Weaving Knowledge Systems Resource Materials

The experiences of colonialism, in their psycho-cultural, educational, philosophico-epistemological and social development dimensions have been extensive, and with respect to the lives of the colonized, severely limiting in their onto-existential locations and outcomes. I will not go more than warranted into detail in terms of the immediate and enduring impact of this heavy world phenomenon on the immediate lived contexts of the colonized. [From Publisher]

This edition of the ALAR "Action learning action research" journal aims to capture some of the current dilemmas, solutions and actions researchers experience in the decolonising space. This collection of papers demonstrates that researchers are not only undertaking action research with and within Indigenous and non-Indigenous contexts, but that they are doing so in exciting and dynamic ways across a diversity of situations. First we will address some of the literature on decolonisation. Then we will explain how this specific edition of the Journal came to fruition and aspects of action research. [From Author]

A Venn diagram with accompanying description developed by Lorna Andrews based on her interpretation of the concepts from the open access BCCampus textbook: Pulling Together: a guide for Curriculum Developers. [From Author]

The essays in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision spring from an International Summer Institute on the cultural restoration of oppressed Indigenous peoples. The contributors, primarily Indigenous, unravel the processes of colonization that enfolded modern society and resulted in the oppression of Indigenous peoples." "In moving and inspiring ways, Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision elaborates a new inclusive vision of a global and national order and articulates new approaches for protecting, healing, and restoring long-oppressed peoples, and for respecting their cultures and languages. [From Publisher]

Decolonization requires critical attention to settler logics that reinforce settler-colonialism, yet settler communities, as a rule, operate without a collective sense of identity and history. This article, provoked by Māori protocols of encounter, explores the necessity of developing a sense of collective identity as precursor to meeting in settler-Indigenous politics. It argues that the ability, desire, and experience of being unmarked as a social group—apparent in paradigmatic approaches to engaging social difference in settler communities—is at the heart of the particularity of settler group identity and also stands at the heart of countless failures to meet in settler-Indigenous politics. This essay thus seeks to mark the particular ground of this unmarkedness of settler identity in Western philosophies that set being unmarked as both ontology and ideal; the dominance of settler communities in places of settlement; and the willful forgetting of the colonial histories brought about by such dominance. [From Author]

Chapters cover the history of research methods, ethical conduct, colonial and postcolonial epistemologies, relational epistemologies, emergent and indigenous methodologies, Afrocentric research, feminist research, narrative frameworks, interviewing, and participatory methods. New to the second edition are three new chapters covering evaluation, mixed methods, and mixed methods evaluation. These chapters focusing on decolonizing, indigenizing, and integrating these methods and applications to enhance participation of indigenous peoples as knowers and foster collaborative relationships. [From Publisher]

When researchers do autoethnography, they retrospectively and selectively write about epiphanies that stem from, or are made possible by, being part of a culture and/or by possessing a particular cultural identity. (Ellis, Adams, and Bochner 2011, 1)The politics of recognition in its contemporary liberal form promises to reproduce the very configurations of capitalist, racist, patriarchal state powerthat Indigenous peoples’ demands for recognition have sought to transcend.(Coulthard 2007, 3)This paper aims to do two things: It discusses decolonization; it also invites the following question—how do we write about decolonization in a de-colonized manner? How might writing engage the personal, relational, and revolutionary sense of decolonization? [From Author]

This article contributes to the current debate on decolonizing geography. It explores rethinking the relationship of Indigenous epistemologies, knowledges, and geography from Indigenous perspectives. After deconstructing the Enlightenment as an illusory way towards emancipation and critically exploring the heritage of geography regarding Indigenous peoples, this paper examines the Indigenous epistemologies that are considered counter-discourses that challenge western ‘regimes of truth’. It approaches Indigenous knowledges through decolonizing paths to capture the originality and strength of Indigenous epistemologies more fully, and re-centre Indigenous conceptual frameworks as offering new possibilities to write the ‘difference differently’ in human geography. [From Author]

Confederation College launched its Diversity, Equity and Indigenous Lens, a tool that will help ensure Confederation’s policies, programs and practices are free of elements that knowingly or unknowingly enable the exclusion of Indigenous peoples. [From Website]

