Toward Reflexive Practice: Deconstructing Academic Integrity, EDI, and Awareness Training from an Indigenous Perspective

Abstract

While notions of academic excellence and the policies that construct and reinforce it are culturally positioned, institutional practices at both the macro and micro levels are underlain with assumptions of cultural neutrality. Cultural and implicit biases, the universality of Western perspectives in constructing excellence, and conceptualizations of diversity are woven into the cultural fabric of academia resulting in the gatekeeping and policing of definitions of academic excellence, all of which have led to the persistent overrepresentation of minority students in student conduct breaches. As universities across Canada express institutional commitments to the Calls to Action articulated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC, 2015) and, on a broader scope, to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), the experiences of Indigenous students within the academic misconduct processes remain as a significant gap in both the academic literature and institutional policy perspectives. Through this chapter, I seek to give voice to this silent area by advancing the notion that the way reconciliation, inclusion, diversity, and equity are conceptualized in academia further marginalizes the embodiments of Indigenous learning, integrity, and relationality. By seeking to illuminate the conversations and perspectives in the scholarly literature surrounding reconciliation and EDI, I argue for a deepened understanding of Indigenous integrity as distinct from EDI frameworks which will ultimately highlight the need for developing diversity of thinking in regard to how institutions of higher education conceptualize and mobilize policy and practices related to academic integrity.