The current state is a crime: Decolonizing experiential education on the Brock University campus

Abstract

Indigenous ways of knowing and being have always been experiential. With this, our Canadian post-secondary institutions that have been working to grow experiential education and experiential learning opportunities have an obligation to acknowledge these Indigenous roots in order to avoid further appropriation. With two thirds of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s 94 calls to action focused on education, including post-secondary, the Ontario Government has also recommended that post-secondary institutions in the province provide students with a minimum of two experiential learning opportunities within their academic courses by the time they graduate. This Participatory Action Research (PAR) project at Brock University was designed and executed in full collaboration with Indigenous peoples and looks at a campus with a focus on decolonization as well as experiential learning through an Appreciative Inquiry framework to best determine how experiential education can be decolonized. Using semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and institutional documents that speak to the current state of experiential learning as well as institutional strategic goals, ten themes were developed. These highlight settler tendencies, the current state of experiential education, recommendations for decolonization and an ideal future state, important approaches to consider when decolonizing as an individual and as a campus, cautions to heed, as well as values and emotions to consider. In order to decolonize experiential learning and the campus authentically, Indigenous voices must be and have been amplified in this process.