Examining international students’ implication in settler colonialism

A letter to my fellow international students: Examining our implication in settler colonialism

The following anonymous letter was written by an international student who recently graduated from a university in what is currently known as Canada. It was inspired both by reflections on their own learning, and by the “Letter to prospective immigrants to what is known as Canada” thought experiment. Because the student’s legal status in Canada is not permanent, and because the issues that they raise can be understood as being critical of the Canadian nation-state and Canadian universities, they have asked us to publish this letter anonymously.

I write this letter to my fellow international students as a recent graduate of a Canadian university. I want to invite all of my fellow international students who are studying in or have graduated from a Canadian higher education institution to pause and take a moment to reflect on the Indigenous-settler relationship and the colonial violence we might be implicated in.

From my experience as an international student in Canada, I have observed that there is little crosstalk between international students and Indigenous peoples. Many international students who study in Canada lack a deep understanding of settler colonialism and some of them are unaware and even indifferent towards the colonial violence that they are implicated in. Many also have limited knowledge of Indigenous peoples and their colonial history in the Canadian context. Many entrenched biases towards Indigenous peoples have been reinforced due to the misleading narratives about Indigenous peoples and issues that are disseminated by the mass media and the Canadian government itself. Therefore, this letter is an effort to invite international students to not only consider their personal experiences of systemic racism but also to reflect on their positionality in relation to Indigenous peoples and lands. Even though international students are not responsible for Canada’s painful colonial legacies and many are systemically vulnerable themselves, we are often invested in the continuity of the system that perpetuates ongoing colonial violence that harms both ourselves and Indigenous people.

This invitation might seem unintelligible if the whole idea of ongoing settler colonialism is still new to you, or its implications are unclear. This is not entirely your fault, because our universities are inclined to downplay their implications in colonial violence to protect their reputation in order to attract students and intellectuals from across the world. You might feel perplexed and disoriented because this question goes against your intuition and preconception that universities are noble institutions that cannot possibly do harmful things.

As a racialized international student, I have found it important to develop the ability and endurance to hold space for sitting with and working through all the complexities, paradoxes, tensions, and contradictions that emerge in relation to my positionality. In reflecting on my positionality, I certainly find myself in a weird position. On the one hand, I would like to advocate for the decolonization and Indigenization of higher education for various reasons; on the other hand, I am reluctant to do so if this advocacy is at the expense of the value of my educational credential or social mobility. However, I think it is imperative for us to be honest and compassionate towards ourselves and other marginalized groups. In this letter, I speak in the first person to share my stories, reflections, and numerous internal struggles as a racialized international student. To acknowledge that international students are complex human beings with conflicting desires who might be both subject to and complicit in others’ marginalization.

Considering Our Role in Colonization

The issue of Indigenous peoples and their position in what is currently known as Canada might not entirely be an alien thing for you. For example, your professors might be doing a land acknowledgment to kick off their weekly lectures. But they rarely explain why they are doing this, and you might never bother to ask or study the meaning behind this acknowledgement because this question will be unlikely to show up on the exam.

In this letter, I refer to the question of “what land acknowledgments mean to you, specifically as a racialized international student studying at a Canadian university.” Because without deep reflection on this question and understanding why we are doing this acknowledgement in an earnest, discerning, and accountable way, this land acknowledgement may quickly become a vacuous symbolic gesture that cannot translate into any meaningful actions. And part of me is cynical about many of our faculty members’ superficial adoption of land acknowledgments to make them look good and feel good, while no further effort has been paid to expand this critical conversation. Therefore, I am calling for us to create spaces to have these critical discussion amongst ourselves as international students, so we can work toward confronting our complicity in harm, and building ethical solidarities with Indigenous peoples.

My reflections might help some international students to make more informed decisions before deciding to come to Canada to study.  However, it is equally important for international students who are currently here or who have already graduated to reflect on their experiences and to ask critical questions, such as: How do you feel about being both at the receiving end of racism as a form of oppression and also part of the system that perpetuates the dispossession of Indigenous peoples? Has your experience as an international student matched what was sold as “the Canadian experience”? When we invest in the prestige of Canadian universities (as something that adds value to our CVs), what forms of harm are we reproducing?

You might still believe that colonialism is all in the past, but in fact, the expansion of the university campus, the international branding, and the uncritical pursuit of “research excellence” are in many ways achieved at the expense of specific marginalized groups including Indigenous people and international students. This might come as a surprise to you, or maybe not. Because as a racialized international student, your authentic experiences can speak for themselves. Your experiences might tell you that Canadian universities are not a wonderland in which all students are being equally desired, valued, welcomed, and included. In fact, there are inequalities, marginalization, isolation, and discrimination inside of our institutions. In other words, our university is tantamount to a “microcosm of the larger society”.

