Workers united: a non-assimilatory approach to Indigenous leadership in higher education

Abstract

Indigenous leaders in higher education are restive, disaffected, and dissatisfied with the slow gyrations of change. Using Interest Convergence Theory, this paper will unravel the constraints inherent in institutional reform that delimit the influence of Indigenous senior leaders in the sector. Positioned amidst the burgeoning impact of neoliberalism, an architecture of colonial governance models, and systemic resistance to change, Indigenous leaders are affecting reform. By providing examples of reform-driven agential actions shouldered by senior Indigenous leaders across Canada, Aotearoa, America and Australia, this paper, underpinned by relationality, details how Indigenous leaders are engaging with Indigenous Institutional work and Entrepreneurship, speaking back to interest-driven institutional policies and practices in the sector with a pronounced focus on nation building. Drawn from an international, comprehensive qualitative study, we investigate how Indigenous leaders in higher education are disrupting systemic racism to promote equity and justice within higher education amid macro-level resistance to change.

Keywords:

• Indigenous
• higher education
• leadership
• nonassimilatory approach
• qualitative study

For the Indigenous peoples¹ of the four nations colonized along the Pacific Rim (United States of America², Aotearoa, Canada and Australia), Anglophone expansion through settler invasion significantly transformed their lives. While European expansion had relied on networking and imperialism, both founded on exploitation, settler invasion not only exploited but also condoned genocide in attempts to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands and cultures (Wolfe, 2006). Truth telling, reparation, and promises of reconciliation are a long time coming for the Indigenous peoples of these nations, and for educators, especially senior Indigenous leaders in higher education,³ lack of parity in the sector creates a restiveness and disaffection that is hard to quell. In a sector emboldened by systemic racism, Indigenous leaders continue to build a resistant and emancipatory position, contesting colonial ownership of space, architecture, governance, and knowledge in a higher education sector that is physically grounded on stolen land and founded on epistemological racism and cognitive imperialism (Battiste, 2008; Debassige & Brunette, 2019; Moreton-Robinson, 2011; Scheurich & Young, 1997).

This paper investigates a common purpose of Indigenous leaders in America, Canada, Aotearoa, and Australia, by sharing Indigenous leaders’ experiences of institutional dynamics that constrain claims to sovereignty through and in higher education. In the process, we will make transparent Indigenous leaders’ wealth of knowledge, skills, and determination, to Indigenize and decolonize higher education. While we heed the warning that homogenization of Indigenous peoples perpetuates racism (Bodkin-Andrews & Carlson, 2016), and acknowledge there are points of contestation in the experiences of colonization in America, Canada, Aotearoa, and Australia that are borne from differing processes of colonization⁴ and lengths of time since the beginning of colonization (Archibald, 2006), substantive similarities exist and a relational thread can be drawn connecting each nation’s Indigenous living experiences and experiences of Western education (Goldberg, 2009). Therefore, relationality underpins our position in this paper. Goldberg (2009) argues comparative studies position studies of racism that are located within national contexts, with “consequences that unfold within and are bounded by specific nation-states” (Vass et al., 2018, p. xiii), therefore ignoring the interconnectedness of these nations as well as the notion that racial contracts in one nation depend on racial practices elsewhere to be maintained (Goldberg, 2009). By focusing on relationality, that is by connecting rather than looking to “contrast and compare” (p. 1276) colonized nations along the Pacific Rim, we hope this paper will contribute to a constructive debate seeking resolution to ongoing systemic racism in education within a global-meaning framework by stressing the relational ties and their mutually reinforcing impacts of colonialism.

We celebrate the achievements of Indigenous senior leaders in higher education in colonized nations along the Pacific Rim who are speaking back to hegemonic racism. As Australian Indigenous authors and an ally, we propose a strength-based approach, endorsing the more current positions on colonialism advocated by Konishi (2019). By reframing Western academic discourse about colonialism, we will emphasize Indigenous survivance amid ongoing colonial domination by arguing Indigenous people have been “agential in evading and resisting the logic of elimination” (p. 300). The study aims to bring to the fore institutional constraints on change and highlight how Indigenous leaders are calling into question systemic racism, advocating for equity and justice within higher education.

Literature review

Leadership disadvantage

This literature review explores contemporary literature pertinent to Indigenous leadership in higher education, and in doing so will bring to light research exposing the lack of parity and the racially divided hierarchical leadership structures in the sector. The review will also highlight the smoke and mirrors tactics employed by the sector to stymy systemic change and concludes with a review of the literature that shows the role neoliberalism has played in curtailing the purview of Indigenous leadership.

The itemization of historical practices of colonization is harrowing, and includes, though is not limited to: “war, displacement, forced labor, removal of children, relocation, ecological destruction, massacres, genocide, slavery, spread of infectious diseases, banning of Indigenous languages, regulation of marriage, assimilation and abdication of social, cultural and spiritual practices” (Paradies, 2016, pp. 83–84). As argued by Taleb (2020), colonized nations experienced most of the above, though not in the same sequence. R. G. Gonzales and Colangelo (2010) propose that policies for the Western education of Indigenous children are not dissimilar across the Pacific Rim, despite the different periods of time of colonization: all four nations experienced assimilationist policies that directly shaped negative educational experiences, and failure of governments to meaningfully respond to and act upon recommendations from successive inquiries.

