Beyond Recognition: Indigenous Sovereignty and Equity in Ontario's K-12 Landscape

Abstract

While efforts have been made to include culturally relevant, anti-oppressive, and decolonizing pedagogy and curriculum within Ontario’s public education system, these efforts take place within a system built to reproduce its own colonial values. Grounded in Néhiyaw (Cree) principles of research and informed by broader theories of resurgence and refusal, this thesis explores conceptual tensions between equity and Indigenous sovereignty in Ontario’s K–12 educational landscape. Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition, it uses an Indigenous Literature Re-view methodology with four interrelated phases: Searching, Analysis, Yarning, and Re-view. This research traces policy narratives that shape educational discourse in Ontario. What emerges is a vision of equity that is highly reliant on a theory of change based on the politics of inclusion and is limited within frameworks prioritizing student achievement. This framing confines Indigeneity, neutralizing resurgent possibilities and rendering settler colonialism and land invisible.