Perhaps I am thinking like a tribal pragmatist, showing a “perspective that merges indigenous and mainstream values toward the integration of Native communities within colonial structures” (Alfred, 2009, p. 56), when I approach my area of interest in professional inquiry (and praxis), the intentional Indigenization of organizational learning.  The Canadian business and corporate sector is predominantly Eurocentric; the Indigenous population is currently young, with its largest population demographic being of working age (Brown, Doucette & Tulk, 2016), suggesting that the corporate sector can benefit greatly, now and well into the future, from employing and developing an ever growing Indigenous labour force.

Trends in workplace learning are indicative of a mutual relationship between employer and employee, working toward building the knowledge base of the organization through shifting power paradigms that place greater responsibility on the individual employee to produce more of the organization’s knowledge capital.  Learning is problem-based, collaborative and communal in nature, which in many ways aligns with Indigenous epistemology and pedagogy.

As an Indigenous practitioner of both adult and Aboriginal education, I exist professionally between the two cultures — Indigenous and Eurocentric, with the greater part of my practice being within the Eurocentric construct; being a non-status Nakoda woman, praxis is often conflicted.  Battiste (2013) provides recommendations for decolonizing Indigenous education, and for the development and mainstream acceptance of capacity building in Indigenous knowledge “Canada, the provinces, and territories should work together to ensure that Indigenous knowledge is respected and promoted in all funded education programs, and in an appropriate range of documents and contexts” (p.170); with the area of organizational learning being an appropriate context for Indigenous knowledge usage and production.

My concern with ‘intentional Indigenization’ in an organizational learning context, parallels that of black educator and feminist, bell hooks, in a postsecondary context, where “despite the focus on diversity, our desires for inclusion, many professors still teach in classrooms that are predominantly white. Often a spirit of tokenism prevails in those settings” (1994, p.43).  Does the Indigeneity of the educator negate the token nature of intentionally integrating Indigenous pedagogy into the Eurocentric corporate context?

References

Alfred, T. (2009). Peace, power, righteousness: An Indigenous manifesto (2nd ed.). Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Battiste, M. (2013). Decolonizing education: Nourishing the learning spirit. Saskatoon, SK: Purich Publishing Limited.

Brown, K.G., Doucette, M.B., and Tulk, J.E. (2016).  Indigenous business in Canada: Principles and practices. Sydney, NS: Cape Bretton University Press.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.