Research in Indigenous contexts is strongly associated with colonialism (Smith, 1999). In response to this, Indigenous scholars have, in the last two decades, recentred research on Indigenous ways of knowing and doing (Kovach, 2009; Wilson, 2008). This change marks the advent of an "Indigenous research paradigm" based on "an ontology, epistemology, methodology, and axiology that is Indigenous" (Wilson, 2008, p. 38). In recent years, this approach has gained momentum in Canada, making it a "fifth paradigm" and a sought-after research approach across disciplines (Chilisa, 2020, p. 19). This thesis seeks to better understand the evolution of Canadian Indigenous research across disciplines in the last two decades (1997–2020). Using a mixed-methods approach (western and Indigenous), I adopted Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) scoping review methodology for the initial five steps and Kovach's (2010) Indigenous conversational method for the final consultation step. Based on the in-depth analysis of 46 Indigenous research studies, my findings indicate a notable increase in the number of collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners, especially in the last five years. This may signal the beginning of an era of reconciliation in research; however, my conversations with Indigenous scholars revealed that, in many cases, collaborations are tainted by tokenism and present many risks for Indigenous researchers. Indigenous research is principle-based, and its key principles are relationality, reciprocity, respect, and accountability. Indigenous scholars emphasized that the key to successful collaborations and to "good" Indigenous research is taking the time to build genuine relationships based on these principles. My research thus demonstrates that healthy and productive collaborative Indigenous research is possible, but only when there is relational accountability on the part of non-Indigenous partners. In sum, using a scoping review analysis and the Indigenous conversational method, this research has established that the marker of robust and valuable Indigenous research is congruency: the clear and explicit alignment between researchers' positionalities, their epistemic frameworks, and the methodologies used to conduct the research.

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The university habitus is not comprised of neutral structures but carries with it a history of privileging certain ways of doing, learning and being. Students who identify as Aboriginal draw from a number of identities at the University that become more or less relevant depending on the context. In this narrative study, seven students who identify as Aboriginal are interviewed about their experiences at the University of Saskatchewan. As a result of these interviews, a perspective of the university takes shape where Aboriginal culture welcomes and comforts students in a supporting role but does not always seem relevant in an academic context. Connections to others and to oneself can impact a student’s engagement in classroom curricula and stereotypes about Aboriginal peoples and grades play an important role in shaping the experiences of students who identify as Aboriginal at university, their definition of success and even their decision to attend university. The “narrative of struggle” can influence students’ choices to frame themselves either in relation to a non-Aboriginal reference group or question why Aboriginal educational success is framed in terms of exceptional individual cases rather than as a group norm. While students’ experiences at the university vary, their purpose for attending university is closely connected to their identities both now and their hopes for creating a better self in the future.

Ally literature suggests processes and guidelines that non-Indigenous researchers can follow in order to establish respectful relationships (Battiste, 1998; Wilson, 2008; Edward, 2006; Margaret, 2010). It also states the importance of preparedness for engaging and sustaining long term alliances (Lang, 2010; Brophey, 2011); however specific training methods; modalities that support long-term relationships; practices to develop desired qualities; or self-care approaches for Allies have not been addressed in the literature. Through autoethnographic work I sought to explore this gap in literature. This study is situated within decolonizing methodologies looking to contribute to legitimizing traditional ways of knowing; and within Anzaldúas (1987) philosophical view of “Doing Mestizaje” (1987). My work is a personal account of the complicated and conflicted situation of working as an Ally, being both Mestiza and Buddhist in a culture of colonization/decolonization. Unique to this exploration are modalities I chose to help with a deeper understanding, and as possible approaches to address emotional stress and prevent burnout in Ally work: art, meditation, mindfulness practice, prayer, dream work, and narrative/poetry. My findings show that a Mestizo view of Allyhood presents differences with those of White Allies; that implementation of the Buddhist concepts of interdependence and selflessness can support Allies during a painful or stressful process of self-reflection, as well as through out the relationship; and that doing research as ceremony, and ceremony as research contributes to the revitalization of Indigenous traditional ways of knowing and its importance in Decolonizing work. / Graduate

Museums as colonial institutions and agents in nation building have constructed, circulated and reinforced colonialist, patriarchal, heteronormative and cisnormative national narratives. Yet, these institutions can be subverted, resisted and transformed into sites of critical public pedagogy especially when they invite Indigenous artists and curators to intervene critically. They are thus becoming important spaces for Indigenous counter-narratives, self-representation and resistance—and for settler education. My study inquired into Cree artist Kent Monkman’s commissioned touring exhibition Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience which offers a critical response to Canada’s celebration of its sesquicentennial. Narrated by Monkman’s alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, the exhibition tells the story of the past 150 years from an Indigenous perspective. Seeking to work on unsettling my “settler within” (Regan, 2010, p. 13) and contribute to understandings of the education needed for transforming Indigenous-settler relations, I visited and studied the exhibition at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. My study brings together exhibition analysis, to examine how the exhibition’s elements work together to produce meaning and experience, with autoethnography as a means to distance myself from the stance of expert analyst and allow for settler reflexivity and vulnerability. I developed a three-lens framework (narrative, representational and relational/embodied) for exhibition analysis which itself became unsettled. What I experienced is an exhibition that has at its core a holism that brings together head, heart, body and spirit pulled together by the thread of the exhibition’s powerful storytelling. I therefore contend that Monkman and Miss Chief create a decolonizing, truth-telling space which not only invites a questioning of hegemonic narratives but also operates as a potentially unsettling site of experiential learning. As my self-discovery approach illustrates, exhibitions such as Monkman’s can profoundly disrupt the Euro-Western epistemological space of the museum with more holistic, relational, storied public pedagogies. For me, this led to deeply unsettling experiences and new ways of knowing and learning. As for if, to what extent, or how the exhibition will unsettle other visitors, I can only speak of its pedagogical possibilities. My own learning as a settler and adult educator suggests that when museums invite Indigenous intervention, they create important possibilities for unsettling settler histories, identities, relationships, epistemologies and pedagogies. This can inform public pedagogy and adult education discourses in ways that encourage interrogating, unsettling and reorienting Eurocentric theories, methodologies and practices, even those we characterize as critical and transformative. Using the lens of my own unsettling, and engaging in a close reading of Monkman’s exhibition, I expand my understandings of pedagogy and thus my capacities to contribute to understandings of public pedagogical mechanisms, specifically in relation to unsettling exhibition pedagogies and as part of a growing conversation between critical adult education and museum studies. / Graduate