Indigenous mentor’s understandings of being a mentor in higher education: insights from a Canadian university

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article introduces the voices of Indigenous mentors, which have been overlooked in mentoring research. This study addressed how mentors understood their role in nurturing student competence, connection, and agency; key ingredients of self-determination. Indigenous mentors participated in conversational interviews, which were examined from traditional academic and pastoral perspectives and from the perspective of self-determination theory. Six themes emerged from the analysis: mentors as knowledge brokers; facilitators of belongingness; supportive and empowering, guides, self-managers and as enablers to help mentees become self-determined. Most of these themes align with previous literature on mentoring and add insight into a small but growing body of research findings on student mentors from Indigenous backgrounds. Notably, one of the themes, mentors as self-managers, has largely been neglected in research on mentoring involving students from Indigenous backgrounds. The implications for giving voice to Indigenous mentor views are discussed in the concluding section.