The Natural World as a Colonized and Oppressed Community: Educational Implications

• In Event: 26.056 - Challenging the Discourse of Environmental Education: Tropes, Metaphors, Boundaries

Abstract

This paper will explore the educational implications of framing our relationships with the natural world using the language of colonization, marginalization, silencing and alliance building. We believe this contentious perceptual shift may open a series of potentially interesting, fruitful, and likely contested and troublesome conversations. It is here that discussions related to decolonization, eco-justice, Indigeneity, and revolutionary praxis might surface in conjunction with ideas of “personhood”, more-than-human political subjectivities, the language/s of struggle, and the need for cultural transformation. Overall, we hope that this paper will help educators to think seriously about the possible ways in which they might recognize, address and trouble the colonization of the natural world within their own teaching practice.

Authors

• Laura Piersol, Simon Fraser University

• Sean Blenkinsop, Simon Fraser University

• Michael W. Derby, Simon Fraser University