Indigenous Dawn Breakers and Daybreak People: The Braided Journey of Indigenous Professors
Date
2021-08-20
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Abstract
A growing number of Indigenous people have successfully obtained an undergraduate degree and have continued their educational journey to earn a graduate degree. Indigenous communities have more Indigenous people attending post-secondary institutes seeking Western Knowledge as this is what is offered. Indigenous graduate students can transcend the colonial imposition that exists in Canada and in universities by pursuing a graduate studies education as a tool of empowerment. This qualitative study involved interviews with eight Indigenous professors who shared experiences of their graduate educational journeys and thoughts for future Indigenous graduate students. By exploring these stories and their messages in this study, I am helping Indigenous professors share how they broke the trail for generations to come. Those who arise at dawn, when the sun rises, are known as Dawn Breakers and Daybreak People. In contemporary times, they are ones who have sought a new path of graduate studies and have gone on to create this new path for future generations of Indigenous scholars. This research presents its findings through the metaphor of a sweetgrass braid where the lived experiences, colonial-based experiences, and academic experiences of Indigenous faculty members are the three central strands. The first strand of lived experiences concerns the importance of families in graduate students’ lives, establishing a new Indigenous community, understanding an Indigenous cultural imperative, and relocating to attend graduate school. The second strand of colonial-based experiences represents some of the negative outcomes of a colonial past on those pursuing graduate degrees, including the personal struggles as graduate students with feelings of inadequacy, preserving Indigenous culture during graduate studies, awareness of the labour market, racism in society and universities, and universities’ deficiencies. The third strand of academic experiences represents the educational context of Indigenous professors, highlighting the need for mentors to help support Indigenous graduate students, understanding the relevance of a graduate degree as a condition of employment at universities, navigating finances, time management considerations, and having frank discussions to understand all that is involved in pursuing graduate studies. Culture is rooted in but not limited to the past, as this Braid of new Knowledge will serve as a gift to distil insights for the success of future Indigenous graduate students.
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Keywords
Indigenous education, Indigenous graduate studies
Citation
Shawana, J. (2021). Indigenous Dawn Breakers and Daybreak People: The Braided Journey of Indigenous Professors (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.