"So, what's a white girl like me doing in a place like this?": rethinking pedagogical practices in an indigenous context.

This article addresses the question of whether a white academic can act as an ally to Native students and faculty in their struggle to "Indigenize" the Canadian university system. Through an analysis of two personal experiences teaching in an Indigenous context, the author argues that university classrooms can become spaces of liberation and decolonization. This transformation is possible when the traditional power dynamic between teacher and student is destabilized, the role of the teacher is decentred, and priority is given to the reading strategies that Indigenous students bring to the texts and to the Indigenous texts themselves.

Cet article pose la question a savoir si un universitaire blanc peut se proposer comme allie d'etudiants et de professeurs indigenes dans leur lutte pour l' > du systeme universitaire canadien. A travers l'analyse de deux experiences personnelles de I'enseignement dans un contexte indigene, l'auteure avance l'argument que les salles de classe universitaires peuvent devenir des espaces de liberation et de decolonisation. Cette transformation est possible Iorsque le rapport traditionnel au pouvoir entre enseignant et etudiant est destabilise; le role du professeur et decentre; et la priorite est accordee aux strategies de lecture apportees par les etudiants indigenes et aux textes indigenes eux-memes.

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Native writing, publishing, performing, reviewing, teaching, and reading necessarily take place ... in contexts shaped and controlled by the discursive and institutional power of the dominant white culture in Canada. Editorial boards, granting agencies, publishing companies ... enact policies of inclusion and exclusion, and produce meanings based on norms extrinsic to, even inimical to Native values and interests.... So, what's a white girl like me doing in a place like this? (Hoy, p. 14)

Introduction