Our goals are to make Camosun as welcoming and relevant to Indigenous learners as we can be, and to prepare non-Indigenous students, graduates and employees to better understand, live alongside, and work with Indigenous peoples.
Please contact us if you have questions or innovative, creative ideas about Indigenization. Levi Glass is our Indigenization Coordinator and聽Natasha-Faye Parrish聽is our Indigenization聽Education Developer.
What is "Indigenization"?
Indigenization is the process by which Indigenous ways of knowing, being, doing and relatingare incorporated into the educational, organizational, cultural and social structures of the institution.
Employee education and the indigenizing curriculum development and delivery are聽important parts of the indigenization process.
Curriculum development and delivery
What, in practical terms, does Indigenization mean in relation to curriculum and student learning?
The development and maintenance of deep relationships with the community
The following needs must be addressed:
- Dedicated resources to community relationship development (local First Nations, M茅tis community, Indigenous organizations), including a person or people who can build bridges between Indigenous communities and the institution.
- Informed willingness and capacity on the part of the institution and its programs to work collaboratively and respectfully with Indigenous communities and knowledge keepers.
A knowledge about and use of Indigenous scholarship
- Faculty to develop and/or co-develop curriculum and to teach.聽
- Continuation of resources, programs such as聽TEL纽IN T纽E WILNEW: 鈥淯nderstanding Indigenous Peoples"聽and the聽Indigenous Education Community of Practice, as well as the development of new resources including an orientation to Indigenization program to be made available to all new faculty.
- Library鈥檚 Teaching & Learning Resources at Camosun:
Understand the concept of Indigenous knowledge and how best to integrate it
- Need to work with Indigenous knowledge keepers and to review Indigenous scholarship to establish a process or policy about how to integrate Indigenous knowledge and at the same time to protect it.
Understanding, knowledge, and capacity to apply Indigenous theories and pedagogy
- This requires expertise and can be included in educator development, once faculty have grappled with the impacts and implications of colonization and have experience with Indigenizing their professional practice.
Commitment to a significant organizational culture change project
The formulation of strong relationships across the institution among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples is necessary to understand of why Indigenization is important.
- Institutional leadership must buy into Indigenization and support it with resources and through modelling respectful relationships, meaningful engagement and inclusion of Indigenous peoples in all aspects of the work of the college and not only for ceremonial purposes. The process of Indigenization is most effective