Lives in the Making: Indigenous Postsecondary Student Experiences

• In Event: 56.062 - Counterstories and Communities in Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

In this paper I draw upon a narrative inquiry alongside of Urban Indigenous post-secondary students in Western Canada inquiring into the stories they told of who they are and are becoming, and how other cultural, familial, social, and institutional narratives influence, or shape, these stories during their first year of post-secondary education. I inquired into the ways that Drew negotiated the multiplicities of conflicting and competing plotlines that shaped her stories to live by around which she was composing her life. I speak to the ways stories to live by, as a way to understand identity, calls for us to attend to a life in the making as we consider the experiences of Indigenous post-secondary students.

Author

• Trudy Michelle Cardinal, University of Alberta