Just take a closer look, and you will find the legacies of colonialism are everywhere on campus. The creation of universities in Canada was itself an act of white supremacy (Stanley 2009); the land you are situated on is the stolen land of Indigenous peoples; the university you attend is named after colonizers; the university buildings were named after donors with no recognition of whose land the buildings were built on; the reconciliation totem pole that was installed on campus is a symbol of Indigenous people’s resilience in the face of colonial violence; and the textbook you studied is likely epistemic Eurocentric and written in English.

However, these historical and contemporary facts are often told differently. For many Indigenous people, the past is a painful chronicle of broken treaties, stolen lands, Indian residential schools, cultural genocide, and intergenerational trauma. For many non-Indigenous people, the past is a celebratory story of discovering new lands, nation-building, and helping “uncivilized Indians” adjust to (i.e. assimilate into) mainstream Canadian society.

Canada’s colonial legacies not only have far-reaching implications for Indigenous peoples, but they also impact every aspect of my life on campus as a racialized international student. Some of you might feel disappointed, frustrated, or irritated after you heard about my story because my experiences of studying at a Canadian university somehow resonate with you. In retrospect, despite the thousands of dollars I have spent on my education, I realized my four-year education at a prestigious Canadian university can neither prepare me to resolve many unprecedented challenging and imperative global issues nor guarantee my competitiveness in the global job market. I feel I have been cheated, ripped off, scapegoated, abused, exploited by the institution that I used to admire, respect, and long to be part of. However, this disillusionment with the shiny promises offered by my institution enabled me to be more candid, authentic, compassionate, and empathetic with myself and others around me. It is from this space that I invite you to reflect on your own educational experiences as well as to consider the question of what it means to be situated on Indigenous land as an international student.

Disillusionment with the Promises of Western Education

I wholeheartedly wish that each of my fellow international students will have a bright future. But I also have to admit that I am here not to celebrate our education but to puncture the enchanted bubble that has besieged us. I am here to invite people to be psychologically prepared to enter the complex, volatile, unequal, and uncertain world that is replete with legacies of past, present, and enduring colonial violence. I am not here to give a pep talk; my goal here is to break the silence, unravel myths, identify misconceptions, and visibilize hidden truths. I know that when I do this some of you and even some of my own professors might be looking to me to offer “answers” for how we can “solve” these problems. But I am here not to offer simplistic or pragmatic solutions, but rather to stimulate critical awareness, dialogues, discussions, and reflections that might enable us to rethink the promises we have been sold, and perhaps even to move toward disinvesting from the educational system that is trying to infantilize us.

I know that the decolonization of higher education may be an awkward and uncomfortable topic to discuss for some European-descendent international students. It is comfortable for me to denounce white supremacy and Eurocentrism, because I am not a white person. Instead, I am a victim of systemic racism. So, it is plausible to infer that I should not be accountable or feel guilty for what white people have done. It is even desirable for me as a racialized person to explicitly castigate systemic injustice, racism, and chronic impacts of colonial legacies and calls for actions. However, being the victim of systemic harm does not immunize me from being implicated in the perpetuation of ongoing settler colonialism and the subjugation of other people and other-than-human beings. The fact is, like many international students, I am a beneficiary of this colonialism. This paradox also drove me to ask why I am interested in pursuing higher education in a Canadian university, although I might encounter systemic racism and unfair treatment. What does it mean to me to have a degree from a prestigious western university?

For a long time, the single narrative of progress, development and human evolution that has been defined from a western perspective has been perceived as a default and universal prototype; the western way of knowing and being is framed in dominant narratives as universal and unlimited; the fluency of English language speaking is still perceived as crucial to becoming successful. Due to these prevalent narratives, having western educational experiences, especially credentials, from top-ranking universities have been perceived as the primary pathway to greater opportunities for social mobility, economic advancement, and the capacity to combat social injustice and give back to society. Like many parents in Asian countries, my parents would sell their properties, take on extra shifts, and even go into debt to financially support me to get into a top university in the world so that I can have a “brighter” future and support them in their old age.

