Navigating “Tricky Grounds”: A Conversation with Candace Brunette-Debassige About Indigenous Women’s Experiences in University Administration

The following interview between Academica Group Senior Researcher Kascie Shewan (KS) and Laurentian University Assistant Professor in Indigenous Relations Candace Brunette-Debassige (CB) took place on 29 January 2025.

It focuses primarily on the findings of Brunette-Debassige's 2023 monograph Tricky Grounds: Indigenous Women’s Experience in Canadian University Administration, which highlights the challenges that Indigenous women face as they seek to implement reconciliation in postsecondary institutions that largely remain colonial, Eurocentric, and male-dominated. The book draws on Brunette-Debassige's experiences as well as those of other Indigenous women working in senior administrative roles in Canadian universities. The interview additionally explores topics of emotional labour, decolonization, and International Women’s Day.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

KS: Could you please share how you came to the research presented in Tricky Grounds? What drew you to explore these ideas?

CB: Like a lot of Indigenous scholars, this research started with Indigenous experience. Self-location in Indigenous research is also a grounding place. People who do research with Indigenous communities are not only expected to ground themselves, but oftentimes, they locate themselves in relationship to the topics that they’re researching. So naturally, as an Indigenous scholar who uses Indigenous research methodologies, you will find my own experiences grounded in this work.

After working in Indigenous leadership roles in education for several years, it became clear for me that research on this topic was desperately needed. To add to this, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) had hit the ground in many educational institutions and Indigenous leaders like myself were grappling with how to move forward. I was one of a handful of Indigenous leaders working in formal positions in my university. I also found myself attending conferences, associations, and councils sitting with others in similar roles across the country. I observed that we were such a minority in our respective institutions, and that we were predominantly Indigenous women. And I thought that was interesting.

And so, this observation sparked my interest to focus on Indigenous women in leadership in universities and to look at how we were grappling to implement these calls to action from the TRC. Everyone was turning to Indigenous people, of course, for this direction. At the same time, I also felt isolated in that work. I felt like I was trying to make sense of what was put on me. And so, I turned to research, and I built my whole study around that need. It was a need inside myself, but it was also a need identified by the collective Indigenous community. 

KS: One of the things that I loved about your book, is that it uses Indigenous storying methods to build its argument, while showcasing their effectiveness. Can you unpack more about the methodology of your work?

CB: Story is accessible, universal, and culturally grounded. Indigenous people and ways of knowing are grounded in story as a way of teaching, a way of healing, a way of researching. It’s not just a way of communicating. It is a way of understanding the world. And so, I really wanted to model that.

I have a theatre background—not a lot of formal training—but community-based experience and training. And I just find that type of sharing is so powerful; there’s a form of witnessing that happens in theatre. There’s a healing aspect to it where we can sit collectively and witness someone’s story, someone’s truth, and sit with that. And when we think about truth and reconciliation and what that movement involves, it has to be about truth telling. And truth telling can be challenging sometimes, but there’s a power in it.

So, basically, my methodology was an Indigenous storying approach. But I took this a step further to develop a performance script in the book based in a fictional world inspired by some of the salient experiences that I heard from the people I interviewed. My methodology also invited those same people to review draft performance scripts to engage them in the collaborative process. 

It’s not unheard of to write performance scripts as part of qualitative research, but very few have done this in an Indigenous way. And so, this methodology was a bit unique where I gathered my own and other women’s stories and used Trickster theory to help retell these stories. 

Something else I will note here about that methodology is that sovereignty was so important when it came to the representation of Indigenous women’s stories. And yes, while I am an Indigenous woman, I’m not absolved of colonial misrepresentations as a researcher. We’ve all been marinating—as Marie Battiste says—in Eurocentrism and colonialism. And we can inadvertently internalize these narratives at times. So, as scholars, we have to be careful in terms of how we represent and tell stories. So, I put protective mechanisms in place to try to keep myself accountable to the other women who shared their stories so generously.

KS: In Tricky Grounds, you emphasize the importance of community in Indigenous leadership. Many may agree however, that academic institutions can often prioritize individualism and competition. Given this, how do Indigenous women leaders foster community in spaces that often feel hostile to collaborative, lateral ways of working?

CB: Many things come to mind, but one of the unique elements of how Indigenous offices in universities operate is that we bring in community and even Elders. Elders carry such an important role in our societies. Their wisdom and presence balance us. I can’t talk for everyone, but in my own experience, I have been reminded about how to be in relationship through community and Elder. I’ve had the privilege of working with Elders who have gently reminded me that I am not the sole decision maker. I am not the sole authority. Even though the system tells us that administrators hold power, in our communities, leadership is a collective process.

So, I think that way of being really balances us to avoid the egocentric tendencies towards individualism and competition so prevalent in Western societies.

There are certainly two different worlds at play in Indigenous leadership in universities. In my work, I talk about the borderland and how Indigenous women administrators are working on a border: it’s an epistemological border, it’s an ideological border between Indigenous and Western ways—not always a simple binary, but a complex tension. I try to make that border more explicit in the book. For example, the community has certain expectations of how things should happen, but then there’s the Westernized norm of doing things in universities. Sometimes these expectations collide and come face-to-face because we operate on this border and move across both worlds. Indigenous women can see it. It’s hard for other people to see this sometimes though.

KS: One concept that I found especially revolutionary in your book was the idea of “hospicing the university.” What might this look like in practice?

CB: It’s important to note that this idea of hospicing comes out of decolonial discourse. A lot of decolonial, abolitionist scholars—like Sharon Stein and Vanessa Machado De Oliveira Andreotti—have engaged with this concept. I take it up in the book because I find that decolonial thinkers are really starting to interrogate what the university is and where it comes from. 

