People have been asking me what I think about the University of Toronto’s statement on the TMT Project, so I will share some thoughts in this thread.
#MaunaKea 1/ I was glad to be interviewed for this article, and to appear in the article alongside others trying to convince our universities to show leadership and divest from the TMT Project cbc.ca/news/indigenou… 2/

I was just asked by a colleague how I facilitate Q & A sessions—I guess the word is out that I am very deliberate about how an academic Q & A should go after a talk or panel. I think of this as an Indigenous feminist approach to facilitating academic Q & A. 1/ Ever since I was in graduate school, I thought I hated giving public talks. But I soon realized it’s not the presentation, but the Q & A that can feel so awful. Academic audiences can be arrogant, hostile, and self-absorbed. 2/

I have spent last months traveling + visiting with members of Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Métis, Cree, Dene, Yukon, and Inuit Nations + communities; what I have learned is that they are totally exhausted by the new wave of clueless academics showing up to do research on them All of these researchers show up wanting to do a study that has been approved by the university, funded by a grant, and is often on something that the community has already studied or doesn’t want to study. The researchers say the same thing: but I already have the funding!

The verb for what we want universities to do in relation to Indigenous communities is really hard to determine. It’s not “indigenize,” + it’s not “make visible.” It’s not “decolonize.”

The verb is hard to determine because of the depths of harm done. macleans.ca/education/univ… Universities need to engage in extensive, specific, layered and humble acts of repair, and even then it is hard to predict what the word for the effect of those acts will be.

Some Indigenous colleagues at U of Toronto and I have been talking about Indigenous presencing—

Indigenous people in universities-- this is a time for us to push universities for much more than we are being invited to discuss under the banner of 'indigenization.' Time to push against antiblackness. Time to push against exclusionary practices against gender diverse people. This may be the first time we are at the table, the first time anyone is trying to hire an Indigenous scholar in a department, first time, first time for so many things. But our first time conversations have to shift from the "single issue" way that they are structured

I know that there is much (deserved) outrage about that article, but much of social science is a tacit endorsement of colonialism. This is not *new* it is the past and the future of many disciplinary fields. Those which do work on people and not with them.