Indigenous grads wear regalia to claim their place

A lot has changed since 2018 for Laura Forsythe.

The Métis assistant professor recently received her PhD from the University of Manitoba where she proudly attended her convocation ceremony in beaded dress robes made by her mother. 

It was a vast departure from five years ago when Forsythe said she faced pushback over wanting to wear a Métis sash. 

"That day I had to fight to be able to wear it across the stage because it didn't fit the appropriate dress regulations of the day," she said. 

Forsythe was the Métis inclusion co-ordinator at the school back then and managed to convince the staff that she would wear her sash no matter what. 

This time around, Forsythe said, she knew she would wear regalia again. 

Her mom, Cheryl Foster, began to bead her robes in January 2022 as a way to encourage Forsythe to buckle down and write her thesis. 

"And we finished around the same time in April, and she gifted me with these beautiful robes that I knew I would wear across the stage," Forsythe said.

"In the past we haven't been allowed to be empowered by who we are and to showcase that in the rooms that we sit in, including the Convocation Hall."

Being able to do that without question, "made my heart sing," she added. 

In an emailed statement, the University of Manitoba said it took steps to learn from past harms and is "committed to moving forward in a good way." 

The statement said this year the university engaged with Indigenous artists and updated the chancellor's and president's convocation robes, as one way to demonstrate its commitment to reconciliation. 

Big changes at universities

The process of asserting identity in academic settings is one Forsythe has lived out herself. 

For her undergraduate degree, she wore a stole from Simon Fraser University as she crossed the stage. Then for her master's, she wore a stole and a Métis sash. Finally for her PhD, she wore the robes made by her mother. 

While Forsythe appreciates the stoles schools offer to students, she said they can't encompass the diversity of Inuit, Métis and First Nations people. She calls wearing regalia "an act of visual, educational sovereignty" that shows that diverse Indigenous people deserve to take up space in institutions of higher education. 

When it comes to recognizing Indigenous students and culture, there have been "remarkable shifts" at academic institutions since her graduation in 2018, Forsythe said.

She credits the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as grassroots efforts by students and staff.

More grads don regalia

On her graduation day in 2023, Forsythe looked around the hall and saw her peers dressed in beaded caps, ribbon skirts and sashes. 

One of those colleagues was Pahan PteSanWin. PteSanWin said her regalia reflected her own culture as well as the academic work she has done over the past two years.

About 30 years ago PteSanWin got her first degree, and since then she's worked with residential school survivors and their families. 

She said she was curious to know what academics had been saying about the work she'd been doing for three decades. 

"I felt like there was this circle of people having a discussion about us and issues related to Indigenous people and I was on the outside of the circle."

Despite her wish to join the conversation in academia, PteSanWin said she was afraid returning to school could impact her values as a Métis Niheyaw woman. 

"I promised myself that I would not allow the university to change me," she said. 

When she returned to university to get her master's of social work based in Indigenous knowledge, she wanted to do it in a way that aligned with her identity.

"In a way, standing in my regalia during my convocation was a way of honouring the promise that I made that I would not allow the university to change me, but instead I would change the university," she said.

To write her thesis, she borrowed a practice from a vision quest ceremony to go out on the land alone for four days.

At a cabin reviewing the research interviews she had done with elders, she said she needed something to keep her hands busy while her mind worked so she began to work on the ribbon skirt she eventually wore at graduation. 

"The skirt designs that I came up with are informed by some of the things that I learned from the kitayatis [elders] that I interviewed," PteSanWin said. 

To acknowledge her husband, who is Dakota, she also included some Dakota geometric patterns. 

She returned to the cabin after submitting her thesis and made the bandolier bag she carried at graduation "kind of like closure for the whole journey of my master's degree."

When fellow students approached her at convocation to tell her she looked good, PteSanWin said she had a realization. 

"I realized that when I do this, I'm doing it for myself, but I'm also doing it for every Indigenous person. I am making a statement."