Article

Marie Battiste

Published Online February 7, 2024

Last Edited February 7, 2024

Marie Ann Battiste, OC, FRSC, Mi’kmaw educator, professor, activist (born 1949 in Houlton, Maine). Marie Battiste is from Potlotek First Nation, Nova Scotia. She is also a member of the Aroostook Band of Micmacs, Maine. She is one of four children of Mi’kmaw parents Annie and John Battiste. The family lived in Houlton, Maine where John and Annie worked. Battiste has degrees from Harvard and Stanford universities. She is a highly regarded intellectual leader and speaker. Her research and scholarship promote the protection of Indigenous knowledges, the reclamation of Indigenous languages and cultures and the balancing of diverse knowledge systems. She and her husband, James Youngblood Henderson (Sa’ke’j), have three children and a grandson.

Marie Battiste

Education and Early Career

After graduating from high school in 1967, Marie Battiste completed a teaching certificate at the University of Maine at Farmington in 1971. Following this, she completed a masters degree from Harvard University in educational administration and social policy in 1974. In 1984, she received a doctoral degree from Stanford University in bilingual education and literacy. Her dissertation examined the social and cultural consequences of Mi’kmaw literacy. She researched how traditional communication was “subverted by the English literacy movement that left the Mi’kmaq illiterate, damaged and diminished by English literacy and education traditions.” This research has informed her career. Her early teaching began in Mi’kmaw elementary and secondary schools. She was a teacher and school administrator. She created the first bilingual Mi’kmaw language program in Atlantic Canada. Additionally, she developed Mi’kmaw curriculum that led to the creation of the Mi’kmaw Centre of Excellence. She contributed to the formation of a Mi’kmaq-Maliseet teacher education program at the University of New Brunswick. Through her work, Battiste shaped the current Mi’kmaw educational authority, Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey. This educational authority was the first First Nations legislated model in Canada. In 1993, Battiste accepted a teaching and research position at the University of Saskatchewan. There, she became the founding Academic Director of the Aboriginal Education Research Centre.

Career Highlights

Marie Battiste is an intellectual leader. Her work has been about self-determining Indigenous education based upon Indigenous knowledges and languages. She advocates for the decolonization of education. She describes decolonizing education as a two-prong process involving both deconstruction and reconstruction. Deconstruction is the process of recognizing and acknowledging colonialism. It includes the languages, privileges and purposes of colonization. It recognizes the impact of social systems on Indigenous peoples. Finally, it requires acknowledging the reasons for happenings such as land appropriation and residential schools. Reconstruction is the recovery and rebuilding of Indigenous languages, knowledge systems and cultural practices. Additionally, she discusses cognitive imperialism and cognitive assimilation. Battiste explains that cognitive imperialism is a form of mental manipulation. It is intended to change the consciousness of those being colonized by replacing their knowledge systems and cultural values. Their values are then replaced with those of the colonial power. Thus, colonized people are cognitively assimilated into the colonizer’s culture. Her work encourages resistance to Eurocentric domination.

Battiste was a founding board member of the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL). She is also a former co-director of the CCL’s Aboriginal Learning Knowledge Centre. Additionally, she was a founding member of both the Aboriginal Forum of the Canadian Association of University Teachers and the Canadian Association for the Study of Indigenous Education.

Battiste is currently Professor Emerita of the University of Saskatchewan. Recently, she completed a two-year term as Special Advisor to the Vice President Academic, Provost and Dean of Unama’ki College, Cape Breton University. This position was related to decolonizing the academy.

Activism

Marie Battiste describes herself as committed and passionate about social justice and Indigenous empowerment. She has referred to her work as “a life quest for justice.” Her activism has centered on the decolonization of education through systemic and cultural changes. She advocates for the reclamation of Indigenous languages and cultural knowledges. Additionally, she promotes the respectful inclusion of Indigenous cultures in education to advance cognitive and cultural diversity.

Marie Battiste and Governor General Mary Simon

Legacy

Marie Battiste is a prolific writer and speaker. Many of her talks are recorded and available online. She has published numerous books about decolonizing education. She has also written about protecting and promoting Indigenous knowledges. In addition to writing books, she is the editor of numerous volumes on Indigenizing the academy, Indigenous education and treaty relationships.


Selected Writing and Editing Work

  • Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit (2013)
  • Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge (2000)
  • Visioning a Mi’kmaw Humanities: Indigenizing the Academy (CBU Press, 2016)
  • Living Treaties: Narrating Mi’kmaw Treaty Relations (CBU Press, 2016)
  • Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision (UBC Press, 2000)
  • First Nations Education in Canada: The Circle Unfolds (UBC Press, 1995)

Awards and Recognition

Honorary Degrees:


Awards:


Marie Battiste has received numerous honouring feathers and blankets from Indigenous communities across Canada.