ABSTRACT
Over the past five decades, policies and programmes aimed at supporting Indigenous students have increased Indigenous student participation in Canadian higher education. However, the effects of colonisation continue to manifest in systematic barriers to Indigenous students’ success. In this chapter, we emphasise Indigenous students’ accounts of overcoming such challenges, while focusing on a particular subset of Indigenous students in higher education: Indigenous women who pursue postsecondary education while caring for children. Drawing on qualitative interview data with nine Indigenous student-mothers, we explore their experiences navigating postsecondary education through the lens of an Indigenous wholistic framework. This framework foregrounds the intersections among intellectual, physical, cultural and emotional realms, as well the integral connections among Indigenous individuals, family and community. In this chapter we represent these Indigenous women’s experiences as three essential teachings: responsibility to others, challenging expectations and resiliency through relationships. These teachings offer an expanded view of wholistic support for Indigenous students and for student-parents more broadly. The wisdom of the Indigenous student-mothers in this study offers a more transformative vision of support, specifically, structures, policies and practices that recognise and value students’ wholistic (integrated) identities as women, mothers, students and Indigenous people.
