“Role Models Can’t Just Be on Posters”: Barriers to Indigenous Community Engagement in Canadian Schools

• In Event: The Struggle for Parent and Community Voice in Schools

Abstract

Colonial practices and relations of structural domination resulting from Eurocentrism continue to pervade urban Indigenous education in Canada. Despite growing efforts on an international scale to address this by incorporating Indigenous knowledges, perspectives, and pedagogies into school curriculum and other schooling processes (Kanu, 2011), institutional barriers actively resist the inclusion of the living Indigenous knowledges of community members within classrooms. By presenting the narratives of Indigenous community, we aim to expose the perspectives and practices which dissuade and/or prevent Indigenous community members from actively contributing to urban Indigenous education that otherwise would be culturally responsive, inclusive, and equitable to all students.

Authors

• Marc Roderick Higgins, The University of British Columbia

• Brooke Madden, The University of British Columbia