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In a recently published Quillette article, political science Prof. Frances Widdowson described the difficulties that Canadian university administrators face when they seek to âIndigenizeâ their schools. Everyone in academia seems to agree that Indigenization is an urgent task, but the particulars are typically ill-defined.
As Widdowson reports in a newly published book, these efforts at Indigenization (sometimes referred to as âdecolonizationâ) comprise a combination of symbolic gestures, ramped-up affirmative-action programs, mandatory anti-racism courses and demands that Indigenous folklore be accorded epistemological stature on par with science. At Concordia University in Montreal, for instance, a dozen researchers are collaborating on a project called âDecolonizing Light,â whose aim is to âinvestigate the reproduction of colonialism in and through physics and higher physics education.â Our scientific understanding of light