Hauntings on Blackfoot land: Theorizing the hinterlands of Native teacher education programming at the University of Lethbridge
Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Sociology
Shortly after the 1967 establishment of the University of Lethbridge (U of L), a Native
teacher education program was developed in collaboration with First Nations
communities. This collaboration, the program, and the U of L’s location on Blackfoot
territory feature as selling points in contemporary promotional materials designed to
recruit Indigenous students. My reading of the U of L archives, however, suggests that the
partnerships required to build the NEp were haunted by colonial logics and practices.
Following John Law (2002), I juxtapose and theorize the tensions and correspondences
between stories told by the promotional texts and counterstories that correspond to my
reading of the archives. I suggest that in these two textual sites, the U of L is variously
and contradictorily enacted as a place beset by ghosts, invested in keeping with particular colonial projects, and as a place committed to supporting the success of Indigenous students.