Reconciliation
Getting to the truth was hard, but getting to reconciliation will be harder. It requires that the paternalistic and racist foundations of the residential school system and racist systems, laws and policies be rejected as the basis for an ongoing relationship. Reconciliation requires that a new vision, based on a commitment to mutual respect, be developed. It also requires an understanding that the most harmful impacts of residential schools have been the loss of pride and self-respect of Indigenous people, and the lack of respect that non-Indigenous people have been raised to have for their Indigenous neighbours. Reconciliation is not an Indigenous problem; it is a Canadian one.
Decolonization
Is the process of deconstructing colonial ideologies of the superiority and privilege of Western thought and approaches. On the one hand, decolonization involves dismantling structures that perpetuate the status quo and addressing unbalanced power dynamics. On the other hand, decolonization involves valuing and revitalizing Indigenous knowledge and approaches and eliminating settler biases or assumptions that have impacted Indigenous people. For non-Indigenous people, decolonization is the process of examining beliefs about Indigenous people and cultures by learning about oneself in relationship to the communities where one live and the people with whom one interacts. Just as colonization was a global project, so too must decolonization be a global ongoing process that requires all of us to be collectively involved and responsible. Decolonizing our institutions means we create spaces that are inclusive, respectful, and honour Indigenous Peoples.
Indigenization
TRU’s Indigenous Education office foregrounds Indigenization initiatives such as the Coyote Project, and research initiatives such as Research activities the Knowledge Makers program, the All My Relations Network, the International Indigenous Therapeutic Jurisprudence + Conference, the Awakening the Spirit Conference, and the Strategies to Keep Indigenous Children in School Conference, as well as offering guidance for requesting an Elder, how and when to smudge, among many other important protocols for Indigenizing TRU.
Territorial acknowledgement Thompson Rivers University campuses are on the traditional lands of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (Kamloops campus) and the T’exelc (Williams Lake campus) within Secwépemc’ulucw, the traditional and unceded territory of the Secwépemc. The region TRU serves also extends into the territories of the St’át’imc, Nlaka’pamux, Tŝilhqot’in, Nuxalk, and Dakelh, and Métis communities within these territories.
Indigenization seeks not only relevant programs and support services but also a fundamental shift in the ways that institutions:
- Include Indigenous perspectives, values, and cultural understandings in policies and daily practices.
- Position Indigenous ways of knowing at the heart of the institution, which then informs all the work that we do.
- Include cultural protocols and practices in the operations of our institutions.
Indigenization values sustainable and respectful relationships with First Nation, Métis, and Inuit communities, Elders, and organizations. Moreover, 17% of Canadian international student identify as Indigenous in their home context. Thus, Indigenizing is a Global project. When Indigenization is practiced at an institution, Indigenous people see themselves represented, respected, and valued and all students benefit. Indigenization, like decolonization, is an ongoing process, one that will shape and evolve over time.
“Indigenizing requires a recognition of historic wrongs committed against Indigenous peoples in Canada; a need for redress (UNDRIP, 2007), (TRC, 2015), (CAUT, 2016), (MMIWG, 2019); and a commitment to undertake proactive measures aimed at restoring, renewing, and re-generating Indigenous practices, languages, and knowledge” (Shelly Johnson, Faculty of Arts Presentation, Oct. 25, 2019).
Decolonial indigenization
Envisions the wholesale overhaul of the academy to fundamentally reorient knowledge production based on balancing power relations between Indigenous peoples and Canadians, transforming the academy into something dynamic and new.
Implicit bias
Attitudes or stereotypes that affect our judgement and actions unconsciously. Studies in social psychology suggest that our implicit biases may be contrary to our avowed commitments and that those with strong social justice commitments may be least amenable to recognizing and ameliorating their own bias.
Stereotype threat
Stereotype threat is a situational predicament identifying the ways in which anxieties about conforming to negative stereotypes tend to impede the performance of members of negatively stereotyped groups. Stereotype threat is particularly potent when group membership has been made salient in a particular context even if the negative stereotype is not mentioned (for instance, if a professor says “Good luck, ladies,” to the women in their class at the beginning of a math exam).
Moral licensing
Doing something that positively affects one’s self-image in some respect tends to make one less concerned about behaving immorally in that respect. For example, doing something that makes one feel less sexist, by say including more women on your reading list, may make one less concerned about speaking over women at meetings. More troubling, though no less familiar, is when someone who persistently sexually harasses women also consistently promotes the careers of female students.
Institutional discrimination
Policies and practices that tend to work in favor of a dominant group and systematically disadvantage another group. These norms can be particular to an institution but many such norms are embedded in the existing structure of society and reverberate through most institutions in that society. For instance, the overcriminalization of Indigenous people and of people of African descent not only increases the likelihood of their entering the criminal justice system, but affects their experiences of the education system, their ability to secure lodging and bank loans and so forth.
Epistemic injustice
The recognition that not all people are identified as equal knowers. Members of some groups have certain types of knowledge systematically withheld from them; members of other groups have their testimony systematically discredited; members of other groups are silenced by their being inadequate resources available to them to make themselves understood. Philosophy should be a resource for combatting epistemic injustice, but is often experienced as a prime perpetrator of epistemic injustice.
Intersectionality
The recognition that axes of oppression are not additive but often interact and create specific types of challenges and barriers that are difficult to anticipate or understand from an external perspective.
Types of inclusion
Of actual people: Perhaps the most important type of inclusion from which many of the other types of inclusion often flow is the inclusion of members of underrepresented groups. It is an error, however, to think that if one does include members of underrepresented groups in one’s department as faculty member, students or visiting scholars, that one’s work is done or to think that if one fails at such inclusive practices nothing more can be tried.
Of perspectives: In research and in classroom contexts one can include the perspectives of underrepresented groups by not merely addressing issues that pertain to these groups but also statements and claims made by members of these groups. Note: this can be fraught as many of the nuances and complexities that pertain to these issues, the groups, and their representatives may not be obvious to people without the relevant experience or expertise. Philosophical work that takes on the issues or perspective of a particular underrepresented group can often be less fraught, assuming that they are recognised as a legitimate scholar in the relevant subdiscipline.
Of work by: In research and in classroom contexts one can include works by members of underrepresented groups.
Of work in the tradition of: This is particularly salient when it comes to including works outside the Anglo-American and European tradition.
Relationships between types of inclusion: Often these types of inclusion line up, as when women who work in feminist philosophy research issues that particularly pertain to women and teach the feminist philosophical tradition as one reaching back to Mary Wollstonecraft and Anna Julia Cooper. And often they don’t, as when a philosopher with a disability of Asian descent works in analytic epistemology. All types of inclusion matter and individuals and departments are tasked with doing the best they can along each measure.