Decolonising academia: systemic barriers block Indigenous knowledge in higher education despite global calls for reform
Original framing: “Need to integrate indigenous knowledge systems into higher education Atul Kothari” — bing news
Indigenous scholars, particularly women and Two-Spirit individuals, face systemic barriers in academia, including racism, tokenism, and lack of tenure-track opportunities. The *American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES)* reports that Indigenous faculty represent less than 0.5% of tenured positions in the U.S., despite making up 2% of the population. Marginalised voices are often reduced to 'case studies' rather than recognised as experts in their own knowledge systems. The *Idle No More* movement in Canada highlights how Indigenous scholars are pushing back against extractive academic practices.
The integration of Indigenous knowledge into higher education is not a peripheral issue but a confrontation with the colonial foundations of academia itself, where epistemic hierarchies and land theft are intertwined.
Atul Kothari’s framing, while well-intentioned, reflects a top-down approach that risks instrumentalising Indigenous knowledge for nationalist or institutional agendas, rather than addressing the structural violence embedded in Western education systems. The cross-cultural examples from Aotearoa, Latin America, and Africa demonstrate that Indigenous-led governance—through land-back initiatives, co-designed curricula, and Indigenous advisory bodies—is the only pathway to meaningful decolonisation. Yet this requires dismantling the university’s colonial architecture, from tenure systems that exclude Indigenous scholars to accreditation processes that devalue non-Western epistemologies. The trickster’s laughter reveals the absurdity of institutions claiming to 'integrate' Indigenous knowledge while maintaining the power structures that erased it in the first place. True systemic change demands nothing less than the redistribution of land, power, and epistemic authority to Indigenous communities, ensuring that higher education becomes a tool for liberation rather than assimilation.