Within this global-meaning framework, colonization is tenacious, with an ever-evolving array of technologies designed to maintain the dominance of White status quo (Veracini, 2015). One such technology is Western education, weaponized so as to isolate Indigenous peoples from land, culture, language, and each other (Povey et al., 2021b), in a practice reinforced by contemporary neoliberal backed globalization of knowledge (Pihama et al., 2019). The unrelenting impact of colonization reaches into higher education. Data tells an undeniable story of Indigenous disadvantage in higher education across these relationally-like PacificRim nations (R. G. Gonzales & Colangelo, 2010), particularly in the field of senior leadership (Minthorn & Chavez, 2015). Research attests to racially divided leadership, with a lack of parity across higher education in America (Brayboy et al., 2012), Canada, (Mohamed & Beagan, 2019), Aotearoa (McAllister et al., 2019) and Australia (Coates et al., 2020b).

Power, politics and rhetoric

International literature tells how the influence of these fewer Indigenous leaders in higher education is curtailed by the mirage of systemic change. While higher education institutions may appear to align themselves with the changing public discourse, many are creating a veneer of equity rather than righting historical wrongs. Perhaps the most explicit example of these smoke and mirrors attempts to appease institutional and public conscience can be seen in the Canadian government’s responses to the Calls for Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Released in 2015, the Calls to Action (Truth and Reconcilition Commission of Canada, 2015) summoned Canadian institutions and citizens “to redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation” (p. 1). As public discourse turned toward reconciliation, higher education was called to account for its role in perpetuating a racist landscape: demands were made for philosophical and systemic changes (Gaudry & Lorenz, 2018) to enable Indigenization of universities. Although the document was greeted by a public national response in support of structural and philosophical changes, concerns arose about the prevalence of speech acts, rhetoric and tokenistic actions. Findings from our Canadian study (Povey et al., 2021b) showed that fears arose amongst Indigenous faculty as, under the facade of transformative actions, universities increasingly misconstrued initiatives of mandatory courses in Indigenous Studies, increased hiring of Indigenous academics without purviews of influence (Henry et al., 2017), embedded reconciliatory language into campus discourse and made rhetorical shifts in policy (Gaudry & Lorenz, 2018; Tamtik & Guenter, 2019).

Similar occurrences can be identified among the colonized nations across the Pacific Rim: governmental failure to meet the partnership agreement embedded in Te Tiriti o Waitangi in Aotearoa (Kidman et al., 2015), with impacts on the purview of Indigenous leadership in higher education (Povey et al., 2021a); the 1967 referendum in Australia that was realized under international pressure against the legal treatment of Aboriginal people (Bargallie & Lentin, 2021) yet failed to advance the cause of Indigenous socio-economic disadvantage, persistent and unacceptably high rates of incarceration and child removal. Nor did it advance parity in educational outcomes and Indigenous representation in higher education (Trometter, 2015). Additionally, Indigenization of curriculum and the introduction of Indigenous Studies has been a common response to public pressure across Pacific Rim nations, yet Indigenous leaders argue these initiatives are often introduced through processes that lack authenticity and/or without consultation with community (Gaudry & Lorenz, 2018; Nakata et al., 2012; Smith, 2012; Stewart-Ambo, 2021).

Governance, neoliberalism and Indigenous leadership

Indigenous influence on governance is also stymied by neoliberalism acting as a technology of colonialism and incumbering the global movement towards Indigenous sovereignty in education. Many Indigenous leaders are faced with neoliberal data driven accountability that is colorblind and perpetuates discrimination in the workplace (Khalifa et al., 2013). A survey of international literature concludes higher education is increasingly driven by market response, including the commercialization of academia to operate under a transnational business model (Gonzales & Shotton, 2022; McAllister et al., 2020); managerialism, performance indicators and benchmarking (Henry et al., 2017); and market-driven accountability for what is taught (Gaudry & Lorenz, 2019), and who is employed (Kidman & Chu, 2017). Macro-level pressure to endorse the neoliberal rationalisation of Indigenous departments, known as whitestreaming, in effect protects and maintains Anglo-European systemic power (Kidman & Chu, 2017; Potter & Cooper, 2016).

Furthermore, institutional racism reinforces neoliberal systemic barriers to the promotion of Indigenous leadership when the rigor of Indigenous scholarship is erroneously questioned (Mohamed & Beagan, 2019), when greater esteem is given for publication in top-tier academic journals that favor Western epistemology (Henry & Tator, 2012; Louie, 2019), when Indigenous women are marginalized by ongoing gendered power constructs (Fredericks & White, 2018; Thunig & Jones, 2020), and when Indigenous academic performance is diminished by accruing insufficient grant money (Henry et al., 2017; Kidman & Chu, 2017).

