All universities in what is currently known as Canada are products of settler colonialism.
In the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report and Calls to Action in 2015, many universities across what is currently known as Canada pledged to address the legacies of colonialism on their campuses. This work is often conducted under the heading of reconciliation, Indigenization, and/or decolonization, with these different terms being contested and interpreted in a variety of ways (Andreotti et al., 2015; Gaundry & Lorenz, 2015; Tuck & Yang, 2012). Yet critics have increasingly pointed out that institutional apologies, aspirational statements, land acknowledgments, and various efforts to include more Indigenous staff, faculty and students into the university ring hollow if they are not accompanied by substantive commitments to repair harms that have been and are being, done.
Contemporary Context
Indigenous Peoples have always had, and continue to steward, their own, place-based forms of higher learning despite colonial processes that sought to wipe out these knowledge traditions. These Indigenous practices of higher learning are grounded in Nations’ specific knowledge systems, worldviews, ontologies, ceremonies, and governance systems. Even as Indigenous Peoples strive to revitalize their traditional ways of knowing, learning, and being, they also continue to fight for access to higher education in settler colleges and universities and to advocate for the transformation of these institutions in the service of Indigenous communities.
While some have suggested Indigenous higher education policy has shifted from a tool of assimilation to one of empowerment, others emphasize that the assimilatory dimensions of Canadian higher education remain largely in place. Nonetheless, for many decades Indigenous Peoples have fought for more culturally relevant and affirming forms of higher education in accordance with Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination. This advocacy has led to the establishment of several Indigenous Studies programs and Indigenous-focused professional programs (e.g. Indigenous teacher education), targeted student service programs, the founding of several First Nations colleges and institutes, the First Nations University of Canada, as well as the unique, land-based Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning.
According to the 2021 Canadian census, 49.2% of Indigenous Peoples aged 25-64 held a post-secondary qualification. The most common qualification is a college, CEGEP, or other non-university certificate or diploma. Specifically, 45.3% of First Nations people, 56.3% of Metis people, and 33.6% of Inuit people held some post-secondary qualification. Overall, the rate of post-secondary education competition for non-Indigenous Canadians is 68%. While 29.3% of non-Indigenous Canadians hold a bachelor’s degree or above, only 10.9% of Indigenous peoples do. In BC specifically, Indigenous Peoples are also more likely to attend colleges than universities. Indigenous students also have lower retention rates than non-Indigenous students.
As Blair Stonechild (2006) writes, “a fundamental policy disagreement exists between First Nations and the federal government over whether higher education is a treaty and Aboriginal right” (p. 1). Apart from the Post Secondary Student Support Program, which was established in 1968 and provides limited financial assistance to First Nations students, the federal government claims that responsibility for Indigenous higher education falls under provincial and territorial responsibility along with all other higher education (per the Canadian constitution). Thus, despite several positive developments in Indigenous higher education over the past several decades, this has left Indigenous Peoples with a lack of adequate higher education funding to either fund student attendance in settler institutions or build and support their own institutions.
The History of Settler Colonialism in Canadian Higher Education
In order to understand the responsibilities of Canadian universities to Indigenous Peoples, it is important to contextualize the history of settler colonialism in Canadian higher education.
All Canadian universities are located on Indigenous lands, and all of them were built without the free, prior, and informed consent of local Indigenous Nations. This includes UBC, which was funded through the University Endowment Land Act of 1907, officially founded in 1908, and built on Musqueam territory in the following decades, and UVic, whose campus occupies the lands of the Lekwungen peoples, to which the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples have long-standing relationships. UVic went through several institutional formations and affiliations before being established as an autonomous public university in 1963. In 2005, the University of British Columbia acquired a second campus in Kelowna on Sylix Territory. This created a distinction between UBC-Vancouver (UBC-V) and UBC-Okanagan (UBC-O).
In addition to being located on dispossessed Indigenous lands, many universities – including UBC-O – received endowed lands from their provincial governments and benefitted from endowment capital derived through the lease, mortgage, or sale of those lands. The initial endowment for UBC in 1907 included up to 2 million acres of land in northern BC to fund the university; this land was later exchanged for 3,000 acres of Musqueam land. Many Canadian universities, including UBC, continue to hold and benefit financially from endowed lands beyond their campuses (see e.g. UBC’s Wesbook Village real estate development). This has made universities “the beneficiaries of Indigenous removal and agents of colonization” (Harvey, 2023, p. 470). Several Canadian universities, such as the University of Toronto and McGill University, also received early funding from donors who derived their wealth from colonial enterprises.
