Post-secondary education is inherently colonial, from the ways in which we learn to the four walls we learn them in.
Cara Loft is trying to change that.
“There’s still a very fraught relationship between Indigenous people and education because of the residential boarding school era. Education was used as a tool for colonization and assimilation,” said Loft, the educational developer for Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy at the University of Guelph.
Loft was hired six months ago as part of the mandate for Black and Indigenous hires at the U of G in support of equity and diversity. She is part of the Tyendinaga, Mohawk Territory Indigenous community, but was raised off reserve in Ilderton, Ont.
Her work is currently focused on setting the groundwork for bigger systemic changes in the coming years, from meeting with faculty individually to guest lecturing and incorporating more land-based learning.
Previously, she was a professor at Humber College, where she was often asked for help from colleagues to Indigenize and decolonize their work.
“That itself kind of became part of the role,” she said.
So when the opportunity for this role appeared, she jumped at it.
“I am doing my best to try and empower faculty to see that this isn’t scary work, that it’s very important work, and it is possible for non-Indigenous faculty to begin to decolonize,” she said.
She does that, in part, by meeting faculty and students where they are.
“Faculty and other folks who are looking to engage in this work need to first look at themselves and their decolonial work,” she said. “We don’t have to do everything all at once. We don’t have to decolonize and totally Indigenize. We can do it bit by bit.”
To start, she’s been doing circle work with some of the faculty she’s working with, introducing the concept of sharing in a circle.
She works in conjunction with the Indigenous Student Centre and Indigenous Student Services on campus, and said they’ve done impressive work so far with things like the Indigenous Initiatives Strategic Plan, which provided "foundational support for the work I’m doing.”
“I'm really trying to break down the silos of decolonized and Indigenized work that's happening here, because it will benefit everybody if we can get the best practices that are already happening here.”
During her own time as an Indigenous student, Loft faced racism, misogyny and discrimination. Now, she’s hoping to create an environment at the U of G and beyond “where Indigenous students don't feel they just have to survive, where they can actually thrive in their educational journey.”
And while Western understandings of teaching aren’t bad, she said – they work for some people – they don’t work for everyone.
“(I’m) looking to help faculty and students see … not just that there are different ways of learning, but these different ways of learning are equally as valuable as Western ways of learning.
“I would like to see us move more intentionally in a way that highlights the learning aspect, as opposed to students just trying to reach for that grade,” she said, adding that taking the grading pressure off could lead to more individualized learning and success for students.
One way to work towards that is by changing the way students are graded, moving away from traditional grading and assessments, and including more holistic elements to ensure students are engaged in the learning.
In one class, a faculty member has incorporated a knowledge necklace to do just that.
“This faculty member is creating the opportunity for students to record their learning through putting certain colour beads onto a necklace. It's meant to be a tangible, physical representation of their learning,” Loft said.
Students take a wooden bead at the end of each class, each a different shape, design or colour, selecting one that resonates with them for what they learned in that class, adding it to the necklace.
At the end of the semester, they had a sharing circle, where students would share what those beads meant to them.
“It’s an opportunity to think about alternative modalities for learning,” she said.
Another way to decolonize is by incorporating more land-based learning practices.
“It’s so important for myself to see the land as a classroom, moving outside the four walls that we have traditionally learned in, and to see alternative learning spaces that, again, are just as valuable. The land slows you down, because land moves in its own way, its own cyclical patterns,” she said.
One way Loft is incorporating land-based learning is by hosting storytelling workshops at The Arboretum.
“I was talking to a faculty member here who was really looking to get her students out onto the land, but was not sure how to do that,” she said. “And so I created the wintertime storytelling event as a way for students from that faculty's course to come engage.”
It’s open to other students from the university as well, and each session has 10 spots available for community members. The event is free, but requires registration in advance.
On Friday, Loft shared the Mohawk creation story, one of the first stories she learned from her grandfather.
“It provides a guide for us on how to live in a Goodway,” she said. “Goodway for us as Haudenosaunee, that's talking about relationality, respect, kindness and communalism, so working together and bringing everybody in.”
The creation story exemplifies the Indigenous connections to the lands and the importance of how Indigenous folk learn and know.
“It's a beautiful story that really shows the cultural diversity (among Indigenous peoples), but also highlights the beauty of my culture.”
In February, she will tell the Haudenosaunee confederacy story – how the Six Nations, originally five, came to be one, and the importance of coming together.
“The white pine is significant in that story, so we’ll be making white pine tea,” she said.
The third story, in March, will be how the maple tree came to the people.
“The Maple Story is a very interesting story and highlights the relationship between Indigenous and Mohawk people and their connection with the lands.”
The last story in April will be the story of the three sisters: corn, bean and squash, and how they came to the Haudenosaunee people.
They will begin with a traditional song and a smuge, followed by tea.
If the trails are clear enough, the plan is to walk the land while she tells the story incrementally. If the weather is too adverse, they will likely relocate to the Taylor Nature Centre.
The session will begin and end in a Goodway (a practice she encourages faculty and students to adopt in classes as well), asking how we can bring our minds together as one and set the tone for the work.
“Ending in a good way sort of bookends that time together, so it houses the knowledge within a certain time period,” she said. “And from what I heard from students in my previous work, it helps them remember specific topics that were taught on a day based on how we opened and how we closed in a Goodway.”