It is salient to note the literature in this review has been authored by Indigenous academics and allies: we acknowledge and value this work, and acknowledge the tide is slowly turning towards the centering of Indigenous research by Indigenous academics. However, this paper will also argue for further support in this area by non-Indigenous leadership in an effort to pursue parity and equity in the sector.

Walan Mayini: the Indigenous leadership study

This paper is part of a project funded by the Australian Research Council, exploring and evaluating the roles, responsibilities, and influence of senior Indigenous appointments in higher education. The project, Walan Mayini: Indigenous Leadership in Higher Education⁵ investigates the way universities do business with Indigenous leaders, considering the factors affecting institutional fit, how Indigenous appointments are valued and contribute to Indigenous outcomes as well as the structural barriers to senior Indigenous appointments as well as the advantages. The scope of the study extends into the international field, as, despite the different traces colonial regimes may have left on some higher education systems, and different shared histories of colonial experiences (Gonzales & Colangelo, 2010), relationality connects the experiences of Indigenous peoples in colonized nations.

The project is comprehensive, ranging from the experiences of recruiters responsible for the recruitment of senior Indigenous positions in Australia (Trudgett et al., 2020); Indigenous Australians who hold Indigenous-specific senior leadership positions, senior executive positions (Trudgett et al., 2021) and also Australian Indigenous academics (Coates et al., 2020b). This paper is part of a set of four papers reporting on international Indigenous experiences of leadership in higher education: the three leading papers being on Indigenous leadership in Canada (Povey et al., 2021b), Aotearoa (Povey et al., 2021a) and America (Povey et al., 2022).

Methodology and method

Theoretical framework

Despite “creaking under the weight of own its theoretical apparatus” (Lawrence et al., 2011, p. 52), and marked by numerous iterations and by significant paradigm shifts, Institutional Theory has been anything but static. Nevertheless, Suddaby (2015) asks the question as to whether Institutional Theory can take on a critical lens. Critical analysis of racism is central to the purpose of this study of Indigenous leadership in higher education: in this paper we propose Institutional Work, Institutional Entrepreneurship and Interest Convergence Theory can become close allies for a critical race analysis of institutional behavior in higher education.

Most recently, the theoretical directions of New Institutional Theory heralding a realignment toward agential accounts of institutional change (Hwang & Colyvas, 2011):, and while the field of higher education has been dominated by New Institutional Theory, with a focus on environmental factors, isomorphism and institutionalization (Cai & Mehari, 2015), the more recent theoretical iterations introduce actors and agency to the field of study through the neo-institutional theories of Institutional Entrepreneurs (Battilana & D’aunno, 2009; DiMaggio, 1988) and Institutional Work (Lawrence et al., 2011), thereby creating a critical lens looking at the role of agency and logics in action (Cai & Mehari, 2015). Webber (2012) contends actors in the field of higher education are not passively constrained by the external and internal institutional environment, as per Old Institutional Theory (Selznick, 1957), but are instead individual actors that can play a key role in adapting or resisting environmental pressures. In this way actors can lead to institutional change though Institutional Work and Entrepreneurship (Cai & Mehari, 2015). We are then able to recognize the work of Indigenous leaders in disrupting and creating transformative change.

The theory of Institutional Work positions individuals at the center of Neo-institutional Theory as a key driver in institutional change, as well as a “stabilizing guardian of institutions” (Hwang & Colyvas, 2011, p. 62), highlighting how individuals actively apply effort (work) to engage in processes of institutional creation, maintenance disruption, and change (Lawrence et al., 2011, p. 53). With power to “transcend the totalizing influence of institutions” (Lawrence et al., 2011, p. 54) and reacting to institutional pressure of conformity, actors engage in purposeful work, described by Emirbayer and Mische (1998) as a future-oriented projective agency (as opposed to habitual) that challenges the taken-for granted schemas of historical institutional interfaces. As well as pointing to the actions of actors in the field, (in this study the actors are Indigenous leaders), Institutional Work Theory lends itself to alignment with social movements and distributed agency that can explain global mobilization of decolonizing and emancipatory agendas.

Institutional Entrepreneurship straddles both macro level analysis and micro analysis, by analyzing both the micro-level of actors and the macro-level of organizational fields: Institutional Entrepreneurship is concerned with how actors change institutions (DiMaggio, 1988), by describing the interplay between structural field level conditions and the embedded agency of entrepreneurs (Battilana & D’aunno, 2009). Hoogstraaten et al. (2020) contend the actions of entrepreneurs may be constrained in stable and more highly institutionalized fields where stakeholders hold a sanctioning power of social upheavals. In contrast, field level conditions of regulatory changes, technological disruption and competing logics that disturb consensus, are enabling factors that trigger entrepreneurship.

