Courageous Conversations: Decolonization, Disciplines, and Indigenous Knowledges in the University

This webinar is a part of the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion’s speaker series called “Courageous Conversations”. The theme of the 2021-2022 Courageous Conversation Speaker Series is, “Decolonization and Questions of Justice in the University."
Guest speakers:
Dr. Marie Battiste presented on how disciplinary colonialism and Indigenous knowledges form a split that has been created and continues to be reinforced within contemporary universities and in the K-12 education system. In early education, through to high school, there’s been a piecemeal approach to building up to specialized disciplinary knowledges. Dr. Battiste explained how this additive approach functions to maintain the coloniality of the education system through its supposed rationalized structures, and why decolonizing knowledges and curricula matter to universities.
Dr. Catherine Odora Hoppers presented on the higher education system, especially the disciplines of law, science, and economics. She focused on education with a small “e”, the discipline and subject-based western education. She also discussed Education with a capital “E”, as focusing on life-long learning, and life ward learning, including the ethics of our connections to the planet, and relationships as reflected in the philosophy of Ubuntu. The presentation showed how economics, science, and law can operate to produce false universalisms. Drawing on decades of research and policy work in South Africa, Uganda, and world-wide, Dr. Odora Hoppers explained why cognitive justice is necessary for all forms and traditions of knowledge to co-exist without duress in the public sphere.
Dr. Malinda Smith, vice-provost (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) hosted and moderated questions from the audience.

| About the speakers
Dr. Marie Battiste holds the position of Professor Emerita at the University of Saskatchewan, and is Mi’kmaq from the Potlotek First Nation. She is also a Fellow of the 2019 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, advancing scholarship in the theme of power and knowledge. She is an honorary Officer of the Order of Canada, an elected Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada, and has four additional honorary doctorate degrees (St. Mary’s University, University of Maine at Farmington, Thompson Rivers University and University of Ottawa).
Dr. Catherine Odora Hoppers is a scholar and policy specialist on International Development, education, North-South questions, disarmament, peace, and human security. She is a UNESCO expert in basic education, lifelong learning, information systems and on Science and Society; an expert in disarmament at the UN Department of Disarmament Affairs; an expert to the World Economic Forum on benefit sharing and value addition protocols; and the World Intellectual Property Organisation on traditional knowledge and community intellectual property rights.