As the Indigenous and Queer community reel from the horrific note that was posted in Chown Hall, we are reminded yet again that members of these communities are not safe, and that the Queen’s community knows very little about the struggles faced by Indigenous students on this campus. Organizations such as the Four Directions Indigenous Students Centre (4D) and the Queen’s Native Student Association (QNSA), have been doing resistance work for years to support the Indigenous community at Queen’s. In comparison, we see this institution hold focus group after focus group, in an attempt to figure out what needs to be done while simultaneously ignoring the demands of the Indigenous community.
Queen’s University has a long-standing history of racism. Processes that were used to build settler-colonial states such as violence and erasure of its Indigenous populations, in addition to the depletion/ theft of their lands, continue to manifest themselves at Queen’s with the lack of effort towards addressing the demands of Indigenous students. This makes this institution inaccessible to many Indigenous youths.
To gain a deeper understanding of the barriers that Indigenous students face on campus and some institutional changes that need to take place, I decided to interview Lisa Doxtator from Four Directions.
Lisa is the Four Directions Indigenous Student Centre’s first cultural counselor, a position that has been fully integrated with Queen’s Student Wellness Services (SWS). She provides individual and group counseling therapy and offers wellness and cultural programming to Indigenous students. New programs include The Sacred Fire, an event that gives students, faculty and staff the opportunity to learn about Indigenous sacred medicines, the fire and Smudging.
Misconceptions and Tokenization of Indigenous Students
When Indigenous students arrive at Queen’s, they find themselves being tokenized very quickly as the burden of speaking on behalf of all Indigenous people is placed on them. Lisa said that this “keeps students from self-identifying in class as anything Indigenous gets pushed to them, and they get embarrassed because they don’t know the answers.” Most Indigenous students at Queen’s are recruited from urban areas, specifically the GTA, and may have never lived with or visited their communities, so there is a disconnect between their Indigenous ancestry and urban upbringing. Many Indigenous students are bombarded with questions about their histories, and not having the ability to answer them is the cause of shame and embarrassment. Indigenous students are also faced with misconceptions that their “education is paid for; they get all this free money, free gas, free prescriptions,” which is not true. This is another reason Indigenous students prefer not to self identify, as all of a sudden, their level of “funding” becomes the topic of public conversation, and they find themselves defending their right to be here.
Support from the Four Directions
The racist/homophobic incident in Chown has highlighted the importance of 4D and the crucial role they play in providing a support system for Indigenous students. They were able to provide an immediate response to the incident in performing a Smudging ritual and hosting a Sacred Fire, as well as providing support to students in the form of counselling and additional programming. Some of the programming 4D offers includes Sharing Circles, Feasts, Moccasin Making, Drumming Circles and Firekeeping training, as well as hosting Morning Fires every Monday and Beading Circles, both of which non-Indigenous staff, faculty and students can attend. However, in Lisa’s opinion, what happened in Chown shines a light on the need for more Indigenous staff and representation across campus. After speaking to many students, she said there is also a need for programming within residences instead of solely at 4D. Additionally, there is a need for more Indigenous counsellors as she is currently the only one.
Supporting Indigenous Students in Residence
Despite the positive step made by Residence Life in creating the Indigenous Living Learning Community, there is a lot of work to be done in creating an environment where Indigenous students can not only feel safe, but also thrive. Lisa said that giving students the ability to Smudge in their residence rooms when they need to and providing them access to the traditional medicines, as well as training residence staff on how and why certain medicines are used, is one way we can accomplish this. 4D is currently working with Residence Life to implement the required policies to ensure students can Smudge in their residence rooms.
Supporting the Indigenous Community as settlers on this campus
The best way to support the Indigenous community is to go to the events held by QNSA and 4D. It is crucial for both the non-Indigenous community and the institution itself to support initiatives led by 4D and QNSA. Additionally, support must go beyond just “solidarity” in the form of lip service and focus groups. Lisa says, “When given the opportunity to support, make sure that you show up because it’s people that show up to these events, who show students like the one who wrote the note that Indigenous students aren’t alone and they have the support of so many.” For example, there was a student led “March in Solidarity” in response to the Chown Hall incident in which hundreds of students participated. You can also get involved with QNSA. While the QNSA executive team are all Indigenous, they have allies who help them organize and execute their events.
