One explanation for our failure to close the educational gaps that separate Indigenous and non-Indigenous learners in Canada is to see it as a byproduct of mainstream pedagogy, which has ridden roughshod over the epistemic differences--different ways of knowing--that set Indigenous knowers apart from their non-Indigenous counterparts. Persons reared in different cultures are regularly said to frame and defend their understanding of truth in different, ways--ways that promote misunderstandings, tensions, and conflict between colliding cultures. Among the places where these tensions are most sorely felt are our schools. If--as is widely argued to be the case--Indigenous learners routinely subscribe to ways of knowing that are at variance with those of the economically dominant culture, and if the systems of mainstream pedagogy to which they are exposed are principally set within that culture's epistemological frame, then school failures and lost opportunities are sure to follow. (Contains 16 endnotes.)