Education in uncertainty: Academic life as Indigenous health scholars during COVID-19

As the COVID-19 crisis continues to develop, communities around the world find themselves living in new and uncertain times. School and university closures are significantly disrupting the lives of students, educators and researchers alike. With the sudden shift to online learning platforms, the limitations on research projects and the lack of standardised policies and procedures, many concerns arise surrounding the unequal impacts of this crisis. This article brings together diverse perspectives on the effects of COVID-19 on post-secondary life for students and scholars engaged in the field of Indigenous health research. The authors reflect on how this time has impacted them as a graduating student, incoming PhD student, junior faculty member and mid-career faculty member respectively. Their experiences of teaching and learning at a large, research-intensive university in Toronto, Canada have been profoundly transformed, and will continue to change the way they work, research and interact at the graduate level. Working with Indigenous communities and organisations requires relationship building, collaboration and ceremony. In these unprecedented times, scholars cannot simply continue “business as usual”. They must adapt everything, including how they teach, learn and work with Indigenous peoples, who are particularly vulnerable to this pandemic. Reflecting on the impacts that have already occurred and those that are still likely to come, the authors discuss what changes may need to be made in academia to support diverse actors within their scholarly community. They suggest changes to their scholarship with Indigenous communities in Canada to help them continue to work in a respectful, reciprocal and culturally appropriate way.