We are socialized in a highly constructed environment, and the dominant settler colonial narratives condition us to ignore and diminish other ways of knowing and being. The dominant global imaginary has sought to erase the diversity of human knowledge and experience. The western way of being and knowing has become the paradigm of excellence and exceptionalism. Under the influence of the dominant global imaginary, “all non–colonial-derived methodologies or beliefs are stigmatized as irrational and in need of change” (Hanson & Jaffe, 2020). All non-living things and even non-white human beings were and in many ways continue to be treated as non-emotional entities, tools and objects to be used then discarded. Historically, science has been used to legitimate systemic racism, and to defend slavery and colonialism. Subjects like psychology were used to support eugenic and white supremacist beliefs, practices, and policies. Breakthrough technologies were used to consolidate geopolitical dominance and to maintain deeply uneven power dynamics. The promise of universities that universities are leading the fight for social inequality and challenging the status quo has become lip service, and no strategic plan can mobilize us to transform ourselves and the harmful systems we inhabit and embody.

After 5 years of study, I realized western education is a placebo, and the credential I obtained is not an unassailable shield that protects me from being a victim of systemic racism. The narrative we have been sold only made us feel good about ourselves, to further foster the illusion that we are indispensable, irreplaceable, and superior, but ignoring the fact that our advancement in society is premised on the ongoing marginalization of racialized and Indigenous people. However, I have to pause here again, in order to question my own presumed benevolence in offering this critique. Some people might assume that, because I am not a white person, and because I am critiquing colonialism, I am immune from reproducing the problematic patterns of colonialism. In fact, despite my racially marginalized position and despite my critique, parts of me might still be affectively invested in the continuity of the system that perpetuates the harm. I might, in some contexts, feel compelled to selectively tell good stories about my experience at a Canadian university. I have to come up with a justification to mitigate my cognitive dissonance. And I am reluctant to advocate for the decolonization/Indigenization of higher education if this advocacy is at the expense of my social and economic power, privileges, and entitlements. I might even actively reject decolonization if I perceive it has the potential risk of devaluing the credentials that I and my family put so much time and money into achieving. An analogy here is that people who wait in line for an hour or more to get into an exclusive restaurant are often unwilling to criticize the restaurant afterward, even if they have been served a mediocre meal.

I am disappointed with conditional inclusion and disillusioned by tokenistic gestures of institutional transformation. As an international student, it is hurtful to see universities perceive and frame international students as cash cows, competition, and charity (Stein & Andreotti, 2016). Is hurtful to have your white teammate reject you from engaging in the group project and ask you to not feel guilty about being a freeloader. It is hurtful that English-speaking skills become the objective benchmark of intellectual capacity. It is hurtful that your professor suspected you were engaged in academic plagiarism without any solid evidence because his intuition told him the quality of the paper seems to exceed your academic writing capacity. It is hurtful that your professor made an inappropriate racist joke that is full of arrogance, but you lack tactics to confront it. It is hurtful that you were trying to seek support from the university on how to confront racism on campus, but you never heard back from the university.

Their promises are incompatible with their actions. I feel angry, even outraged, but I have come to realize that there is also something important to learn from these traumatic experiences. The conflicting and ambivalent remarks I received, microaggressions I experienced, condescending responses I encountered made me question the narrative I have been told for a long time about the virtuousness of Canadian universities. The paradoxical question that arose for me is: Can we expect justice from an institution that is rooted in so many injustices?

Reframing Our Relationship to Canada and Our Responsibilities to Indigenous Peoples

I resonate with Khawaja and Stallman’s (2011) observations that international students face “a range of stressors, such as cultural shock, discrimination, adjustment to unfamiliar cultural norms, values and customs, communication or language difficulties, education system differences, financial hardships, lack of appropriate accommodation, isolation and loneliness, homesickness, and loss of established support and social networks.” I struggled with how to adapt to the Canadian educational system throughout my entire undergraduate studies, but I grappled with them alone because no one seems to care too much about it. Or even if someone does care, they often don’t know how to help or even how to change their own colonial habits.

My parents often remind me that supporting me to pursue higher education in Canada is the biggest investment that they have ever made. The expectations from this extravagant but promising investment is something that I cannot treat as negligible. There is another stressor that Khawaja and Stallman seem to omit but that is equally disturbing, which is the external pressure from “investors” due to the promised expectations and internal pressure of students to return the favour to their “investors.” The expectations could include receiving exceptional grades, being competitive and outstanding in the global job market so that their parents can gain face, and the capacity to find a high-paying job right after graduation. These expectations seem reasonable because it is congruent with the narratives they were sold. We need to change the narrative, debunk false promises that universities have made to international students and their parents, and more importantly to educate our parents about settler colonial relationships and ongoing colonial violence in Canada. And we need to consider how we can honour the sacrifices that they have made for us while also recognizing that we can make different choices.

