In spite of being in administration, as many administrators do, I taught when I was an administrator in order to keep my finger on the pulse of what was happening in the institution.
I taught a contemporary indigenous issues course, and I assumed that the people who would be attracted to this course would be those who didn't know much about it—non-indigenous students. No, it was almost exclusively indigenous students. I remember asking on the first day, “What are you guys doing here? Why are you interested in this?” They said, “Because we don't know these things.” A lot of this is about a reinforcement of identity. They like to come to classes where there are lots of indigenous students. They know they'll be there. They like to study together.
In some classes there was a critical mass of Cree-speaking students, where a lot of the discussion occurred in Cree. It was really interesting for me to see, but you will find, I think, that lots of indigenous students choose indigenous studies or Canadian history, especially with an indigenous focus, for these reasons—for the idea of collegiality and of coming together with another group of indigenous students.
It can be challenging. We, at Indspire, for example, get all sorts of requests to find students in physics, AI and different scientific disciplines, and we realize that we have very few numbers there. There's a critical need to direct students, or at least to give them a sense of what the options are for them beyond their first choice, and to maybe intervene with them in their third year of university and say that they're doing well but the world's a big place and here are some options for them based on what they're doing.