staff and faculty, it’s also about rewriting and correcting the historical representation of Indigenous peoples. Indigenization is also about bringing in Indigenous knowledge into academe.
In May, the U of S hosted a two-day conference around Indigenization and OER, in an effort to create an opportunity for advocates of these two important initiatives to come together for conversations around where there may be cross-over priorities and how we might collaborate on bringing change to higher education. While the majority of the sessions and attendee interest related to indigenization, there were some presentations around OER and indigenization, including a fishbowl discussion around how the two initiatives might work together.
Intersection of OER and Indigenization
OER has enjoyed grassroots support at the U of S for the past four years, with the number of students benefiting from the use of OER instead of commercial textbooks growing from fewer than 100 students in 2014 to more than 4,000 in 2018, saving students more than $800,000 in less than five years. In addition, there has been a growing interest in the past year in the integration of open pedagogy.
This cost savings for students is vital as tuition and housing costs continue to increase for post-secondary students and their families. These costs can be particularly challenging for indigenous students, and can be a barrier to entering and staying in post-secondary education. Targeting programs with high Indigenous student numbers such as nursing and education for the integration of OER should be a priority for institutions interested in better serving members of Indigenous communities, something the authors of this post have been advocating at the U of S.
Another opportunity and priority area that post-secondary institutions should target for the use of OER alongside Indigenization is in history. The use of OER in place of commercial textbooks allows for adaptation of history texts to provide both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students with the needed foundational understanding about colonization, including the history of residential schools. Historical truths needs to be told and corrected in the books before there can be reconciliation. Much of what has been written about Indigenous peoples has been by non-Indigenous authors. This must change – Indigenous voices need to be heard in the re-telling of our collective history.
Making it Authentic
However, in other areas of Indigenous knowledge and OER, we urge you to slow down. Learning about Indigenous ways of knowing through the lens of a euro-western worldview will perpetuate the ‘othering’, as well as continue the colonization and appropriation. Indigenization isn’t about inserting pieces of appropriate Indigenous information within the western based course. It also isn’t about inviting an Elder or Knowledge Keeper into your class and asking them to tell their life story or share sacred knowledge. Authentic indigenization is about community and relationships. Members of Indigenous communities need to be contributing to the process and content at every step. Indigenous peoples are the ones that will know and recognize what is appropriate to share and what is to be left in the community.
An Elder of my community once said to me, “They have taken everything else from us, they can’t have our medicines.” When a peoples have been stripped of everything they were and everything they had, there is a lot of mistrust when yet another non-Indigenous person comes and asks for knowledge. As human beings, rejection is a difficult emotion to process, however, the relationship building between non-Indigenous and Indigenous must begin if our actions today are to create a better world for the next 7 generations.
Featured image by kewl from Pixabay