“Tricky Grounds: Indigenous Women’s Experiences in Canadian University Administration”by Candace Brunette-DebassigePublished by University of Regina PressReview by Sally Meadows$34.95 ISBN 9780889779778 Tricky Grounds is a passionate reflection by author Candace Brunette-Debassige as she documents “the experiences and challenges that Indigenous women administrators face in enacting Indigenizing policies in Canadian universities” (p. 10) with an eye towards “more transformative, decolonial approaches to Indigenous leadership and policy practices” (p. 10). The book begins with a personalized account of what led to Brunette-Debassige’s own research–this is her published PhD dissertation–followed by a critical (i.e. important) review of historical policies, institutional approaches, university participation, teaching agendas, and research agendas as they pertain to Indigenous people from the 1800s to present. Highlighted is the consistently and devastatingly undermined, marginalized, suppressed, and even silenced, non-European (particularly for the context of this book, Indigenous) ways of knowing of traditional Euro-Western universities. I was shocked to read, for example, that the Indian Act of 1876 forced First Nation men (and later, women) who wanted to attend university to “surrender their Treaty rights and terminate their Indigenous legal status and…reserve lands” (p. 33-34), a legality that remained in place until 1951. I champion this book as an invaluable resource…