Nevertheless, neo-institutionalism still falls short of a race based critical analysis that informs our understanding of institutional change. In this study, the critical lens of neo-institutionalism is enhanced by Interest Convergence Theory (ICT). The focus of ICT is on macro-level critical analytical principles that enable understanding of the complex and often contradictory logics informing and shaping policies and practice (Bell Jr, 1980). When applied to this study, ICT will show how higher education institutions tolerate advances for equity and racial justice if it serves to benefit the self-interests of the institution itself (Castagno & Lee, 2007), ultimately masking the rhetoric of color-blindness and the assimilatory nature of the convergence. ICT explains competing logics introduced through external environmental factors and suggest that for fear of not being legitimized, of being left behind, higher education will incorporate the competing logic of race and shift its position. Therefore, ICT creates a way of analyzing the logics behind institutional polices from the point of view of the university and then problematize these logics from an Indigenous standpoint.

By using a critical race analysis of institutional behavior in higher education, this study will show how institutions respond to competing institutional logics that challenge colonial logics, and how Indigenous Leaders/Entrepreneurs initiate change and actively participate in Institutional Work, taking advantage of macro-level challenges to the institutional landscape.

Methodological approach: Indigenist research

This study is underpinned by the notion of emancipatory Indigenist research, founded on the three principles of resistance as an emancipatory imperative (self-determination), political integrity in Indigenous research (research led by or authorized by Indigenous peoples), and privileging Indigenous voices (informed by Indigenous peoples) (Rigney, 1999). This standpoint is a crucial critical response to systemic racism embedded in Western-centric governance and knowledge systems that dominate higher education.

The authors of this paper are all Australian academics: authors two and three are Australian Indigenous scholars holding senior leadership roles in the sector, and the fourth author is also an Indigenous scholar holding the position of a Senior Lecturer. The first author is a non-Indigenous ally who completed their doctoral research under the supervision of authors two and three: Povey works in solidarity and standing with Indigenous colleagues, and currently co-authors the international phase of the Walan Mayini project. Our standpoint is clear as we speak back to colonial hegemony that endorses racial discrimination in higher education. We hope publication of the various aspects of the study will challenge colonial constructs and promote dialogue amongst Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders internationally, furthering the promotion of justice in higher education.

Sampling and recruitment

Data in this paper is drawn from the Australian and international phases of the Walan Mayini project. Participants were selected by purposive sampling, with deliberate selection of participants and locations (Cresswell, 2009), ensuring participants were selected from a cross-section of universities across the Pacific-Rim. Potential participants were contacted by email after being identified by a google search using the keywords: Indigenous; senior leaders; higher education, accompanied by either: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or America. In total, 14 Australian Indigenous academics holding a senior Indigenous identified position, such as Dean, Pro- Vice-Chancellor, and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, were interviewed, and 13 international senior leaders: five from Aotearoa, four from Canada and five from the American mainland and (Coates et al., 2020a). Interviews were conducted between March 2018 and August 2019, with each interview lasting between 38 and 59 minutes. Consistent with Indigenist and Indigenous approaches to research, the format of the interviews was informal, allowing for Aboriginal yarning between the participant and the interviewer: yarning, as described by Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010), elicits culturally safe research relationships that are unencumbered by constructs of researcher power and racial inequity. Each participant was asked questions about their leadership position, role, challenges, successes, and perceptions of their sphere of influence. The transcripts were transcribed by a professional transcription service, and consistent with an Indigenous approach to Povey and Trudgett, (2019), we engaged in member checking by sending the transcripts to the participants for approval.

Interviews with Australian and Māori participants were conducted before the Covid-19 travel restrictions were introduced in Australia; we were able to conduct these interviews in person with all but one participant, who preferred to email a written response to the questions. Interviews with the Canadian Indigenous and American First Nation participants were conducted using zoom technology rather than face-face. Subsequently, we carefully considered if and how this may have influenced the results. As interviews were conducted in early stages of Covid-19 when the full impact of the virus was unknown, some uncertainty was detected around precarity in the higher education, however we did not discern a significant difference in perceptions of leadership between interviews conducted pre-Covid and those conducted in the early stages of Covid. We would expect if interviews were conducted one year later, the impact of Covid-19 would feature strongly. Therefore, rather than being a limitation of this study, it is a rich topic for future research.

While the sample size is small relative to the number of Indigenous leaders in all four nations, we contend more data does not necessarily lead to more information (Ritchie et al., 2003), and that our rich and deep interview responses allowed for a thorough understanding of the living experiences and perspectives of the participants. We also predicted that such rich and deep interviews would mean we interviewed enough participants to yield a range of views (Bazeley, 2013); a prediction found to be accurate.

Data analysis

In accordance with ethical principles of research with Indigenous peoples referenced above, all participants have been deidentified to ensure cultural safety and privacy, as agreed in the participant consent form. Although we acknowledge deidentification may risk homogenization of Indigenous peoples (Bodkin-Andrews & Carlson, 2016), and reaffirm structural racism by perpetuating a culture of silencing (Moses, 2021), we respected participant wishes for anonymity. We also felt the decision was justified in consideration of the small sample size per Indigenous nation. In the same spirit, participants have not been given a pseudonym nor have they been traced across the paper. However, participants’ country, such as America, Canada, Aotearoa, or Australia, has been assigned to interview extracts to facilitate the readers understanding of different experiences and circumstances in relation to the impact of colonialism.

