Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit

Marie Battiste, Professor of Educational Foundations, founder and first Academic Director, Aboriginal Education Research Centre, University of Saskatchewan, is a Mi’kmaw scholar, knowledge keeper, and educator from Potlotek First Nation, Nova Scotia. Marie earned degrees from the University of Maine (B.S.), Harvard (Ed.M.), and Stanford (Ed.D.). She has also received honorary degrees from the University of Maine at Farmington, St. Mary’s University, and Thompson Rivers University. A Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada, she has also received the Distinguished Academic Award from the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation Award in Education, the Saskatchewan Centennial Medal, the 125th Year Queen’s Award for Service to the Community, the Distinguished Researcher Award from the University of Saskatchewan, and Eagle Feathers from the Mi’kmaq Grand Council and Eskasoni community.

She edited two highly influential books from UBC Press, texts that continue to be taught nationally and internationally: First Nations Education: The Circle Unfolds (1995) and Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision (2000). She has coauthored, with J. Youngblood Henderson, Protecting Indigenous Knowledge: A Global Challenge (Purich Publishing 2000), identifying threats to Indigenous knowledge from global patenting and intellectual property regimes while affirming the linguistic and land-based grounds of resistance to paternalism and predation. A prolific writer and speaker, she has developed an international profile for advancing the decolonization of education, the development of Indigenous voice and vision, antiracist education as violence prevention, and the institutionalization of the Indigenous humanities, science, and knowledge.