On the evening of February 8th, members of the Trent University community packed into Bagnani Hall at Catherine Parr Traill College to hear a lecture from the 2023/2024 Ashley Fellow, Bridget Larocque. The talk, titled “A Northern Perspective on Decolonization and Indigenization—Retelling Narratives” is a part of the university’s North at Trent lecture series, a program of public talks organized by Trent’s Canadian Studies program featuring and focusing on Northern Canada. Traill College is the host of this year’s Ashley Fellow, a collegiate program where a college will host a visiting scholar while they give talks and facilitate workshops in their field of study. 

Traill College President Michael Eamon kicked off the night by  discussing the collegiality of the Ashley Fellowship and Trail’s hosting this year. The Ashley Fellowship is a combined effort between all the colleges, whose principals Eamon pointed out in the audience as all in attendance. The next person to speak was Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in the Study of the Canadian North and Professor in Canadian Studies at Trent and personal friend of Larocque. Lackenbauer introduced Larocque and her extensive CV, including her experience as network co-lead and chair of the Northern Advisory Board of the North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN), policy advisor and researcher with the Arctic Athabaskan Council (AAC), and executive director of Gwich’in Council International (GCI).

Larocque opened her talk discussing how one cannot look at or talk about Indigenous issues from only one point of view, one needs to look at them holistically. As mentioned in the title, her talk was about Decolonization and Indigenization and she began with discussing her home community of Inuvik, NWT. The community is segregated into Indigenous and Non-Indigenous sections, with the Indigenous part receiving substantially less services and infrastructure. She also briefly discussed the residential schools in the area, including how the feud between the Catholics and Anglicans, who each ran one of the schools, led to a further divide in the community.

The discussion moved on to some numbers about the Northwest Territories more broadly. The territory has around 40,000 residents, there are 33 communities, mostly as a result of Hudson’s Bay Company Trading Posts, and two reserves, Hay River Dene 1 and Salt River No. 195. 

The territory has many different First Nations, Inuit and Metis communities, including Larocque’s own Métis identity. A lot of these communities practice Indigenous communal governance, but Larocque says it’s not enough, to properly Indigenize we must first decolonize. She explained that this is impossible to do while working within the land claims and treaty offices which are based in the colonial system. Land claim agreements between the Crown and Indigenous people are colonial and often patriarchal. To be able to make a land claim you must go through the court system which requires a ton of time, money and resources, with no quick results. 

As the final part of her talk, Larocque described the early stages of decolonization, which involved all the different First Nations, Inuit, and Métis groups coming together to assert their rights and personhood to the Crown. She discussed how a lot of today’s media about Indigenous people is about the atrocities committed against them historically and in the present day. How does self-determinism and reconciliation work when people are dying? Larocque said that Indigenization cannot be done if we continue to work within the colonialist structures set up, it is not decolonization or Indigenization. Decolonization is about dismantling structures and reconnecting to traditional Indigenous knowledge. It is about, as Larocque put it, “taking up space, place, and energy,” by sharing Indigenous creation stories and cosmology, Indigenous people writing their own stories and histories. The ideas of Indigenous Lives Matter and Every Child Matters are not just slogans, but things to be practiced. 

After the talk there was a question period open to the audience. I particularly liked Larocque’s response to a question by Michael Eamon about having the right words to discuss issues and how to find a shared language? Larocque answered with an example about the use of the word “wild” by governments as well as popular culture to describe the land and animals. Arguing that the plants and animals are not wild, they are an important food source of her community. The term “wild” is also something she disagrees with in reference to the devastating forest fires that swept through the Northwest Territories this past summer and her continued PTSD from watching her land and food sources be destroyed. She described that it’s not just Indigenous people that hold the land as sacred but non-Indigenous farmers and agriculturalists also have a connection to their land that grows their food. A connection to and respect for the land, plants, and animals that surround us is not just for Indigenous people but something we can all participate in. 

Finally, Larocque discussed a bit about her work on the Arctic Council, working with Indigenous groups of the Arctic from outside Canada. Before the Arctic Council there was the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), the Saami Council, and the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) who worked together for Indigenous rights and justice in the Arctic. Larocque says it’s important to remember the groups that came before the Arctic Council and not forget or take for granted the things they were fighting for. This can lead to being privileged and forgetting the main goal of research and sharing of ideas and knowledge that first brought the groups together. 

After the question period Vice President of Communications & Enrolment, Marilyn Burns, briefly spoke. She reiterated the collegiality of Ashley Fellowship and thanked Larocque for the talk. 

If you wish to see Bridget Larocque speak while she is in Peterborough she will be at a Traill College Dinner on February 15.