Data were analyzed by the first author using Nvivo 12 software (Bazeley, 2013) and shared with the team on completion. The first author initially deductively coded the data by applying a descriptive approach based on the interview question number (Neale, 2016). Data was then coded inductively by theoretical concepts and then again using a more flexible grounded approach, reviewing the main concepts, looking for insights and ascribing key themes (Corbin, 2016). Throughout the analysis, we were mindful of the cultural and contextual integrity of the extracts and endeavored to avoid the smash and grab of depersonalized analysis (Kovach, 2020). We maintained the context of the extract and the participants voice when coding, thereby ensuring that the research inhabits a moral space that fairly and ethically represents the experiences and perceptions of the participants (Liamputtong, 2007). We acknowledge the paradox inherent in preserving the cultural integrity embedded within the participants’ interviews on one side and maintaining participant deidentification on the other. However, we contend our data analysis procedures safe-guarded the integrity of the data, improving rigor of analysis and interpretative validity (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006), whilst simultaneously protecting participant anonymity. Additionally, this data analysis method captured the complexities, differing perspectives and points of agreement; a critical aspect considering the international nature of this paper (Bazeley, 2013).

Findings

Interest convergence: who benefits?

Indigenous participants in our study were quick to acknowledge their initiatives and endeavors to create an Indigenous leadership presence in the sector; they were also quick to express frustration at the flawed and ineffective responses to the pressure from macro-level external logics. On one American campus, a Native leader did acknowledge an institutional shift in thinking towards understanding Indigeneity:

I think acknowledging the fact that at least, well really everywhere, our Indigenous people were the first occupants of this territory. So I think there’s starting to be more respect and recognition around that which is really important.

However, the ongoing employment of White male leaders undermines Indigenous efforts to develop a sustained understanding and awareness of Indigenous issues relative the sector:

I think the number one challenge I have is the change we’ve had in leadership. I have worked now with five different presidents and so the turnover has been pretty significant. So the challenge is how is it that you bring someone new who’s never been in the [institution name redacted] who’s never really worked with tribes, how do you on board them? […] So with the turnover it was always sort of going back and providing that education. Let alone they bring in a whole new senior leadership team, usually white, usually male, and so then you have to go down the line, like with each one, and do the same thing. So it’s very taxing, they don’t do their own education. They want the CliffsNotes for everything.

By suggesting the institutional response carries an inherent racial and gender bias, this Indigenous leader posits the macro-level response to facilitating equity paradoxically supports the continuance of White hegemony in the sector.

Similar to the American leader cited above, a Māori leader also noted an inherent systemic obstinacy, this time founded on pressure to conform to hegemonic practices that belie Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing:

I feel like that cultural shift in behaviour and attitude shift is gaining momentum, but it is hard, because people were, like, I need a result now. This relationship is hard.

Implicit in ICT is the impact of institutional rhetoric, wherein promises are made but not kept. This issue is most pronounced in the equity-based drive for partnership, as decreed in the Te Tiriti o Waitangi:

So where’s the partnership model there? The University is not the Crown - so it comes unstuck. Again, it’s living a bit of a lie that there is a partnership in place and that’s been a concern to me […]. So it is still the old model really. We’re not in partnership, we are ‘governed’ by non-Māori. At the end of the day we don’t have autonomy; the promise of partnership is false; the other partner is in charge of us. Living a bit of a lie that there is a partnership in place and that’s been a concern to me - we need to tidy this up and get it correct.

Here a Māori leader questions the rhetoric of partnership models espoused by the Crown, calling out the duplicity of the university promising an autonomy thinly disguised as a colonial governing structure that continues to undermine Māori leadership.

In terms of Indigenization of the academy, a Canadian senior leader is disparaging of the sector’s response to the TRC, adding a further indictment against neoliberalism:

Nothing has grown other than making sure there’s certain bums on seats … Its never about the systemic issues. And they give themselves awards for it.

Canadian participants articulated concerns about the precarity of institutional responses to the TRC. One university had significantly increased the size of faculty by hiring:

Some amazing, amazing professors from other universities and to promote some amazing students without our own university to the rank of tenure-track professor

However, the participant also expressed concern about the strength of this commitment:

We spent the last four years building up relationships with them so when it comes to a time of austerity like now hopefully, now they’ll see us as a good partner to engage with.

Senior Indigenous leaders across the relationally-like nations along the PacificRim have provided evidence showing the racial awareness of universities are not as they seem. The outcome of competing institutional logics trends towards sustaining White privilege and the will of the majority (Bell Jr, 1980), despite a perceived willingness to engage with the pursuit of equity.

Entrepreneurship

Yet the senior Indigenous leaders in our study are ambitious and committed to institutional reform. Driven by an Entrepreneurship that is intent on changing institutions at the macro and micro-levels (DiMaggio, 1988), Indigenous leaders strive towards institutional change to promote student and faculty successes by initiatives such as Indigenizing the sector, and paying-it-forward through nation building in higher education (Brayboy, 2015).

