Post-secondary Education (PSE) Indigenous Students' Perspectives: Sharing Our Voices on How We Fit into Residential School (RS) History of Canada and the United States Using Photovoice
Abstract
A substantial body of literature about Indigenous experiences regarding the boarding school and residential school systems in the US and Canada, respectively, does exist. Both federal governments’ intentions were to Christianize, assimilate, and “civilize” students who attended these schools. Most Indigenous educational research is centered in either an American or Canadian context, and the colonial education of Indigenous peoples is rarely discussed as a collective experience. This colonial education occurred in tandem, in both countries, and its legacy severely impacted Indigenous students by separating them from their families and communities and stripping them of their Indigenous identities and lifeways. Furthermore, there have been few researchers who have examined the longtime and generational impacts of these institutions on the lives of students’ descendants. This study is two-fold. First, it examines and compares Indigenous education in Canada and the United States. Second, it focuses on Indigenous university students’ (RS Survivors’ descendants) perspectives of this legacy, and the ongoing effects which weaves together the American and Canadian RS history.
Indigenous university students’ personal stories were analyzed using interviews, group discussions, and individual photovoice projects. The generational impacts of colonial education have sometimes been described as soul wounds that have led to persistent scars often referred to as historical unresolved grief and/or intergenerational trauma. This study examined historical unresolved grief and intergenerational trauma that Indigenous university students experienced during their academic journeys. The history of colonial education on Indigenous peoples is a lived experience and comes to life when Indigenous students learn or re-learn more historical details during their academic studies. I developed colliding heartwork, a research framework, that is based upon interviews and other findings that helps to facilitate the emotional and mental work needed to learn, discuss, heal, and support Indigenous students regarding the continuing aftermath of boarding and residential schools.