Learning Respectful Relations With Indigenous Peoples: Shifting Canadian Teacher Education Toward Justice

• In Event: 46.076 - Transforming Self Through Intercultural Experiences

Abstract

This paper explores a duo-ethnography of decolonizing and indigenizing teacher education, making a case, based on our self-study data, that there is an important process or set of shifts for improving Indigenous—non-Indigenous relations in education. Through our dual self-studies as settler-Canadian educators, we explore how relational ethics apply to our lives, our teaching and teacher education programs and focus our analysis on specific expressions of decolonizing and indigenizing thinking to shift teacher-educators towards respectful relations. Specific characteristics of decolonization for non-Indigenous teacher-educators include contending with and working through teacher ignorance and resistance, responsibility for one’s own individual ongoing decolonizing and indigenizing processes, and commitment to improving the Indigenous—non-Indigenous relationship through sticking, stumbling, and swimming shifts in teacher education programs.

Authors

• Lisa M. Korteweg, Lakehead University

• Emily Root, Cape Breton University