Think-tank to promote Indigenous voices on policy and governance
Yellowhead Institute to solicit papers from community-based researchers
A think-tank launching TORONTO in Toronto this week hopes to give Indigenous researchers the opportunity to provide greater input on policy issues relevant to their peoples.
Hayden King, an Anishinaabe writer and academic from Beau Soleil First Nation on Georgian Bay, will be leading the Yellowhead Institute at Ryerson University and sees it adding to the growing presence of Indigenous voices in Canada’s conversations on governance.
“We’re hoping to reverse the very long history of excluding Indigenous people from policy decisions and legal decisions that affect our communities,” King said. “It should be Indigenous people themselves that make decisions about their future.”
The institute — named after William Yellowhead, an early-tomid-19th century Anishinaabe chief who promoted unity among Indigenous nations and resisted heavy-handed colonial policies in southern Ontario — will launch Tuesday with a research paper analyzing the Indigenous-related policies that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has enacted or planned since taking power. The paper, co-authored by King, involved the work of about 30 mostly Indigenous leaders, activists, community members and policy experts.
“We’re hoping the Yellowhead Institute becomes a source for media, to amplify the voices of Indigenous communities and Indigenous policy and legal experts,” King said.
From the Idle No More movement for Indigenous rights and sovereignty, to demands for government to address the disproportionate number of missing and murdered Indigenous women, Indigenous leaders and activists have in recent years become more aggressive and assertive in their calls to action, King said. Nevertheless, the voices of nonIndigenous scholars are more prevalent, and more accepted, in media and research reports on Indigenous issues, he added. “The non-Indigenous experts … often say things that are palatable to Canadians, Canadian institutions and, governments, and they’re not offensive or threatening,” King added. “Indigenous analysts, on the other hand will, in fact, say there are fundamental problems with institutions, there is systemic racism, there is chronic neglect, and really demand fundamental transformation.”
The new institute will have two research associate positions filled by Indigenous faculty members at Ryerson and, this summer, will add about a dozen research fellows, from different Indigenous nations and areas of expertise. The think-tank plans to solicit policy analysis papers from communitybased researchers who can offer on-the-ground perspectives on the effects of Indigenous policies. “We’re also hoping to work with students at Ryerson and across Toronto to do mentorship as we go forward and build the institution,” said Shiri Pasternak, the institute’s research director and a Ryerson criminology professor, whose work has concentrated on Indigenous rights for over a decade. Pasternak is not Indigenous and the institute’s goal is for her to eventually be replaced by an Indigenous research director, she said. “In the meantime … I think we can model something important about how, when non-Indigenous people get involved in these kinds of initiatives, the important thing is not to have our (non-Indigenous) voices determine the content or agenda but rather to really learn how to listen and work hard to create spaces for Indigenous peoples to have a platform,” she said.