Last Updated on July 13, 2021 by YGK News Staff
On Monday, Queen’s University Principal and Vice-Chancellor Patrick Deane and Chancellor-Designate Murray Sinclair jointly issued statements announcing that the University will begin rethinking its approach to hiring Indigenous staff members.
The statements arrive amid growing pressures to investigate allegations of certain staff and faculty members falsifying Indigenous identity.
“Over the past few weeks, we have heard from many voices, inside our university and from around Canada, on the need to rethink and review the ways in which institutions like ours approach the question of Indigenous identity,” said Deane.
He acknowledged that “the way Indigenous identity has been factored into hiring and other internal processes may not have been what it should be,” a sentiment sharply contrasting the University’s previous statements on the matter, which had defended its hiring practices for Indigenous staff and faculty members.
Deane’s statement was released alongside a statement by the Honourable Murray Sinclair.
Sinclair described the matter as “a complex conversation – one that is made more complicated by the ongoing legacy of colonialism and the intergenerational trauma caused by residential schools, child apprehension, and cultural genocide.”
Sinclair said the University is embarking on a journey of introspection and reevaluation of current hiring practices, as well as a process of extrospection to “begin a dialogue on who is the arbiter of Indigenous identity.”
This is a developing story. More to come.
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