JARITA GREYEYES IS TRANSFORMING INSTITUTIONS AND CHANGING ATTITUDES
Jarita Greyeyes is just over a month into her PhD studies in Race, Inequality and Language in Education at California’s famed Stanford University, and already she’s seeing ways she’d like to see the campus change. She comes by her desire for progress honestly, starting in her home communities of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, and most recently as director of community learning and engagement at her alma mater, the University of Winnipeg.
“My whole career has been focused on making space and taking up space for indigenous people, and making sure they see themselves reflected in the institutions that are supposed to serve all people,” she says.
At the University of Winnipeg, that meant organizing an inaugural spring feast and working with artists to wrap a building on campus with Star Blanket-inspired mural, among other initiatives that helped to increase inclusion at the institution.
Greyeyes says symbols should not be underestimated, because they communicate whose history and culture is valued. “We are seeing a tide turning in terms of resistance to keeping these symbols uncritically,” she says. “When we transform spaces, it is a way of honouring people, their history and knowledge, and what they bring to the institution.”
Greyeyes was raised by a single Cree mom and saw firsthand the gendered ways that colonization continues to affect Indigenous people. “There are threats of violence that are omnipresent and do not go away as you move out of poverty,” she says. “We’ve been raised in a system that devalues Indigenous lives and those of women in particular. Having two degrees and a good job doesn’t protect me from the threat of violence.”
Part of healing this, says Greyeyes, is understanding that the current system didn’t come from nowhere – and ensuring that educational institutions are equipped to teach the diversity of Canadian history. “We know that education can be transformative for people and communities,” says Greyeyes. “So it’s looking at where there is room, making room, and creating opportunities for institutions to be better.”
Her doctoral research is part of that effort, focusing on the contributions of women to indigenization and identifying best practices from which others can learn. Women, she says, are the ones increasingly “doing this work at institutions. It’s not glamorous, but women are the ones stepping up and showing up, building the relationships and taking their skills back to their communities. It’s a different kind of leadership.”
At Stanford, where fewer than one per cent of students identify as Native American, Greyeyes sees only opportunity.
“All places can be resistant to change,” she says, “but my approach is one that is really grounded in creating the understanding that we have so much to offer, our knowledge and ways of doing things are rich and bring so much value. It’s that idea that there is so much strength in what we have to offer.”
WE’VE BEEN RAISED IN A SYSTEM THAT DEVALUES INDIGENOUS LIVES AND THOSE OF WOMEN IN PARTICULAR.