This expansive collection explores the complexities of decolonization and indigenization of post-secondary institutions. Seeking to advance critical scholarship on issues including the place of Indigenous epistemologies, knowledges, curriculum, and pedagogy, Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada aims to build space in the academy for Indigenous peoples and resistance and reconciliation. This 15-chapter collection is built around the two connecting themes of Indigenous epistemologies and decolonizing post-secondary institutions. Aiming to advance and transform the Canadian academy, the authors of this volume discuss strategies for shifting power dynamics and Eurocentric perspectives within higher education. Written by academics from across Canada, the text reflects the critical importance of the discourse on truth and reconciliation in educational contexts and how these discourses are viewed in institutions across the country. This expansive resource is essential to students and scholars focusing on Indigenous knowledges, education and pedagogies, and curriculum studies. FEATURES: Includes discussion questions and further reading lists and offers practical examples of how one can engage in decolonization work within the academy Features Canadian authors in varying academic positions and provides content specific to the Canadian education system. [From Publisher]

Over the past forty years, recognition has become the dominant mode of negotiation and decolonization between the nation-state and Indigenous nations in North America. The term "recognition" shapes debates over Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, Indigenous rights to land and self-government, and Indigenous peoples' right to benefit from the development of their lands and resources. In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. [From Publisher]

Presented by the SFU Woodward's Cultural Unit and the Vancity Office of Community Engagement

Glen Coulthard is an assistant professor in the First Nations Studies Program and the Department of Political Science at UBC. Coulthard has written and published numerous articles and chapters in the areas of contemporary political theory, indigenous thought and politics, and radical social and political thought (marxism, anarchism, post-colonialism). His most recent work on Frantz Fanon and the politics of recognition won the Contemporary Political Theory Annual Award for Best Article of the Year in 2007. He is Yellowknife's Dene First Nations. [From YouTube]

In this article, I present critical insights gained from attentiveness to the significance of the fort as a mythic symbol deeply embedded within the Canadian national narrative that reinforces the troubling colonial divides that continue to characterize Aboriginal-Canadian relations. I argue that forts have taught, and continue to teach, that Aboriginal peoples and Canadians live in separate realities. One way to rethink these relations, overcome these teachings, and decolonize educational approaches is to consider a curriculum sensibility called Indigenous Métissage. Indigenous Métissage is a place-based approach to curriculum informed by an ecological and relational understanding of the world. I provide a textual example of Indigenous Métissage that tells the complex story of a rock known to the Cree as papamihaw asiniy. [From Author]

Following the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action, Canadian universities and colleges have felt pressured to indigenize their institutions. What “indigenization” has looked like, however, has varied significantly. Based on the input from an anonymous online survey of 25 Indigenous academics and their allies, we assert that indigenization is a three-part spectrum. On one end is Indigenous inclusion, in the middle reconciliation indigenization, and on the other end decolonial indigenization. We conclude that despite using reconciliatory language, post-secondary institutions in Canada focus predominantly on Indigenous inclusion. We offer two suggestions of policy and praxis—treaty-based decolonial indigenization and resurgence-based decolonial indigenization—to demonstrate a way toward more just Canadian academy. [From Author]

Riding on the success of Indigenous Social Work Around the World, this book provides case studies to further scholarship on decolonization, a major analytical and activist paradigm among many of the world's Indigenous Peoples, including educators, tribal leaders, activists, scholars, politicians, and citizens at the grassroots level. Decolonization seeks to weaken the effects of colonialism and create opportunities to promote traditional practices in contemporary settings. Establishing language and cultural programs; honouring land claims, teaching Indigenous history, science, and ways of knowing; self-esteem programs, celebrating ceremonies, restoring traditional parenting approaches, tribal rites of passage, traditional foods, and helping and healing using tribal approaches are central to decolonization. These insights are brought to the arena of international social work still dominated by western-based approaches. Decolonization draws attention to the effects of globalization and the universalization of education, methods of practice, and international 'development' that fail to embrace and recognize local knowledges and methods. In this volume, Indigenous and non-Indigenous social work scholars examine local cultures, beliefs, values, and practices as central to decolonization. Supported by a growing interest in spirituality and ecological awareness in international social work, they interrogate trends, issues, and debates in Indigenous social work theory, practice methods, and education models including a section on Indigenous research approaches. The diversity of perspectives, decolonizing methodologies, and the shared struggle to provide effective professional social work interventions is reflected in the international nature of the subject matter and in the mix of contributors who write from their contexts in different countries and cultures, including Australia, Canada, Cuba, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and the USA. [From Publisher]

