For six days, some sixty participants and approximately fifteen invited guests from several Indigenous Peoples gathered on unceded Anishinaabe territory for a grounded university experience that sought to do more than talk about self-determination: it sought to put it into practice.
What if higher education were also about engaging with the stories of those who have walked this path, rather than simply being a place where people come to earn good grades?
A place where people stay together, share breakfast and lunch, think together, laugh, cry, are sometimes deeply moved, and forge alliances? A place where knowledge is shared through written work and in the classroom, but also through the oral accounts of those who protect the territories, through intergenerational exchange, through lived experiences of customary governance, and through the people who carry this knowledge?
This is the experience offered by the “Thinking Self-Determination” summer school, an initiative bringing together the University of Ottawa, Saint Paul University, the School of Leadership, Ecology and Equity, and the Canada Research Chair in First Peoples' Intellectual Traditions and Self-Determination(s).
For Professor Pierrot Ross-Tremblay, holder of the Research Chair, and Nawel Hamidi, its Scientific Director, what is at stake goes far beyond a week of learning.
“What we are doing here is unique”
Professor Ross-Tremblay
Not simply talking about self-determination, but putting it into practice
The idea may seem simple, yet it is profoundly transformative: if we want to reflect on First Peoples' self-determination, why not begin by exercising that self-determination in the very ways education and research are conducted, whether as researchers or as students?
For nearly a week, Indigenous Peoples, their knowledge, and the stories and perspectives of people directly engaged with Indigenous Peoples' realities shaped the very structure of the School. Hunters, former warriors, survivors, Innu, Anishinabeg, Mi'kmaq, Wendat, Nehirowisiwok, Abenaki, Maya and other historians and researchers, people involved in protecting traditional territories, researchers, and members of the student community came together in the same space.
Notably, a significant proportion of participants were both Indigenous and members of the diaspora.
For Pierrot Ross-Tremblay and Nawel Hamidi, this diversity is a genuine source of strength. The aim is both to invite Indigenous experts to enrich a university program designed by Indigenous Peoples themselves, for the benefit of everyone, and to create a space by, for, and with Indigenous Peoples, where their knowledge is shared and put into practice. Indigenous Peoples' thought guides the conversation from beginning to end.
Narrative sovereignty at the heart of the approach
This is where what the professor describes as narrative sovereignty takes on its full meaning: enabling those who live the realities being studied to tell, interpret, and transmit their own histories, their own knowledge, and their own perspectives. The ability to speak in one's own voice is one of the summer school's guiding principles.
The format itself is part of this approach. The School began and ended with a ceremony, and medicines accompanied participants throughout the process. Oral transmission, dialogue, and consensus-building were given an important place in the exchanges, reflecting ways of sharing knowledge among several Indigenous Peoples.
The approach also reflects the work of the Chair, which seeks, among other things, to recognize and value Indigenous Peoples' intellectual traditions, stories, memories, and knowledge as living forms of knowledge that support self-determination.
Evolving university practices
The ambition is to help university practices evolve by opening them more fully to the knowledge, experiences, and realities of Indigenous Peoples.
This includes complementing established university approaches with forms of learning and pedagogy rooted in communities and on the land, and informed by lived experience.
What happens when Indigenous knowledge is no longer simply added to an existing curriculum, but instead helps shape how learning itself is organized?
What happens when the university embraces greater co-construction of the conditions for learning and research with Indigenous Peoples?
What happens when students are no longer simply recipients of knowledge, but become active participants in a community of thought and action?
And, above all, what happens when we accept that answers are found not only within universities, but also in communities, on the land, and among the people who carry knowledge?
For Ross-Tremblay and Hamidi, the answer is clear: different and sometimes unexpected forms of excellence can emerge.
This desire to move beyond conventional frameworks also extends to the way academic pathways are conceived. One objective is to develop approaches that respond to the realities of Innu, Anishinabeg, Mi'kmaq, Wendat, Nehirowisiwok, Abenaki, Maya, and other Indigenous historians and researchers, rather than systematically asking them to adapt to structures designed without their participation.
A university that is lived: gathering, truth, relationality, and healing
Over the six days, participants certainly attended lectures, but they also shared in the stories of those engaged in these struggles.
Breakfasts and lunches created opportunities for conversation. Some participants stayed on site. Discussions continued beyond the periods formally devoted to educational activities. Relationships developed among students, researchers, generations, and invited guests.
The summer school thus offers another way of imagining the university: as a place for sharing knowledge and accessing information, but also as a space for encounter, relationships, collective thinking, and, potentially, action.
The usual boundaries between academia and community, between the classroom and the land, and among research, spirituality, and action become far more porous.
Families have a place there. Children are present. Parents accompany participants.
