Indigenous Peoples and Higher Education Governance: Decolonizing the Ivory Tower

Indigenous communities are reshaping higher education governance structures worldwide. Guided by Indigenous knowledges, this paper introduces a new theoretical approach to examining institutional change that centers around decolonization and focuses on returning control, building capacity, and connecting to land. The document analysis covered institutional plans and Indigenous strategies of fifteen research-intensive Canadian universities (U15) alongside conversations with 10 Indigenous faculty members. The paper provides empirical evidence of how Indigenous knowledges have started to shape the highly resistant institutional structures of the academy. However, the changes made toward meaningful decolonization of higher education governance remain limited. This raises the pressing need for unpacking what decolonization would mean in a context where administrative decisions continue to be made by the dominant cultural group.