Community-engaged Learning (CEL): Integrating Anthropological Discourse with Indigenous Knowledge

Abstract

The Indigenous Action Group (IAG) is an alliance of solidarity between Indigenous and settler faculty at the University of Toronto Mississauga with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN), whose Treaty lands the campus is located on. This partnership of responsibility supports the MCFN goals of truth (through public knowledge and recognition of their history), and reconciliation (through the support and equitable sustenance of Indigenous pedagogy, knowledge systems, and research methodologies in educational institutions). The IAG has developed a Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) course to bring ontological pluralism to the Academy to legitimize Indigenous knowledges, epistemologies, and involve the placemaking of local Indigenous communities (Tuhiwah Smith, 2012). This second year undergraduate course entitled “Anthropology and Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island (in Canada)” was developed and implemented by the Indigenous Action Group to prioritize first person voices from the local Indigenous community. We are hoping this diverse educational model will change the discourse in anthropology courses to begin a collective understanding of ongoing power imbalances and oppression in education from colonial mechanisms.