Hosted by the Office of Indigenous Affairs
University of Ottawa is happy to welcome Candace Brunette-Debassige a Mushkego Cree of Peetabeck First Nation in Treaty 9 with Cree and French settler lineage. She is the author of numerous publications including her first book, Tricky Grounds, which was awarded a Canada Prize by the Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2025. Candace is also the proud recipient of a 2019 Peace Award for Truth and Reconciliation from Atlôhsa Family Services, and a 2021 international Peace and Reconciliation Award from the Association of Commonwealth Universities.
Tricky Grounds:
Since the 2015 release of the report on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, new Indigenous policies have been enacted in universities and a variety of interconnecting Indigenous senior administrative roles have been created. Many of these newly created roles have been filled by Indigenous women. But what does it mean for Indigenous women to be recruited to Indigenize Western institutions that have not undergone introspective, structural change?
Informed by her own experiences and the stories of other Indigenous women working in senior administrative roles in Canadian universities, Candace Brunette-Debassige explores the triple-binding position Indigenous women often find themselves trapped in when trying to implement reconciliation in institutions that remain colonial, Eurocentric, and male-dominated. The author considers too the gendered, emotional labour Indigenous women are tasked with when universities rush to Indigenize without the necessary preparatory work of decolonization.