What are the role and responsibility of the professor of European ancestry, who has also battled for legitimizing Indigenous epistemologies and educational considerations in academe, in working with students who take up the challenges involved in this scholarship? This article focuses on an analysis of some of the articulated responses to a panel presented at a graduate conference in a faculty and university committed to equity and social justice. It creates space to address such questions as What does it mean to take Indigenous thought seriously in an educational institution? How can the relational and traditional/historic aspects of these knowledges, with their commitment to spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical dimensions, move beyond acceptance to being seen as normal? How to ensure that intellectual space is open to this turn to the re-creation of such knowledges in the context of the post/colonial university? The article interrogates the roles, limits, and possibilities of education in addressing persistent epistemological inequities as certain knowledges are valued in the university whereas others are relegated to secondary status when they are acknowledged at all. Guswentha and Homi Bhabha's notion of third space provide analytic moments to investigate the tensions and contestations as knowledges collide, interact, and reform in confined discursive spaces. [From Author]

As a way to consider the possibility of decolonizing discourses of diaspora, the central question posed in this paper asks not only where do people of the diaspora come from, but where have they come to? In North America, nations have been superimposed on Indigenous lands and peoples through colonization and domination. Taking this relation seriously in the context of discourses of race, Indigeneity and diaspora within university classrooms interrupts business as usual and promises a richer analysis of one particular similarity amongst diasporic, as well as settler, groups in North America with possible implications beyond this context. In short, the author asks each reader to respond to the question, “Whose traditional land are you on?” as a step in the long process of decolonizing our countries and our lives. While part of the focus for this paper is on theorizing diaspora, there are obvious implications for all people living in a colonized country. Drawing primarily on three pedagogical strategies and events arising from them, the author takes up some of the possibilities for theory-building that they suggest. Reflections on courses taught, student feedback and texts from Toni Morrison’s "Playing in the Dark" to James Clifford’s “Indigenous Articulations” ground the discussion. [From Author]

Community led planning is necessary for Inuit to self-determine on their lands and to ensure the preservation of cultural landscapes and the sustainability of social-ecological systems that they are a part of. The sustainability efforts of three Inuit communities in Labrador during a Community Governance and Sustainability Initiative were guided by a decolonized and strength-based planning framework, including the values of Inuit in this study. This paper demonstrates that Inuit led planning efforts can strengthen community sustainability planning interests and potential. We situate the experiences of NunatuKavut Inuit within, and contribute to, the existing body of scholarly decolonization and sustainability literature. For many Indigenous people, including Inuit, decolonization is connected to inherent rights to self-determination. The findings suggest that decolonizing efforts must be understood and actualized within an Indigenous led research and sustainability planning paradigm that facilitates autonomous decision making and that is place based. Further, this study illustrates five predominant results regarding Inuit in planning for community sustainability that support sustainable self-determination. These include: inter and cross community sharing; identification of community strengths; strengthened community capacity; re-connection to community and culture; and the possibility for identification of sustainability goals to begin implementation through community led governance and planning processes. [From Author]

This article provides examples of introductory activities that engage students in initial steps in understanding the systemic structure of colonization. Examples of student group responses to the activities are provided. The understandings explored by students through these activities are then taken up through Indigenous literatures in university contexts in order to contribute to the ongoing decolonization of knowledge in the university and to explore indigenous understandings of pedagogies. The author explores various themes important to the decolonizing of educational practices through discussions of (a) colonizing and decolonizing agendas, (b) disrupting government ideology, (c) decolonizing government and reclaiming Indigenous governance, (e) decolonizing spirituality and ceremony, (f) disrupting colonizing ideologies and decolonizing minds, (g) reconnecting to land, (h) decolonizing history, and (i) community-based education and decolonizing education. Conclusions drawn include the importance of engaging students in Indigenous pedagogies so that they can find support for transforming understandings through Indigenous literatures and understand strategies and opportunities to decolonize education. [From Author]

For hundreds of years, the peoples from Europe who have raped and pillaged their way through Indigenous nations have perfected not just the instruments and
practices of dispossession but also a whole archive of doctrines and rewritten histories that purport to justify what they have done. They are in fact what may be
termed “mythtakes,” deliberately concocted falsehoods to justify a process that is actually unjustifiable. Indigenous Peoples still live with the fact and practice of those mythtakes. To decolonize is to recognize that colonization is a deceptive lie as much as a crushing oppression. However, in the end, decolonization simply means having faith that we can still be brave enough to change an imposed reality. In that quest, there is always hope in knowing that whenever our tīpuna fought or necessarily adapted to survive in the darkest days of oppression, the resistance was never futile and the adaptation was never acquiescence. A first step in rekindling that hope is perhaps to be clear about what colonization was, and is. [From Author]

