Trent University is a post-secondary educational institution located in Peterborough, Ontario. An important part of the institution is the Indigenous Studies Department which was established in 1969. Indigenous Studies was intended to transform education from a tool of western assimilation into a means for strengthening Indigenous cultural systems of knowledge. Trent University was the first university in North America to establish a department dedicated to the study of Indigenous Peoples. The 1960s marked the beginning of the creation of Indigenous spaces of learning within university environments. Since this time, there has been an ongoing effort to gain greater control over the direction and content of those spaces.
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