While Indigenous leaders perceive student successes as being pivotal to their work, participants understand their purview reaches beyond students into the domain of strengthening Native faculty, as expressed by an American participant:

So how do we help our Native faculty through commensurate tenure, how do we provide mentorship? How do we make them feel that there’s a sort of a supportive community on campus, and even more importantly how do we increase our Native faculty numbers?

Ongoing presence and influence are key requisites for strengthening faculty (Brayboy et al., 2015; Coates et al., 2020b; McAllister et al., 2020), therefore succession planning is highly revered by Indigenous leadership:

I tried to push this when I was [title redacted] - ways of trying to support the Māori academy so that we have a natural progression of people who can come through.

Nevertheless, an Australian Indigenous leader commented on the constraints, both real and visionary to building an Indigenized sector, commenting on the paucity of Indigenous leaders in their institution:

I can’t see my career projection through the university. There’s no Deans, there’s no Associate Deans, there’s no – I don’t think there are any Professors. There’s not a lot of positions.

Centered in participant perceptions of Indigenous leadership, and connected to succession planning, is planning for the future. Nation-building is a concept inextricably connected with the Indigenous concepts of relationships. Brayboy (2015) understands nation-building in terms of stewardship that entails holding land and positions of leadership safe ‘for our children and grandchildren and also for generations to come’ (p. 56). An American participant explains the lasting connections between community and the sector.

I did a lot to focus with the relationships with community and because really that was the majority of my role. But at the same time, as many of us who work in these positions, a lot of our community are very concerned about our students. So you can’t really engage with community on really a whole lot without first reassuring them that we are doing the best job we can to serve our students. So many of our communities we use the concept of nation building. They’re looking to our young people to get educated, to get skilled and to come back and build thriving nations. So many of our communities we use the concept of nation building.

Despite the caveats outlined above, our study demonstrates the collective and individual visions of Indigenous leaders being enacted through Indigenous Entrepreneurialism. The connection between these aspects of leadership identified by participants and in literature cannot be under-estimated, as the concept of non-assimilatory reform led by Indigenous leaders and framed around nation building and paying-it-forward for future generations is presented as being foundational to systemic change and fundamental for educational sovereignty.

Institutional work of relationships

Participants in this study identify relationships as being a core cultural strength underpinning the Institutional Work of Indigenous leaders. Succinctly expressed by a Canadian Indigenous leader:

We can’t withdraw from the institutions. We can’t withdraw from the mainstream politics no more than we can withdraw from the land. Or we won’t be there in seven generations. We need to be in all of these systems, and we need to support each other with that and keep each other honest.

As agential actors in the field, participants in all four nations agreed on the importance of culturally strong relationships. As articulated by another Canadian Indigenous leader, the scope of strong relationships is broad, extending from:

Building the community on campus and building, those relationships I think are so important and need to come first before any other work can get done because the other work can’t get done if the relationships aren’t established.

Through to:

Train[ing] our university community to be more consultative and to do that from the early outset when they have the interest to work with the tribe.

Notably, a Māori leader extends this idea of the role institutions in relationship building by re-reversing causality and insisting it is the institutions’ onus of responsibility to ensure equity and act in the public interest for the common good:

So, without over co-opting the neoliberal language – the University needs to fulfil its obligations as a ‘public provider’, a ‘public institution’. We have a responsibility to the ‘public good’. We have a responsibility to meet the needs of all of our constituents including Māori and Pacific peoples who are both significantly underserved.

Relationships also empower Indigenous entrepreneurialism, with participants in the four nations voicing agreement on building an international space where Indigenous leaders holding similar positions can engage, build, and maintain networks. A Native American senior leader suggested, we could talk for days about the work, the successes, the challenges. Benefits identified by one Canadian senior leader:

It’s super, super important that we build and maintain these networks because at the very least it’s great not to feel like you’re alone all the time and hear other people are going through similar kinds of issues.

A Māori leader agreed:

I think a lot of them are going to face the same challenges, if you think about the VP Indigenous positions that are common, at least in the, let’s say, former British colonies, like English language, the four settler states of the British empire are all facing similar issues and similar points of reckoning.

However, an American senior leader offered a different perspective:

There are many similarities about what our colonisation and everything looks like, but there are different values. Because some people have been colonised way longer than other people and it’s been more, right. So, we always see an affinity with American Indians on the continent here. But we are so different, because of the colonisation and of how long the colonisations gone.

Albeit the caveat succinctly expressed by this participant is a timely reminder of the potential to perpetuate racism by homogenizing Indigenous peoples that (Bodkin-Andrews & Carlson, 2016), this does not diminish the collaborative power of Indigenous leaders guiding Indigenous faculty, students and communities to stand united against the historical and ongoing racism ingrained in the sector.

