They Come From the Land: Situating Early Childhood Education and Care as a Place-Based Practice

• In Event: Confronting Settler-Colonialism in Early Childhood Education: Building Anticolonial Pedagogies for Social Change

Abstract

This academic paper explores the ways in which Indigenous land-based ontologies can offer ‘ethics of care’ to inform the manner in which we organize and deliver care and education-related services to young children. 

Care theory is redefined from an Indigenous framework as a way to decenter settler anthropocentrism. Through the use of Anishinaabe storywork and exploration of land-centered scholarship, early childhood education and care (ECEC) is positioned as a place-based practice that invites settler educators to enter into critical relations with land and Indigenous peoples. 

This paper offers a theoretical articulation of Indigenous land-based ethics of care, presents strategies for the implementation of these ethics in early childhood education and care settings, and discusses tensions involved with embedding land-knowledge in settler-colonial contexts.

Author

• Nicole Ineese-Nash, Ryerson University