Another way the Queen’s community can offer support is by enabling Indigenous students to have a voice and express what they need, as well as validating their experiences and being empathetic. Before now, one of the things that Lisa struggled with was having people understand to what extent students felt unsafe on campus. She says, “People said they got it, but they truly didn’t. It is easy to say things to students who are experiencing racism like ‘Oh that’s your perspective on what happened’ rather than ‘it’s shitty that that happened’ and when people invalidate your experiences, you internalize them, you start to think that it’s you and that there’s something wrong with you. It’s hard when racism is subliminal or a feeling. Comments like ‘wow, look at your hair’ can leave people feeling confused as to whether it was a compliment or racially charged.”
As a Muslim settler of color with Indian roots, I have lived experiences similar to those of Indigenous students. Racism, stereotypes and misconceptions about my faith and culture have become interwoven in the fabric of my life. While I cannot claim to understand the experiences of Indigenous students, the parallels between our experiences allow me to understand somewhat the gravity of what happened in Chown, and this is why I position myself in allyship with the efforts of Indigenous students to decolonize our minds and communities.
As someone who has lived on campus for three years, I have noticed that racism usually occurs out of ignorance. Ignorance is the cause of the culture of passive acceptance in response to racist/homophobic incidents on campus, and indicates a clear need to educate students so that there can be more effective solidarity from non-Indigenous, non-POC (People of Colour), and non-Queer Students. However, it should be emphasized that the note in Chown was not a result of ignorance as it referred to some very specific practices (scalping for example) in North American history, and indicates the individual was highly educated with the intent to harm the community.
Next Steps
Over the past few years, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Task force has been working to identify and address the demands of the community as they relate to academic programming and planning, faculty appointments and research, as well as access and support. While there has been some progress in many of the recommendations for the categories above over the past two years, there has been very little progress in the recommendations relating to an increase in representation of Indigenous staff, faculty and students, and the integration of Indigenous Knowledge into curricula across all programs. I believe that making these recommendations, and the initiatives to achieve them, a priority would have a direct redutionary impact on anti-Indigenous racism on campus and lead to an increase in awareness of the complex histories and modern realities faced by Indigenous Peoples.
According to the Truth and Reconciliation Task Force Implementation Report published in September 2019, in 2018 only 2% of Queen’s faculty was Indigenous, and 4.1% of staff was Indigenous. This is a 1.6 % increase from 2017 for faculty and 0.5% for staff. Over two years the progress the University has made regarding staff recruitment is the following: encouraging hiring managers to post on Indigenous job sites, developing a comprehensive interview guide, and implementing a formal policy for a three hour training session for committee members to “ensure that Indigenous candidates, and other members of equity-seeking groups, are not denied staff positions due to systemic barriers that may unintentionally exclude individuals for reasons not related to ability or qualifications.”
Regarding the integration of Indigenous Knowledge into curricula across all programs, very little progress has been made, with the Smith School of Business update on this recommendation being: “The review is still on-going and embedding Indigenous content is still being fully considered.”
What I believe needs to happen to reduce anti-Indigenous racism alongside increasing Indigenous representation within staff and the student body, in addition to embedding Indigenous Knowledge into the curriculum, is requiring students to take at least one mandatory Indigenous studies course regardless of their discipline. This is an initiative that has been implemented by Lakehead University and the University of Manitoba, and must also be implemented here. There is no question that the integration of Indigenous Knowledge into Queen’s academics is necessary and each program should be actively working on re-developing their curriculums.
As settlers on this land, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves, recognize our privileges in benefiting off this land and from attending this university, show up at Indigenous-led demonstrations and community events, read more Indigenous scholars, and develop an anti-colonial and de-colonial frame of thought.
To members of the Queen’s administration, I ask you: when will you stop asking questions and start listening to what is being demanded of you? How many more racist incidents need to happen before there is actionable change? How many more students will have their identities defiled before we start seeing Indigenous representation in staff, and academic policies that make it mandatory for students to take courses educating us about this land’s settler-colonial history?
How much longer must we wait for institutional reform?