Museums as colonial institutions are filled with the tensions and contradictions of competing discourses. This makes them complex sites of public pedagogy and informal adult education and learning. But they are also becoming important spaces of counter-narrative, self-representation, and resistance as Indigenous artists and curators intervene, and thus key spaces for settler education and truth telling about colonialism. My study inquires into the pedagogies of Cree artist Kent Monkman’s touring exhibition Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience through the lens of my own unsettling as I engage autoethnographically with the exhibition. I highlight the unsettling pedagogical potentials of Monkman’s exhibition and contend that, as a site of experiential learning that challenges Euro-Western epistemologies and pedagogies with more holistic, relational, storied approaches, the exhibition offers much to unsettle and inform public pedagogy and adult education theory, practice, and research within and beyond museums. [From Author]

This case study examines ongoing work to Indigenize education programs at one Canadian university. The history of the academy in Canada has been dominated by Western epistemologies, which have devalued Indigenous ways of knowing and set the grounds for continued marginalization of Indigenous students, communities, cultures, and histories. We argue that institutions of higher learning need to move away from the myopic lens used to view education and implement Indigenizing strategies in order to counteract the systemic monopolization of knowledge and communication. Faculties of education are taking a leading role in Canadian universities by hiring Indigenous scholars and incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing into teacher education courses. Inspired by the 25 Indigenous principles outlined by Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012), four Indigenous faculty members from Western Canada document effective decolonizing practices for classroom experience, interaction, and learning that reflect Indigenous values and orientations within their teaching practices. [From Author]

Since the 1960s, some Aboriginal theorists and political leaders have opposed aspects of Canadian multiculturalism. In part this is because multicultural policies and their promise of “tolerance” (within western institutions) and formal equality insufficiently recognize the sui generis rights of Aboriginal peoples, while similarly failing to address the continuing economic, social, and political inequalities between Aboriginal and settler populations. This article proposes working towards a “syncretic multiculturalism,” which might involve adopting a “binational” perspective, focusing on the need for partnership between Aboriginal and Shognosh peoples. Such a perspective can help the country move beyond “colonial multiculturalism” which privileges integration into dominant English and French settler societies. Prioritizing Aboriginal involvement in reshaping national institutions and identity, so that newcomers and the rest of us are integrated into Aboriginal ways of knowing and being, can play a role in repairing some of the harms done through residential schooling and other colonial policies. [From Author]

A foundational work of radical anticolonialism, back in print Originally published in 1974, The Fourth World is a critical work of Indigenous political activism that has long been out of print. George Manuel, a leader in the North American Indian movement at that time, with coauthor journalist Michael Posluns, presents a rich historical document that traces the struggle for Indigenous survival as a nation, a culture, and a reality. The authors shed light on alternatives for coexistence that would take place in the Fourth World--an alternative to the new world, the old world, and the Third World. Manuel was the first to develop this concept of the "fourth world" to describe the place occupied by Indigenous nations within colonial nation-states. Accompanied by a new Introduction and Afterword, this book is as poignant and provocative today as it was when first published. [From Publisher]

Offered between 2006 and 2009 and graduating 21 Inuit candidates, the Nunavut Master of Education program was a collaborative effort made to address the erosion of Inuit leadership in the K-12 school system after the creation of Nunavut, Canada’s newest territory, in 1999. Delivered to a large extent in short, intensive, face-to-face courses, the program also made extensive use of online supports. This paper outlines the design challenges – geographical, technological, pedagogical, and cultural – that faced the development and delivery of the online portion of the program. It highlights the intersection of the design decisions with the decolonizing principles that framed the program as a whole, the various and varying roles played by the online environment over the course of the program, and the program’s contribution to student success. [From Website]

The handbook provides a variety of Indigenous perspectives on the history of colonialism, current Indigenous activism and resistance, and outlines the path forward to reconciliation. Contributors include Bev Sellars, Taiaiake Alfred, Glen Coulthard, Russell Diabo, Beverly Jacobs, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Arthur Manuel, Kanahus Manuel, Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour, Pamela Palmater, Shiri Pasternak, Nicole Schabus, Senator Murray Sinclair and Sharon Venne. [From Publisher]

