Children, Bilbies, and Spirit Bears: Reconsidering Stewardship in Settler Colonial Contexts

• In Event: 72.034 - Feminist Approaches to Animal-Focused Education: Illuminating the Intersections and Following New Tracks in Environmental Education

Abstract

In this paper we analyze two sets of children’s literature texts that are concerned with the plight of threatened native species - bilbies in Australia and spirit bears in Canada – and focus upon the ways in which they encourage their young audiences to become environmental stewards. Our analysis brings early years environmental education into conversation with feminist environmental philosophy, feminist settler colonial critique, and extinction studies. We begin the paper by reflecting upon the role played by native animal characters in children’s literature in securing non-Indigenous children’s identification with the settler colonial nation (Taylor, 2014). We then move on to unpack the fraught ethico-politics of deliberately cultivating non-Indigenous children’s sense of identification with and custodianship of threatened native species - in this case Australian bilbies and Canadian spirit bears - in the context of the current ‘sixth mass species extinction event’. This is the first mass extinction event to be attributed to human actions and specifically to the actions of the colonizers in settler colonial countries such as Australia and Canada. Drawing upon recent feminist critiques of the solipsisms and heroisms of stewardship discourses (Haraway 2014; Stengers 2012), and of settler colonial conceits to ‘manage’ the environment (Anderson & Taylor, 2005), we reflect upon the limits and possibilities of educating young settler children to become ‘protectors’ of threatened native species populations. We conclude by considering how we might interrupt and augment the conventional wisdom of these threatened species stewardship discourses with a feminist decolonizing ethic (Rose, 2004).

Authors

• Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, University of Western Ontario

• Affrica Taylor, University of Canberra