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I have a cautionary tale to share w/ junior Indigenous faculty being recruited by institutions in âIndigenizationâ schemes. With hopes nobody else ever goes through this. 3 years ago this week I interviewed for a position at a top Canadian uni. It was a wonderful new opportunity.
I had only formally received my PhD a year prior, but had two and a half years of tenure track teaching under my belt. I was thrilled to be shortlisted. The other candidate was someone I also looked up to. Whoever they chose would be great. Overall positive experience.
Having ONE job is a feat in this market, so I am not one to downplay how incredible it is to be shortlisted at all. Always thankful to make it to the interview, and Iâve met some incredible collaborators through interviews so I consider each interview something to be grateful for
To my amazement, I was offered the job. I couldnât believe it. It signalled a radically different possible path for my career. My reasons for potentially leaving my existing job were significant, as Iâd endured ongoing anti-Indigenous racism in first years at my job.
racism so extensive I developed a chronic condition thatâs permanently scarred my optic nerves. Harold Johnson writes in âPeace & Good Orderâ about an early client â a man who started to go blind from stress at his job. I cried when I read this as it resonated deeply.
I brought the offer forward to my employer. To their credit, they moved quickly. Some BIPOC mentors coached me in how to negotiate â a hidden curriculum many of us first generation professors have no access to. One mentor suggested I should think about what I needed to flourish.
It was my wonderful mentor who suggested that if I were to return to a work environment that was costing my eyesight, then I needed real support for my collaborative work. I should have an institute, nothing less, to ensure the communities I work with are supported+celebrated.
With no negotiation experience, no tenure, & a job offer at a top canadian uni in hand, I entered negotiations for my Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Institute -- which we quickly dubbed the Institute for Freshwater Futures. The top administrator agreed on the spot. I was floored
We chatted extensively on the phone, visioning what this would look like, what it would require. This administrator pushed me to think BIGGER. I had NEVER had anyone affirm my work this way. It was a massive moment in my career. After the struggles it took to arrive: a watershed.
At the same time, the other institution was counter-negotiating. I had lovely, expansive conversations with them about what they could offer, what they would do, how deeply they respected my work. It was so hard to choose. After nearly going blind from racist harassment: surreal.
Ultimately, the top Canadian uni just couldn't match my employer's offer. My employer offered a better salary (to counter way I was low-balled at first hire), & the top uni just couldn't release funds to support an Institute. In all of this: My stepdad passed around the same time
The dream had always been to help carry forward my stepdad's trailblazing immersive watershed work. Without him there to help me vision the institute and my work back in Alberta I was devastated. I asked him for guidance from the other side, as silly as that might sound.
It was clear with Wayne's 'guidance' in those painful weeks after he passed, that with the supportive convos I was having with the top leadership at my university that it was the best home for the fish, for my collaborators, for the dreams I was searching for a place to plant.
I had more convos with the top administrator. He confirmed in writing his plan to guarantee me a faculty hire for my institute; a predoctoral fellowship; funding to help me travel from Yale to set up my institute while away on a fellowship; and even grad student support.
ok it's at this point it starts to get difficult to tell the story because it's frankly just such a painful experience and leaves me feeling so despondent and hopeless at times about whether there's even a place for folks like me to do the community-based work we do in academe.
The administrator+I met in person about a month after the offer had come in, after I formally turned down the other job. We discussed my vision more extensively: faculty hire, predoctoral fellow, bringing in digital storytelling tools (AR/VR/XR, art, radio)to my science work.
We talked about the Institute -- where it could be housed, the idea of generating micro grants for Indigenous students to do land-based work in their communities. A desire to recruit brilliant Indigenous colleagues to join us and build something BIG and JOYFUL. I was overjoyed.
Through all of this I was navigating the damage my job did to my eyesight. A truly surreal time in my life: specialist appointments to monitor my eyesight while imagining a world class indigenous ecology institute. I was nominated for a fellowship at Yale at the same time.
At each step, I felt like I was living someone else's life. In departmental meetings I navigated intense hostility towards me as the only Indigenous faculty member, while being recruited/celebrated in some of the top spaces in the US and Canada. Whiplash is mild way to describe.