All fields of study in Canada’s universities have played at least some role in settler colonialism by preparing scholars and professionals to naturalize, expand, and reproduce settler society. This includes but is not limited to education, science, medicine, nursing, social work, agriculture, architecture, nutrition, linguistics, forestry, geography, public policy, anthropology, archaeology, law, literature, and history. Universities were also tightly intertwined with the Indian Residential School System (IRSS), particularly as many professionals who were educated at universities went on to perpetuate violence in these schools (Pidgeon, 2022).
University researchers have also produced knowledge that has rationalized and operationalized the advancement of settler colonization and have been complicit in epistemicide through the erasure, devaluation, and destruction of Indigenous knowledges, as well as the extraction and appropriation of Indigenous knowledges without Indigenous Peoples’ consent. Universities have also supported research in which faculty conducted “experiments” on Indigenous Peoples, and much university research has also been derived through the use of Indigenous artifacts, plants, human biological samples and human remains. Many of these materials have yet to be repatriated to the appropriate Indigenous communities. Thus, all institutions and their specific departments have significant responsibility to confront their historical and ongoing role in colonialism, and to enact redress for their complicity in past and ongoing colonial violence.
Not only were Indigenous Peoples negatively impacted by the training provided and research produced by Canadian universities, but they were also largely excluded from participating in these institutions for many decades. From 1876 to 1951, the federal Indian Act dictated that attending university could lead to the forcible enfranchisement of Indigenous Peoples – that is, having their “Indian status” and related rights stripped of them and thus being assimilated into Canadian society against their will. Therefore, even Indigenous Peoples who sought access to and could technically have attended settler universities often declined to do so.
Following changes to the Indian Act in the mid-20th century Indigenous Peoples gained greater access to higher education and the federal government offered limited funding opportunities to support their higher education studies. Yet the updated federal policy of “integration” was a thinly veiled continuation of assimilation by other means, and many social, political, financial, and geographical barriers for Indigenous Peoples continued – many of which remain in place today. Inequities in the quality and funding of Indigenous education begin in the early years and have reverberating impacts throughout the lives of Indigenous Peoples. The enduring Eurocentrism of Canadian higher education institutions and their dominant forms of instruction and research, along with knowledge of the historical colonial impacts of higher education, have also negatively impacted many Indigenous Peoples’ perception of higher education.
BC Context
There are 25 public post-secondary institutions in BC, including 4 research-intensive universities, 7 teaching-intensive universities, 11 colleges, and 3 provincial institutes. There are also over 40 Indigenous-controlled institutes in BC, many of which partner with post-secondary institutions to provide post-secondary education to their local communities.
In the spring of 2024, the province of BC announced that the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, the First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC) and the Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association (IAHLA) developed legislation that commits the Province to contribute ongoing operational funding and capacity funding for eligible First Nations-controlled adult and post-secondary educational institutes. The province suggests that the legislation “addresses the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, specifically Article 14(1), and delivers on commitments in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (Declaration Act) Action Plan.” In 2020, the province also introduced an “Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education and Training Policy Framework and Action Plan” (see Appendix A of this document for the 10 guiding principles of this framework).
Notwithstanding the importance of this new legislation and the value of this earlier framework, considerable work remains to be done by the government of BC and individual higher education institutions to enact repair and redress for centuries of colonial complicity.
For instance, Section 3 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) (2018), mandates the BC government to align provincial laws with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. There are several pieces of legislation related to higher education in BC that should be reviewed as part of DRIPA, including the University Act, University Endowment Land Act, College and Institute Act, Royal Roads University Act, Thompson Rivers University Act, Private Career Training Institutions Act, and the Degree Authorization Act. Here, we briefly consider the implications of DRIPA for the University Act in more detail.
The University Act was first passed in 1890 and has been updated various times since then. The Act articulates the power, duties, operations and procedures governing public BC universities. Many dimensions of DRIPA/UNDRIP indicate a need to revise the University Act to ensure the rights of Indigenous Peoples in BC are upheld. For instance, the University Act permits universities to expropriate any land they consider necessary for their purposes, which contravenes Indigenous Peoples’ right, outlined in UNDRIP, to grant or withhold their Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for any actions that would affect them or their territories. UNDRIP also entitles Indigenous Peoples to redress, including restitution, for any cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their FPIC or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs, which has many implications for BC’s public universities.
There is also considerable work that is required of individual universities in BC to fulfil their responsibilities to Indigenous Nations that have been negatively impacted by institutions’ complicity in historical and ongoing Indigenous genocide across the province.