Resisting Colonization: Indigenous Student-Parents' Perspectives on Postsecondary Success

• In Event: Unsettling Higher Education Contexts: Indigenous Approaches to Building Educational Solidarities and Decolonizing Research Relationships

Abstract

Despite efforts across Canada to address severe disparities in postsecondary educational outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, systemic barriers continue to limit Indigenous student success. Through an Indigenous wholistic lens, we explore the perspectives of Aboriginal students with dependent children. Drawing from interviews with student-parents at one community college and two universities in British Columbia, Canada, we share these students’ perspectives on navigating the complexities of postsecondary education. Challenging the normative constructions of postsecondary students embedded in postsecondary policies and practices, the narrative accounts that students shared with us offer a more integrated vision for supporting marginalized students.

Authors

• Michelle E. Pidgeon, Simon Fraser University

• Rebecca D. Cox, Simon Fraser University