Decolonizing Pedagogies Teacher Reference Booklet presents: an overview of what “decolonizing pedagogies” means; how and why educational scholars and Indigenous educators suggest they be used to support learning in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal education environments; examples of decolonizing pedagogies (especially in history education); and, some of the opportunities and challenges identified by educators and scholars in implementing decolonizing pedagogies. [From Author]

When I was five, my family moved to a farming community in Germany. My mother regularly wrote home to her parents, telling them about our lives and sending them gifts, which they put in their modern curiosity cabinet. This is a very reasonable situation and one which happens all the time. Nevertheless, what if foreigners who moved to Germany were only ever allowed to read my mother’s letters as the complete and acceptable truth for the entire German nation and its people. Would one deem this an accurate history? Would it be enough to analyze German culture, religion, and society? Would looking at the gifts be enough to determine their use without talking to a German? One would most likely answer no to such questions. I chose this narrative because it mirrors the trust adventures, academics, and so forth have put in the archival records written about Indigenous Peoples and their ways. Europeans writing about the Peoples they encountered did not speak the local languages, nor did they understand the cultural practices. Therefore, everything they wrote was interpreted through a strictly European lens, which in turn means that their writings were utterly biased and their interpretations often misconstrued. Nonetheless, many scripts have ended up in archival institutions. In kanata, this form of literature has continued without much interruption, and many such writings continue to be archived. This thesis will analyze the history of archiving in kanata using a decolonizing lens. It will analyze four archival institutions who are doing it right and four crucial documents, although not the only crucial documents, relevant to decolonizing, indigenizing, and reconciling the archival field in kanata with Indigenous Peoples. Finally, through the use of a case study, it will demonstrate the modern problems surrounding the archiving of Indigenous knowledge not produced by Indigenous Peoples nor housed with any community engagement. The point of this thesis is to call out archivists responsible for the continuing oppression of Indigenous Peoples and provide them with ways of rethinking the archival protocols and practices they put onto Indigenous knowledge contained within archival records. [From Author]

Lisa Monchalin challenges the myth of the 'Indian problem' and encourages readers to view the crimes and injustices affecting Indigenous peoples from a more culturally aware position. [From Publisher]

The academy forms within settler societies as an apparatus of colonization. Indigenous researchers critically engage its colonial power by practicing Indigenous methodologies: an act that also implicates non-Indigenous people in challenging the settler academy. Indigenous methodologies do not merely model Indigenous research. By exposing normative knowledge production as being not only non-Indigenous but colonial, they denaturalize power within settler societies and ground knowledge production in decolonization. An activist impetus thus informs Indigenous methodologies, yet “activism” typically fails to invoke their full implications. Whereas “activism” in a settler society may invest social justice in state rule, decolonization anticipates that rule’s end. Decolonization is activist, but activism need not be decolonizing. Indigenous methodologies arise within the larger pursuit of Indigenous decolonization, a project that Indigenous critics theorize variously as ontological, psychic, governmental, and relational.1 Indigenous methodologies present what Dylan Rodríguez (referencing João Costas Vargas) calls an “urgency imperative,” which answers “the academy’s long historical complicities in racial/colonial genocide” by endeavoring “to denaturalize and ultimately dismantle the conditions in which these systems of massive violence are reproduced.” Such theories seek to fundamentally transform the institutional and epistemic conditions of life and thought for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people on lands where all live relationally, in ways that settler societies and their governance cannot contain. [From Author]

Presentation Looking Forward Looking Back - Canada must now work out fair and lasting terms of coexistence with Aboriginal people”.

What is nation building? This article explores the perspectives of a group of students at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in 2014 during a time of cultural revitalization and upon the restoration of Higher Learning Commission (HLC) accreditation. As demonstrated by the vignette, nation building has become a popular term in academia as well as in the words spoken by Native leadership. From the vantage point of various roles, but primarily as an educator, I wanted to uncover how nation building was articulated through the eyes of tribal college students who: studied nation building curriculum; heard from the experiences of speakers invested in Indigenous communities; engaged in service learning projects that served Native children; and who were immersed in an educational setting that was grounded in valuing the sovereignty of tribal nations. Celina shared her story with me during an interview. She was a key participant in a phenomenological study that was completed shortly after the gas station event described above. The purpose of the study was to capture the collective phenomenological experience and pay tribute to the many projects that led to the accomplishments of students like Celina. These students shared the common experience of taking a set of Native Studies–centered courses and attending SIPI from 2013–14 during a general education movement in cultural relevancy. These courses were designed to establish an understanding of nation building through Indigenous education pedagogy. [From Author]