Yale put me forward for two fellowships actually. They weren't sure I stood a chance at the more prestigious one, given I was so junior+basically unheard of. Incredibly, at one of those specialist appointments I opened my email in the waiting room+saw the news: I was in. I bawled
Revisiting this is so powerful as there are so many things I had buried in the ensuing betrayal of my employer. It's good to tenderly revisit some of the more joyful parts of this whole story. I feel like I'm sewing parts of my life back together.
With the Yale fellowship in place, we agreed I would take a year off but I would be supported to come back to a different work environment. The administrator had suggested funding right away to help me travel back & forth while I was on leave so I would return to a real institute
However in May, the landscape shifted rapidly. The administrator, who had publicly confirmed many times to us that funds had been confirmed for a comprehensive pre-doctoral fellowship program AND ten Indigenous faculty hires, was not renewed. The programs were suddenly in limbo.
I had settled on the following firm asks from the employer: one of the ten Indigenous faculty hires; a predoctoral fellow; funding to travel back and forth to set up the institute and also the possibility of secondment of an Indigenous admin staff to help us run the whole project
These seemed pretty clearly confirmed, as I had extensive notes from our conversations, as well as confirmation in writing of these things being available and confirmed for my work. I left on the Fellowship in good spirits. I had overcome bullying at work and had hope!
while away at Yale, I was part of a team shortlisted to potentially represent Canada @ 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale. The proposed exhibition featured my fishy refraction work. I was excited to make this a centrepiece of our institute. We were on fire! https://c-url.ca/2018/12/21/venice-biennale-shortlist/
Then, guided by a dream from my stepdad, I worked with collaborators on a proposal for the inaugural New Frontiers in Research Fund Exploration stream. We were floored when we won. It was clear we working in a good way, with the right energy. Our institute was blazing trails!
So, you can imagine what it felt like to come back from Yale in July 2019, with $250,000 in funding, a nomination for one of the top honours in architecture, & a fellowship that Roxane Gay held the same year as me to find out: what I had been promised by CU was not being honoured
While I'd been away the uni had quietly scrapped the predoctoral fellowships. The 10 Indigenous faculty hires had almost been cancelled as well, until Indigenous faculty threatened to go public. Indigenization was going ahead, just without a firm financial commitment.
Anyway, long story short: I didn't get my faculty hire. I didn't get a predoctoral fellow. There is no staff member for me to second. Without backbone of the Institute I was promised in writing, I'm unable to comprehensively support Indigenous communities in ways I was promised.
I've been granted some partial support, but frankly given fact I negotiated in good faith with my employer, and I returned to an enviro that consistently causes damage to my optic nerves, I feel so utterly betrayed and embarrassed. I trusted an organization that does not value me
the hardest part is that I work with land defenders and water defenders who put their lives on the line to protect their homelands against egregious violations by states and corporations. I was led to believe I'd have funding+support in place to make their work easier. I don't.
I've shared this story with peers over last few years, trying to get someone to honour what I was promised in writing, what I gave up a lucrative employment opportunity for. Folks commiserate in private but without public discourse, first gen profs like me will always be harmed.
at this point it's not even about me. It's about the fact that three years ago I was offered something that was expansive, powerful, trail blazing, that was supposed to help communities do amazing work on the ground. And all I have is this depressing story of settler betrayal.
I feel so tired. Bone tired. I trusted the wrong settler institution, and I've paid with my body, with my spirit. I failed my stepdad. I failed my amazing community partners. I was duped. I am embarrassed. I am exhausted from fighting it all. I just want to honour the fish.
I truly hope this story can be useful to someone. I hope you can know your worth in ways I didn't fully understand then. I want you to flourish. I want you to work with folks who inspire you. I don't want you to have to fight these cunning institutions.
After nearly dying of COVID last year, I now know that we have to dream beyond these universities, these government ministries, nonprofits, corporations, and other settler organizations. We exist regardless of their approval, of their budget lines. But damn, we deserve to fly.