Laughing, crying, being moved: the place of emotion in learning
Another feature of the summer school may be even more radical: it does not seek to neutralize emotion.
People laugh. People cry. At times, they are deeply moved. They question some of their certainties.
But they do so within a framework grounded in respect, cultural safety, and a commitment to reducing violence within academic spaces.
For Professor Pierrot Ross-Tremblay and Nawel Hamidi, this is precisely what higher education should make possible: being challenged, questioning oneself, and following one's thinking through, without that questioning becoming a form of violence.
Spirituality and medicines are integrated into the experience from beginning to end. The opening and closing ceremonies follow Anishinaabe welcoming protocols.
A summer school in several languages
Discussions take place in French, English, and Spanish, with simultaneous interpretation throughout.
This makes it possible for students from different parts of the world, as well as invited guests, to participate fully in the conversation.
People from the diasporas of several African countries, some of whom belong to Indigenous Peoples, as well as Algerian students, together made up the majority of the student participants.
This exceptional diversity creates a unique space for dialogue among Peoples who are engaged, each in their own way, in defending their ancestral sovereignties, rebuilding memories weakened by colonialism, reaffirming their collective institutions, and pursuing self-determination as a lived reality.
Reflection on Indigenous Peoples' experiences is not confined to a solely Canadian conversation.
Knowledge carried through stories
Among the voices heard during the summer school were Joséphine Bacon, an Innu poet, author, and filmmaker, and writer and Elder Marcel Petiquay, Nehirowisiwok, who shared his story and his book Atcakoc : le pardon (Atcakoc: Forgiveness) with participants.
Also present were Véronique Basile-Hébert, Louisa Biroté, Lorena Cabnal, Christian Coocoo, Albert Dumont, Napess Ashini, Georges Mackenzie, Shanipiap Makenzie-Sioui, Waba Mako, Edmund Metatawabin, and Gary Metallic.
Their presence illustrates one of the summer school's fundamental principles: knowledge resides not only in scholarly publications, but also in stories, lived experiences, cultural memories, languages, relationships with ancestral lands, and in the people who bear the responsibility of transmitting this knowledge to future generations and continuing to resist.
This broader understanding of knowledge lies at the heart of the approach: recognizing Indigenous Peoples as producers of living intellectual traditions that carry philosophies, memories, knowledge, and ways of understanding the world.
Self-determination in research: Indigenous academic excellence in the service of collective action
The summer school goes beyond reflection by building lasting connections in a spirit of cooperation.
Beyond individual learning, the School also helped initiate new research collaborations, support the development of community-based initiatives, and strengthen international networks focused on self-determination, narrative sovereignty, and the protection of knowledge.
The past five years of work undertaken through the Chair have helped document knowledge and lived realities. The coming years must enable communities themselves to put more of this learning into practice.
The challenge now is to turn more of that knowledge into action and foster transformative research.
The School could therefore become a recurring gathering, while also opening the way to advanced seminars under the Shaputuan on the land, organized at the invitation of community members around specific questions.
The university would then also come to the land, rather than systematically asking the land to come to the university.
What if this were only the beginning?
Over time, the ambition is to develop this first summer school into a genuine recurring summer university, bringing together each year students, local experts, Indigenous researchers, and partners from several universities and different territories.
The next step could also involve consolidating a lasting network of Indigenous students and researchers and local experts around narrative sovereignty, self-determination in research, and problem-solving through the Chair's Takuaimatishun Laboratory.
The aim is to sustain the relationships created during the week and ensure that the learning continues to circulate.
To make this possible, however, one thing will be essential: trust.
Trusting students.
Trusting local experts.
Trusting First Peoples.
Trusting researchers.
And, for institutions, accepting that they do not necessarily have all the answers or always have the final say. Truly valuing the search for truth and making room for it to be voiced.
For Professor Ross-Tremblay and Nawel Hamidi, it is precisely this space of care, respect, and trust that allowed the experience to take on an unexpected scope.
The universities worked together, bringing people from different backgrounds into dialogue. Indigenous knowledge was placed at the centre, along with the voices of those directly engaged in advancing self-determination and protecting ancestral territories.
Another vision of academic excellence
At its core, this summer school raises a question that extends far beyond Indigenous studies.
What might the university look like if it were willing to be transformed by the knowledge it welcomes?
The “Thinking Self-Determination” summer school does not offer a definitive answer. Rather, it is a living laboratory for exploring university education led by First Peoples themselves, grounded in their protocols, knowledge, experiences, and medicines, and for placing relationships, territories, stories, problem-solving, and people at the heart of learning.
And perhaps this is what genuine academic boldness looks like: not simply learning to think differently, but being willing to change the way we think, teach, and produce knowledge.