This podcast explores how colonization and anti-Indigenous racism operates in schooling. The speakers explore concepts such as decolonizing and Indigenizing educational spaces and the importance of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination in how we conceptualize the future of education. Listeners are invited to consider their responsibilities as treaty people on this land in interrupting the historical legacy of cultural genocide and its contemporary impacts on Indigenous students, families and communities.

*Editor’s Note: At 27:35, the question and tension addressed is: How can we address anti-Indigenous racism work, and simultaneously focus on Indigenous brilliance and Indigenous imaginaries?

About The Speaker

Diane Longboat, MEd is a member of the Turtle Clan and Mohawk Nation. She is a ceremonial leader, traditional teacher and healer. She has served as Elder for CAMH since January of 2014 and is currently the Senior Project manager, Guiding Directions Implementation. Diane is founder of Soul of the Mother. She is a professional educator with a Master's degree in education and has taught at universities nationally and internationally on the topic of traditional Indigenous knowledge systems and spirituality as the fuel for innovation. She possesses an in-depth understanding of Indigenous history, loss and trauma, as well as the resiliency factors that are embedded in culture and knowledge systems. She has published extensively and written numerous reports on Indigenous education and law for the Assembly of First Nations and the Chiefs of Ontario.

Diane is the founder of First Nations House (Office of Aboriginal Student Services and Programs) at the University of Toronto and Soul of the Mother, a traditional healing lodge on the shores of the Grand River at Six Nations Grand River Territory.

Diane was the Indigenous Education Advisor to the Premier of Ontario and the Ontario Minister of Education from 2018-2018. Recently Diane was Co-Chair of the Indigenous Peoples Program at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, a global gathering for 8,500 visitors in November 2018.  The program hosted over 100 Indigenous spiritual leaders and leading climate activists from 80 countries.