Discussion

Divergence rather than convergence

Bell Jr (1980) proposes competing logics are often introduced through external environmental factors, and suggest that for fear of not being legitimized, the institution, in this case higher education, will incorporate the competing logic of race and adjust its position. However, the movement to effect change will cease when the cost becomes too high, threatening the underbelly of the institution: ICT proposes modifications to strategic directions to incorporate racial equality diverge when the disadvantages to institutions outweigh the advantages, for example when convergence warrants significant ideological, power and governance shifts that threaten status quo (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), or contesting the role of social and historical context that normalizes color-blindness (Taylor, 2000).

Examples given in this study confirm the institutional manipulation of this macro-level tension between convergence and divergence to favor the discriminatory founding values entrenched in higher education. Indigenous participants in all four nations included in this study express frustration and dissatisfaction that higher education sector has failed to meet its commitments to macro-level systemic reform. They have clearly spelled out the ongoing institutional resistance (divergence) not only to broader institutional reforms, such as obeyance to the Canadian Calls to Action but also compliance with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and in all nations, Indigenization of the curriculum, systemic devaluation of Indigenous governance structures, and a diminishing of the power of Indigenous and Black leadership through neoliberal driven policies and employment practices. As our research shows, “the will of the majority tend to the maintenance of the status quo” (Khalifa et al., 2013, p. 483), and positional changes are often demoted to rhetoric that do not necessarily lead to beneficial, operative change.

Leaders united

However, our research also demonstrates the impact of micro-level reformative actions, as Indigenous, Māori and First Nation senior leaders engaging in Indigenous Institutional Work and Entrepreneurialism to enact change: our study offers a view into some of the ways Indigenous leaders in higher education are engaging and leading reform. Within diverging contexts, Indigenous leaders are applying pressure on the sector to meet treaty obligations and to Indigenize curriculum; establishing sustainable relationship amongst themselves and across higher education; succession planning; paying-it-forward through nation building; and affecting a connection between education and Indigenous lands, languages, and peoples. As argued by Crazy Bull (2015); Minthorn and Shotton (2019), Pewewardy (2015), and the participants in this study, relationships underpin Indigenous leadership and are seen as being central to the purpose of institutional reform; a finding reiterated from the international phase of Walan Mayini. The study shows relationships within Indigenous leadership paradigms come with “purposeful recognition of responsibilities” (Brayboy, 2013, p. 7). By thinking collectively rather than individually, by focusing on community rather than individual successes and meritocracy, Indigenous leaders have shown they are better positioned to create institutional spaces where Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing are not marginalised by the normativity of Whiteness (Halle-Erby, 2022; Smith et al., 2021), and wherein Indigenous educational disparity and the corollary of disenfranchised leadership are not accepted as the status quo.

The paradox

The above discussion describes Indigenous leaders’ initiatives to facilitate change and their encounters with systemic stymying of reform; this may go a long way to explaining the slow gyrations of change towards race equity in higher education. In fact, Guinier (2004) makes the point that divergences far outweigh convergences. Rebranded as divergence theory, Gillborn (2013) reframes Bell’s ICT to highlight the situation wherein White power-holders perceive an advantage in even greater race inequity. With an insistence on policies grounded in divergence, many have a predictable outcome and historical precedents. Gillborn then makes sense of policy in terms of a never-ending campaign to secure ever greater control and benefit to White power-holders, all within racisms ‘ever shifting yet ever-present structure’ (Guinier, 2004, p. 100).

However, we pose the question of how then can we account for the influence, power, and purview of Indigenous leadership in the sector, and their successes in turning the system to face the right direction? Herein lies the conundrum that binds ICT and Indigenous Work and Entrepreneurship together. Hoogstraaten et al. (2020) contend the actions of actors in the field may be constrained in stable and more highly institutionalized fields where stakeholders hold a sanctioning power of social upheavals. In contrast, field level conditions of regulatory changes, technological disruption and competing logics that disturb consensus are enabling factors that trigger entrepreneurship and work. It is these are cracks in the institutional White walls that create spaces for Indigenous leaders to widen the fault lines and enable change. Like it or not, convergences and divergences are wrapped together, and while, as shown by Gillborn (2013), Guinier (2004) and Bell Jr (1980), divergences may appear to hold the upper hand, let’s not be too hasty in ignoring the very existence of the tension created by competing logics, and the capacity, entrepreneurship, and determined work of Indigenous leaders to influence change.

Conclusion

Positioned amidst the burgeoning impact of neoliberalism, colonial governance architecture and systemic resistance to change, and constrained by interest-based resolutions to competing logics that serve to benefit the colonial institution, Indigenous leaders are purpose driven to effect reform through a non-assimilatory approach to leadership. Working toward an egalitarian goal, Indigenous senior leaders are enacting leadership in the immediate every-day, and for the future. Our study clearly shows Indigenous leaders are doing the hard work of Indigenous Institutional Workers and Entrepreneurship with intent to realign higher education despite a predominance of systemic divergences. Challenging the taken-for granted schemas of historical institutional interfaces, participants in this study succinctly articulated an emancipatory imperative, driven by a determination to build an equitable, sustainable, and resilient future for Indigenous education in universities.