To be an educator in Saskatchewan is to ask oneself: how do I ensure that all students gain access to respectful and accurate information about First Nations peoples;
how do I work to close the achievement gap for First Nations learners? [From Author]

The historical and ongoing struggles for Indigenous communities in settler-designed school systems across what is now named the United States call for radical educational reform that includes a decolonized curriculum model for Indigenous children. These efforts must first acknowledge that Indigenous education existed prior to European contact and that settler-designed schools were and are detrimental to the well-being of Indigenous children and communities. Radical reform efforts must also recognize the continued systemic racism ingrained in school structures that privilege the dominant, whitestream communities and disadvantage communities of color, including Indigenous communities. [From Author]

As Indigenous educators who share a passion for innovative approaches using instructional media, we are inspired to explore the ways in which technology can
support teaching and learning from Indigenous perspectives. Several scholars advocate the use of technology in reclamation of First Peoples’ voices, stories and other ways of knowing (Ginsburg, 2000; Iseke-Barnes, 2002; Dyson, Hendriks & Grant, 2007). Reflecting social constructionism, we believe media can be designed to build educator capacity within these special interest areas. By highlighting work that is currently underway within Indigenous education, we invite readers to imagine their own possibilities for transformative and decolonizing pedagogy. [From Author]

This article is concerned with the epidemic of alienation created by colonization and the ideologies that maintain systems of domination. More specifically, it argues that a decolonizing holistic pedagogy can help address the root of our individual and collective alienation to facilitate healing. This position is supported by the findings of an ethnographic study, conducted in 2013–2014, highlighting Poetry for the People (P4P), an arts/activism course started by poet-activist-professor, June Jordan, at UC Berkeley. [From Author]

Some diary entries, photos and speeches of George Manuel.

Although teacher education programs across the country are currently under significant review and reform, little attention is paid to the importance of Indigenous principles that could inform or transform them. Attention to Indigenous principles such as those presented in this paper can, we believe, serve to decolonize teacher education, offering programs that enable greater success for a wider array of diverse students, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, and address their needs and interests. The intent of this paper is to draw attention to the ways Indigenous principles offered by Lil’wat scholar Lorna Williams have influenced one teacher education program, and to share some of the ways that these principles have been enacted within the program. We offer our perspectives as narrative accounts of what we have done in our courses and in our teacher education program that reflect the principles explained in the paper. We do not feel we can express this perspective any different other than to recount shifts made and our observations as educators. These could be expressed as case studies but this would only be paying lip service to claiming a methodology that was not really followed. We offer this paper more as a sharing of narratives drawn to the indigenous principles. Authenticity comes from our common perceptions from different perspectives in the program. [From Author]

Celebrate the book launch of How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America, a new book edited by Sara Sinclair from Haymarket Books and Voice of Witness, with a roundtable conversation about Indigenous sovereignty today.

How We Go Home shares contemporary Indigenous stories in the long and ongoing fight to protect Native land and life. In myriad ways, each narrator’s life has been shaped by loss, injustice, resilience, and the struggle to share space with settler nations whose essential aim is to take all that is Indigenous. [From YouTube]

On the occasion of the inaugural issue of Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, we examine the many contradictions, contestations and possible pathways to decolonization. In working to explore the many themes that the articles in this issue bring forth, we recognize that, despite our certainty that decolonization centers Indigenous methods, peoples, and lands, the future is a ‘tangible unknown’, a constant (re)negotiating of power, place, identity and sovereignty. In these contestations, decolonization and Indigeneity are not merely reactionary nor in a binary relationship with colonial power. Decolonization is indeed oppositional to colonial ways of thinking and acting but demands an Indigenous starting point and an articulation of what decolonization means for Indigenous peoples around the globe. This editorial works towards the possibility of a global Indigenous movement that strengthens and supports local moments for decolonization, and does so by exploring some of the many layers and questions that this necessarily entails. [From Author]

"To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being. [From Publisher]

The current generation of students live and learn within a pedagogical milieu saturated by digital technologies. Curriculum scholars have not ignored this, theorizing and critiquing the ways that technology both affords and limits opportunities for students. Notably absent from this conversation, however, is a consideration of how the technologies themselves are designed and the implications that this design process has on the role and use of technology in our classroom spaces. In this article, I use the development of a decolonizing mobile application designed to teach students and educators about the history of residential schools in Canada, as an example, offering a nascent theorization of computer code. In particular, I argue that the exploration of computer code is an important avenue for critical scholarship. In so doing, I suggest that there are three important considerations—obfuscated representation, translation, and the engendering of technocracy—that need to be considered when doing curriculum work about/with computer technologies. While I do not argue that curriculum scholars need to become proficient in the programming languages central to the design of computer applications, I provide this exploration as a means of gesturing toward that which is often not considered but is central to the 21st century classroom. [From Author]

