Barriers to Decolonization in Post‐Secondary Education: Reflections From Non‐Indigenous Faculty Across the Disciplines

ABSTRACT In the territory currently known as Canada, the work of decolonization, Indigenization, and reconciliation within postsecondary institutions is understood as the work of all educators, both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous. Yet non‐Indigenous faculty often struggle to engage, if they engage at all. This article explores barriers for non‐Indigenous faculty to engage in decolonization through analysis of conversations with seven non‐Indigenous faculty at a mid‐sized Canadian university who participated in Disrupting interviews. By analyzing themes in participants’ initial interviews, I identify four barrier categories that impede non‐Indigenous faculty from engaging in the necessary work of decolonization: structural and institutional barriers, disciplinary barriers, individual barriers, and conceptual barriers related to understandings of the relationship between humans and the land. I use faculty comments from individual interviews to nuance each general theme and connect their ideas to broader work on decolonization and Indigenization of higher education. In doing so, this article further demonstrates the usefulness of Disrupting interviews for both uncovering barriers and motivating change among non‐Indigenous faculty specifically and offers those working in post‐secondary institutions important data that will help better support non‐Indigenous teaching faculty to engage in their responsibilities in this area.