We often assume there is deep-seated solidarity between Indigenous people and racialized international students on campus because we all suffered from systemic oppression. However, I find there is a little communication between these two groups of people. On the one hand, the predominant narratives about Indigenous peoples often impede international students from developing a nuanced understanding of ongoing settler colonial violence, let alone feeling accountable for harms we did not directly cause. On the other hand, some Indigenous people might feel resentment or hostility towards international students if they perceive us as threat because of the xenophobic stereotypes that circulate about us. Colonial narratives about Indigenous people represent them as freeloaders, criminals, drug abusers, irrational protestors that resist economic development and so. All these entrenched stereotypes are the consequence of ongoing colonial violence. Although calls for truth and reconciliation are louder today than perhaps ever before in Canadian history, especially in light of the tragic news about Indigenous children’s remains at Indian Residential school sites, many Canadians are still seeking ways to justify historical and ongoing colonial actions. Although K-12 schools are obligated to include the perspectives of Indigenous people, colonial actions are often still justified in curricula in implicit and explicit ways that disavow Canadians’ responsibilities for those actions.

My invitation for my fellow international students is to encourage us to be courageous, curious, critical, and honest not only towards ourselves but also others. To denaturalize and challenge the dominant global imaginary, to question authority figures, to reject patronizing help, to ask provocative questions, and to incessantly seek to confront (rather than run away from) colonial realities while unlearning numerous entrenched doctrines, dogmas, and dictates that conditioned our minds and imaginaries, and that circulate on our campuses and the larger society. And, to prepare ourselves to confront the complexity of the world and our complicity in harm, instead of trying to protect ourselves from critique by either weaponizing our own marginalization or mobilizing our relative privilege . Indeed, we are living in a world that is fraught with complexity, uncertainty, inequality, and instability. However, denying the systemic harm that we have helped produce, discrediting honest accounts of colonial history, and resting on our righteousness are all precarious practices that disengage us from accepting responsibility to interrupt the systemic violence that continues to harm Indigenous communities and lands.

I want to invite all of us to envision what higher education will look like in 50 years. Perhaps in 50 years, scholars will be equally shocked by the harm we are implicated in today as many of us are by the harm perpetuated by Indian residential schools. I sincerely hope that graduation from a Canadian university is not the end of your learning career, rather than the beginning journey of unlearning and relearning. To retrain our brains to respond to painful truths in a healthier, more accountable manner. To turn our hearts and minds to building a future where all knowledge systems are equally valued for their contextual relevance. To acknowledge that even though we are part of global problems but can also be part of global solutions. I sincerely hope that you consider the credential you hang up on the wall not just a representation of your intelligence but also a reminder that your achievements have also come at the expense of others.

What Now?

In offering this letter, I invite you to disarm your defensiveness for long enough to consider the limitations and harms of a system that is trying to infantilize us; and to consider our debt to Indigenous peoples. As an international student, here are some ways you can try to honour that debt, interrupt harmful patterns, and practice different relations of solidarity:

  • Do your homework: 
    • Learn about your institution’s historical and contemporary institutional complicity in settler colonialism, and ask what it is doing to interrupt and redress the harms that have been done and that are in many ways ongoing
    • Learn about the past and present of colonialism within Canada – and try to keep up with the latest developments not only in mainstream news outlets but also as reported by Indigenous journalists and outlets like APTN
    • Learn about contemporary decolonization movements, such as the #LandBack movement – remembering that Indigenous peoples are heterogenous and hold varied perspectives about how to address colonial violence
  • Invite fellow international students to consider the questions raised in this letter, or other questions that have arisen for you in this self-reflexive process
  • If you are considering applying for permanent residency in Canada after graduation, consider what it means to become a resident and perhaps a future citizen of a settler colonial nation (see: “Letter to prospective immigrants to what is known as Canada”)
  • Sit with difficult questions about your own complicity in settler colonial harm, in consideration of your positionality and its many layers; if you feel tempted to absolve yourself because you may also be marginalized in some way(s), ask where that response is coming from and at whose expense you are deflecting responsibility – and practicing hold space for both your complicity and marginalization at the same time
  • When you are advocating for better resources for yourself as a marginalized student, consider if you can do that in ways that enact support for and solidarity with Indigenous students in relation to the specific marginalizations they experience (which might be resonant with but are not the same as your own)
  • From your own context and positionality, ask how you might take small steps to cultivate relationships with Indigenous peoples grounded in trust, respect, reciprocity, consent, and accountability (as Indigenous philosopher Kyle Whyte suggests)

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