This chapter addresses the strategies for decolonizing, transforming, and creating meaningful spaces for Indigenous Peoples within the structures and practices of the academy and the principal institutions through which the academy works. [From Author]

Our goal in this article is to intervene and disrupt current contentious debates regarding the predominant lines of inquiry bourgeoning in settler colonial studies, the use of 'settler', and the politics of building solidarities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Settler colonial studies, 'settler', and solidarity, then, operate as the central themes of this paper. [From Author]

Recently, Indigenous commentators have begun to analyse the way in which institutional Research Ethics Boards (REBs) engage with Indigenous researchers and participants, respond to Indigenous peoples’ concerns with academic research activities, and scrutinise the ethics proposals of Indigenous scholars. Of particular concern for Indigenous commentators is that the work of REBs often results in the marginalisation of Indigenous approaches to knowledge construction and dissemination, especially in relation to the vexed issue of informed consent. Based on analysis of the results of research with Indigenous researchers and research participants, this paper argues that institutionalised REBs’ preference for ‘universal’ and ‘individualised’ approaches for determining ethical research conduct marginalises Indigenous approaches to ethical research conduct. The paper concludes by calling for a decolonisation of REB processes through recognition of the validity of communal processes for attaining the informed consent of Indigenous research participants. [From Author]

In late 2015, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, the Executive Summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) final report, was released. In response, the Canadian Association of Social Workers pledged to move Canada forward from recognition of truth, to reconciliation, acknowledging this with the statement: “the profession of social work recognizes the very specific role and responsibility it has in supporting the implementation of the TRC recommendations with emphasis on those specific to Child Welfare.” The BC Association of Social Workers (BCASW) also announced its support for the 94 Calls to Action in the report, and it is now up to us to take meaningful action as the agents of change. [From Author]

Our goal in this article is to remind readers what is unsettling about decolonization. Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,” or, “decolonize student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor. As important as their goals may be, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches that decenter settler perspectives have objectives that may be incommensurable with decolonization. Because settler colonialism is built upon an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, non-white, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually further settler colonialism. The metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or “settler moves to innocence”, that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity. In this article, we analyze multiple settler moves towards innocence in order to forward “an ethic of incommensurability” that recognizes what is distinct and what is sovereign for project(s) of decolonization in relation to human and civil rights based social justice projects. We also point to unsettling themes within transnational/Third World decolonizations, abolition, and critical space-place pedagogies, which challenge the coalescence of social justice endeavors, making room for more meaningful potential alliances. [From Author]

When Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies was first published, it ignited a passion for research change that respected Indigenous peoples and knowledges, and campaigned to reclaim Indigenous ways of knowing and being. At a time when Indigenous voices were profoundly marginalised, the book advocated for an Indigenous viewpoint which represented a daily struggle to be heard, and to find its place in academia.

Twenty years on, this collection celebrates the breadth and depth of how Indigenous writers are shaping the decolonizing research world today. With contributions from Indigenous female researchers, this collection offers the much needed academic space to distinguish methodological approaches, and overcome the novelty confines of being marginal voices. [From Publisher]

Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society solicits any work purposefully engaged in the decolonization process, regardless of discipline or field, encouraging work that actively seeks undisciplinary connections that work both against and beyond the Western academy. We recognize that this is a wide net to cast but feel strongly that decolonization must happen at all levels, in all fields, and all locations; decolonization seeks to explore the relationships between knowledges and tears down the artificial disciplinary demarcations of dominant ways of knowing and being. Colonial power affects all areas of life and thought - this journal seeks to engage and confront that power at every level. [From Publisher]

Wahkohtowin means "everything is related." It is one of the basic principles of Cree Natural Law passed through language, song, prayer, and storytelling.

