Institutional Logics of Indigenization in Canadian Higher Education: The Role of Critical Policy Analysis as a Research Tool to Activate Social Change

Abstract

A common approach to adopting large-scale social changes in organizations is to codify them within high-level policies, including strategic plans. One such social change with increasing attention is the move towards “Indigenization” throughout all organizations in Canada, with national and international policy imperatives supporting its robust enactment. To understand the overt and covert components of such policies to understand how such large-scale social changes might be codified and framed, critical policy analysis (CPA) is a useful methodological tool to support such policy implementation and inform further activism. To illustrate this, CPA is used in this study to highlight how Indigenous-centric strategic plans (ISPs) conceptualize Indigenization across the U15 institutions in Canada, the largest group of research-intensive institutions spanning the country with educational communities totalling hundreds of thousands of students, staff, faculty, and community connections. The representations of Indigenization in these ISPs are analyzed using Gaudry & Lorenz’s (2018) conceptual framework of Indigenization in higher education, finding that the ISPs largely represent an inclusionary approach to Indigenization, falling short of advancing reconciliatory or decolonial forms of Indigenization. Understanding that ISPs predominantly enable inclusionary Indigenization (Gaudry & Lorenz, 2018) illuminates the institutional logics that underpin Canadian higher education, namely that retaining power structures historically constructed through colonial processes are not overtly challenged by the actions outlined in the ISPs. Though directly acknowledging the need for Indigenization within higher education ISPs is a substantial advancement towards the social reality envisaged by the TRC (2015), this analysis spotlights where further activism is needed, including by educational leaders, to advance substantial reformation of colonial institutional logics within Canadian higher education.