When you look at the roots of the Westernized university, it’s very Eurocentric and has tended to privilege European thinkers, Euro-Western knowledge and the English language. There are certain assumptions within this Westernized model in terms of how it understands time and the relationship to the earth. Capitalism is entrenched within this structure.

So personally, I think that “hospicing” is about changing our education system in deep ways. Some people get a little bit uptight about the term because hospice implies dying and death. For me, it’s about transforming universities because death is a form of transformation. It’s transformation that I believe needs to happen in education.

There are so many important issues upon us: the digital revolution, climate change. We need to reflect on the bigger picture. We need to take that idea of hospicing to determine how the university needs to change in dramatic ways—in very deep philosophical and structural ways. This isn’t just about tweaking; it’s a major shift. I don’t know what that looks like. But I think we need to collectively do it together and lean into it.

When we think about this from an Indigenous standpoint, we need to think more holistically about learning and engaging the whole self. We need to think about not just Western knowledges, but Indigenous knowledges. We are talking about transforming the way we educate, the way that we understand knowledge.

KS: In the book, you highlight how burnout is a significant risk for Indigenous women leaders in postsecondary administration. Can you talk more about this?

CB: I’m actually looking at the ideas of emotional labour, wellbeing, and leadership in my next research project. I think it’s such an important conversation. I think lots of different women leaders and Black leaders are increasingly having these conversations.

With regards to reconciliation work specifically, reconciliation fatigue is common, and it is complex for us take on the work of reconciliation.

When we think about the number of Indigenous peoples who are in universities – the number of Indigenous peoples who are doing the work of reconciliation—the load is heavy on a few.

A lot of the women talked about that in my research. What I try to make sense of in the book is how historical trauma plays a factor in the experiences of women and in the area of reconciliation and how some of the invisible labour that’s placed on Indigenous people contributes to burnout. 

Ultimately, I think we need to pace ourselves and not get lost in meeting the needs of settlers. We need to really prioritize what we need, what Indigenous people collectively desire and need, and think through that strategically. We’ve learned a lot over the last eight years. We’re having these difficult conversations about the change needed and the goals of transforming universities. I still believe that universities need to change and that Indigenous peoples need to be at the centre of this change.

We also need allies to support the work on our terms. We need people to step up and educate themselves, so that we don’t have to provide basic education for the masses. We need a space to strategize and dream. We need supports to create strong structures that are sustainable and supportive of Indigenous peoples. 

We need to think about our wellness intentionally and protect our individual and collective wellbeing. And I’m just not sure that under the conditions that we are currently working, that this is always top of mind.

KS: In Tricky Grounds, you discuss the tensions and nuances of Indigenous feminist theory. While International Women’s Day often focuses on celebrating empowerment and solidarity, these values can sometimes overlook the unique challenges faced by Indigenous women in academia. Given the nuanced relationship between colonialism, racism, and the experiences of Indigenous women, how do you see their stories in academia reshaping the typical narratives around feminism that are often celebrated on days like these?

CB: On these days, we want to highlight the value of solidarity. At the same, we also need to recognize the intersectional differences of women.

It’s taken me awhile to identify as a feminist, but I consider myself an Indigenous feminist. This is partly because feminism hasn’t always been a good word: white liberal feminism in particular, has historically erased the unique experience of how colonialism and racism shape Indigenous women’s experiences. Sometimes, in aligning ourselves with feminism, some people assume we are no longer aligned with the goal of Indigenous sovereignty. And so, when it came to framing my book, I knew gender analysis needed to be taken seriously, because I was looking at women and that gendered, race, and colonial analysis were factors in how our labour and work intersects.

So, I found myself reading a lot of theory. Feminist research can be a bit of a minefield. There are many Indigenous scholars who don’t take on the feminist label and there are many that do. And there’s a lot of debate in the field. And ultimately, I decided to use an Indigenous feminist decolonial framework.

I found that I liked the “red intersectionality” approach. It nuanced the discussion of gender considering colonialism and racism, and it aligned with the nuances that participant partners talked about.

My own positionality is complex. It’s not straightforward. I have a complex intersectional sense of Indigeneity. I am mixed Cree and French settler. My proximity to whiteness in terms of how I can be read as racially ambiguous is something that I believe deserves recognition. I didn’t grow up on the reserve. I have an off-reserve experience. I am cisgender. I am the granddaughter of a residential school survivor. So, I wanted to—like a lot of the women I talked to—highlight and discuss my own intersectional positionalities and relationship to colonialism in nuanced ways. I write quite a bit in the book about complicating the feminist label but still taking it up as something that is important in leadership work. And then complicating our position through intersectional framework.

KS: As you spoke about the complexities of different experiences, it made me wonder if conflict plays a necessary role in building coalitions. On a days like International Women’s Day that tend towards a more celebratory tone, do you think it’s worth acknowledging that conflict and difference can also be celebrated?

CB: We need solidarity for sure. I think we also need to take a step back. We all have our blinders; we all have our biases. We all come from our standpoints and through that, we take certain things for granted and we see other things. That’s what makes us unique.

But if we can talk about it and have honest conversations—and sometimes challenge each other—we can make better decisions and acknowledge our differences. So, I think it’s about honouring the diversity of women’s experiences and perspectives, so that we can learn from each other and have a bigger, whole picture.

So, maybe that’s what we can hope for on these days. That we can hear from different voices that maybe aren’t always at the centre.

The team at Academica Group would like to extend their sincere appreciation to Candace for sharing her time, wisdom, and valuable insights. Tricky Grounds calls upon readers to approach academia with better minds, hearts, and spirits. The depth in this work not only challenges conventional thinking but also empowers those who engage with it. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to explore these ideas with Candace and our community of readers.