Reading Occupation Into the U.S./Mexico Border Educational Experience: Implications for Chicana/o/x Studies

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Radical Dreams: Using the Anti-War Lessons of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Fight for Students of Color

Abstract

The outcomes of war and education are varied and have long-lasting impacts. In the context of the United States one normally does not consider that the founding of the U.S. had to do with ongoing wars and a resulting occupation (at least from the perspective of indigenous peoples and Mexican settlers in what is now the contemporary Southwest of the U.S.). With regards to education, the outcome of such histories result in a type of education model that has its foundations in the inherent violence of wars and their aftermath. The conference theme asks: “How do various communities conceptualize justice, including the many scholarly communities within our association?” Thus, in this paper, I explore the larger scope of what it means to consider education through occupation, centering an indigenous standpoint, asking, how do settler colonial societies construct and maintain educational models and practices that make invisible occupation models of education?

To do this, I will rely on a framework of Coloniality that centers the project of settler colonialism in education (Bang et al., 2014; Calderon, 2014; Coloma, 2013; Tuck & Yang, 2012, 2014). Coloniality refers to the manner in which modern systems of colonialism operate epistemically, economically, ontologically, politically, and spatially (Grosfuguel, 2007; Lugones, 2008; Mignolo, 2000; Quijano, 2000). In order to decolonize we need to first provide a context for the particular colonial project(s) we are responding to. In the United States we need to attend to settler colonialism; yet the idea of the United States as a settler nation, indeed colonialism, is little explored in educational research (Coloma, Means, & Kim, 2009). I maintain that this work is key in order to cultivate holistic (Cajete, 1994; Pewewardy, 2002) educational ideas and practices that can speak to the complex needs of indigenous peoples and truly make space for decolonizing approaches in education. The sources I use for this analysis include Indian federal policies and current policies pushing for privatization of education.

The study presents a timely entry into the growing area of inquiry of decolonial studies in education. Moreover, this discussion reminds us that as we speak of decolonizing work, we must remain attendant to the inherent land-based components of this work (Tuck & Yang, 2012). In other words, to decolonize, affirms a radical (or not so radical depending on your positionality) understanding of education as a mechanism of occupation that implies on ongoing “war” with populations that do not facilitate the continued occupation of territory, or what Tuck and Yang (2012) refer to as “settler futurity.” Such an understanding is fundamental to the conference theme: “[w]e have the opportunity and the moral obligation to apply principles and evidence from social science research and theorizing to the problems of injustice.” We cannot continue to ignore the injustice of occupation in our moral obligation to create pedagogical spaces of hope and humanity.

Author

• Dolores Calderon, Western Washington University