After several decades of calls for action, overall levels of educational participation and attainment among indigenous people remain much lower than those for Canadians as a whole. Beginning with an overview of recent educational trends, this paper seeks to understand why educational visions expressed by indigenous people several decades ago remain unfulfilled. Focusing on recent federal government legislation for First Nations education, the analysis highlights how government policies and public discourses frequently exclude and undermine indigenous people and their rights despite constitutional recognition of indigenous status within a liberal democratic context. These processes of “democratic colonization”, as the emergence of alternative movements such as Idle No More has made evident, reveal the continuing impact of colonization on indigenous people and their lands and communities, reinforced through many of the kinds of government policies, practices and public opinions around which the movement initially coalesced. This paper explores the various factors that facilitate and impede educational reform within this social context. [From Author]

The question of whether neutrality is possible in academic development invites us to explore the particular place of academic development in our institutions and how academic development is positioned in our particular national and institutional environments. This paper, which reports on a small pilot study of how Canadian academic development is positioned institutionally, will use post-colonial metaphors of development to demonstrate the impossibility of neutrality in academic development work. It will also explore how academic developers might move forward in a decolonizing manner that acknowledges our non-neutrality, respecting the expertise and experience of our disciplinary colleagues, while at the same time ensuring a collaborative teaching and learning environment. [From Author]

Colonialism is a significant problem that impacts how Indigenous (and all) students engage with learning, and how teachers create learning contexts. In this dissertation study, I examined how a Community of Inquiry (CoI), comprised of Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators, parents, academics, and community members came together to (re)imagine educational contexts that could better support Indigenous (and all) students. Although much of the research was co-constructed with members of the CoI, the research design, activities, and interpretation were informed by literature discussing colonialism, decolonization, and collaborative inquiry focusing on CoIs. I used a four-dimensional model of colonialism to clarify challenges in the educational system. Decolonizing perspectives were used to critically confront colonialism, and (re)imagine ethical relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples. CoI models offered a way to build on the strength of diverse perspectives. These theoretical considerations were a springboard for investigating how the CoI came together, what they identified as key challenges students and teachers navigated, and the pedagogical principles and practices they co-constructed to support Indigenous (and all) learners in a small school district in British Columbia, Canada. This research was conducted using a critical ethnographic case study methodology, grounded in decolonizing perspectives. Within this approach, research methods were co-constructed with participants to ensure that the research undertaken was situated and responsive to the needs of Indigenous students. Findings from this study highlighted specific CoI structures, such as facilitation, context, communication, and goals that opened possibilities for reflection and transformation among CoI participants. Using these structures, participants co-constructed understandings, grappled with pedagogical questions, and (re)imagined a shared future. Participants built from this foundation to create a set of seven principles and practices that could cultivate supportive learning environments. The principles and practices they co-constructed were designed to inspire educators’ self-reflection, create a space that accepts and builds from the strengths of Indigenous and decolonizing perspectives, and bolster supports for Indigenous (and all) students. Lastly, I discuss how these findings contribute to the literature on CoIs, decolonizing possibilities, and pedagogical practices, and provide suggestions educators may use to open decolonizing possibilities within their own contexts. [From Author]

I work with Tribal and Indigenous Peoples to bring mindfulness and neurodecolonization approaches to these communities for the purposes of healing and improving wellness. I use neuroscience research to examine how mindfulness approaches and traditional Indigenous contemplative practices can train the mind and positively change the structure and function of the brain. I study how experiences and perceptions change the brain (neuroplasticity); shape our DNA and affect the expression of our genes; activate different brain regions, change our brain waves, and shape specialized brain cells such as mirror neurons; and alter our neurotransmitters and modulators. I use my work as a means of translating the neuroscience of mindfulness and neurodecolonization to Tribal and Indigenous communities so they can understand why and how mindfulness and Indigenous contemplative practices work. [From Website]

In order for decolonization to be successful it must begin in our minds. Creative, healthy, decolonized thinking, actions and feelings positively shape and empower important neural circuits in our brain, which, in turn, provide us with the personal resources, strengths, talents and abilities we need to overcome and transform the oppressions of colonialism. On the one hand, a healthy, well-balanced mind and brain are essential to helping one to engage in proactive, creative and successful decolonization activities and, on the other, unconstructive, negative thinking, feelings and behaviours dampen and short-circuit our brain’s creativity and optimism networks and increase our susceptibility to the many stresses that arise in everyday life. The customary stressors, especially for Indigenous Peoples, are exacerbated by the additional trauma of colonialism. [From Author]

While reconciliation seems like a vague or unattainable concept, RTS breaks it down into small but impactful steps for everyone and anyone. Our work focuses on learning from the past, gaining the tools to make change in our present and being empowered to create a better future. [From Website]