However, let us be clear: it is not beyond the remit of higher education to institute equity-based reform. Findings from the Walan Mayini project show Indigenous leaders are unequivocal that they are shouldering the responsibility and doing the hard work with a modicum of ambiguous support from the sector. It is incumbent on higher education to cease shadowing behind the convenience of interest convergences and the default position of divergence, and instead take advantage of competing logics to advance parity in Indigenous educational leadership by taking advice from current research into leadership, for example as outlined in the Walan Mayini project, attending to the remonstrations within their sector, and moving over to make space at the table for Indigenous leaders. This is a call to action for changes in policy and praxis across the sector. No doubt, it is a long and chicane-laden road, nevertheless, participants and literature corroborate that institutional reform led by Indigenous leaders who are working with a shared purpose of combating racism in higher education bodes well for improved equitable outcomes in Indigenous education.

Ethics approval granted by UTS Human Research Ethics Committee (ETH182372).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Australian Research Council (IN180100026).

Notes on contributors

Rhonda Povey

Dr Rhonda Povey is a non-Indigenous researcher, living on Dharug Country Australia, and currently working with Professor Trudgett and Professor Page at the Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Leadership, Western Sydney University. She has extensive experience working and researching in the field of Indigenous education. Rhonda’s place-based doctoral thesis on rewriting colonial history of Aboriginal education in remote Australia was well received, with a commendation for the Chancellor’s award in 2020. She has published widely across the fields of Indigenist approaches to oral history, place-based Indigenous history, Indigenous leadership in higher education, and developing the career trajectories of Indigenous early career researchers. The focus of Rhonda’s thesis, current research, and employment is working and standing with Indigenous peoples in advancing equity and parity in Indigenous education.

Michelle Trudgett

Professor Michelle Trudgett is an Indigenous scholar from the Wiradjuri Nation in New South Wales. Michelle currently holds the position Deputy Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Leadership at Western Sydney University. Michelle is currently the Chair of the Universities Australia Deputy/Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Committee. She also serves as a Board Member on the GO Foundation. Michelle has received a number of awards including the highly prestigious National NAIDOC Scholar of the Year Award, the Neville Bonner Award for Teaching Excellence and the University of New England Distinguished Alumni Award. Michelle is a recognised strategic thinker who adopts a highly collegial approach to achieve positive outcomes for the higher education sector. She is particularly passionate about leading strategic initiatives that empower Indigenous people and communities.

Susan Page

Professor Susan Page is an Aboriginal Australian academic whose research focuses on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ experience of learning and academic work in higher education and student learning in Indigenous Studies. Susan has been Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Education at Western Sydney University since September 2023. She has a record of innovation and scholarship in Learning and Teaching and received a national Excellence in Teaching award (Neville Bonner Award 2018), as well as two university teaching excellence awards early in her career. Susan has held several national committee roles, including elected Director of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Higher Education Consortium, the Advance HE Australasian Strategic Advisory Board and Indigenous representative for the Universities Australia Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic committee.

Stacey Kim Coates

Dr Stacey Kim Coates is a proud Wiradjuri woman and an accomplished Indigenous academic, executive leader and education sector specialist passionate about driving improved educational and employment outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. To date, her research has examined the perceived value, characteristics and challenges of senior Indigenous leadership across the Australian higher education system, through centring the voices of many Indigenous academics. The varying opinions held by Indigenous academics in relation to the qualifications and experience required to fulfil a senior Indigenous leadership position were also highlighted. In doing so, Dr Coates presented a model of senior Indigenous leadership within the Australian higher education system. Her most recent research also resulted in a newly developed Indigenous methodological framework entitled Indigenous Institutional Theory.

Notes

1 The term Indigenous is used throughout this paper when referring collectively to Māori peoples of Aotearoa, Indigenous peoples of Canada and Australia, and the First Nation peoples of mainland America and Hawai’i. However, distinctive terminology for each nation will be used to specify individual nation when appropriate.

2 For the purposes of this paper, and for more fluid reading, the geographical and political region called the United States of America is simplified to the descriptor of America.

3 In this paper, the terms “higher education”, and “the sector” refer to degree granting universities and not the broader tertiary education. Nondegree granting institutions are not included in this study; for example, the study does not refer to Māori tertiary institutions such as polytechnics, Australian tertiary education such as Technical and Further Education (TAFE), Canadian tertiary education such as nondegree granting Colleges, and American tertiary education’s formal learning institutions of post-secondary education. Note in this study, the American data was drawn from universities and not colleges.

4 Foley (2007) describes three ways of colonizing a nation to legally claim sovereignty: through conquest where the colonizing nation is obliged to negotiate reparations to the Indigenous peoples of all alienated lands North America); through Indigenous people ceding their sovereignty to the colonizers, in which case again the colonizer is obliged to negotiate reparations (Aotearoa); and lastly, legal claim to sovereignty can be made by declaring the land terra nullius, wherein no reparation or compensation is required (Australia). Notably, in the American and Aotearoa nations, obligations for just reparations have not been met.

5 Walan Mayini means “strong people” in the Aboriginal Wiradjuri language of the Central-West of New South Wales.