Decolonizing the Curriculum: Toward a Critical Settler Consciousness

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Six
  In Roundtable Session: Interrogating Difference: Radical Ethical Frameworks for Social Justice in Education (Table 1)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which decolonizing the curriculum is essential to the ethical practice of schooling and education. We begin by recounting our positionality to the topic under investigation. We give you our stories so that readers may understand where our thoughts come from, the experiences we’ve had in our own educations within western colonizing institutions, and so that our words have context. We also share our stories because as Indigenous researchers and writers we believe strongly in doing our work within relationship with others – and in our ways of knowing that means sharing parts of ourselves. We must hold true to our values. In addition, we share our stories as examples of the multiple, convoluted, and complicated paths that the process of decolonizing the curriculum can take.
To discuss decolonizing the curriculum, we must first understand the reasons why decolonization is necessary and the how settler colonialism is “the specific formation of colonialism in which the colonizer comes to stay, making himself the sovereign, and [becomes] the arbiter of citizenship, civility, and knowing” (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013, p. 73). As Tuck and Yang (2012) make clear “settler colonialism involves the subjugation and forced labor of chattel slaves, whose bodies and lives become the property, and who are kept landless” (p. 6). Settler colonialism has been and continues to be immensely harmful to Indigenous peoples, so we turn to the concept of decolonization as one remedy. Dian Million (2009) tells us that “to ‘decolonize’ means to understand as fully as possible the forms colonialism takes in our own times” (p. 55). We know that our education system is “rooted in white, male, western, heteronormative culture and is explicitly and implicitly designed to denigrate those positioned as non-white” (Jacob, Gonzalez et al., 2020, p. 3) and that this needs to change. Thinking of decolonization as “the intelligent, calculated, and active resistance to the forces of colonialism that perpetuate the subjugation and/or exploitation of our minds, bodies, and lands, and … is engaged for the ultimate purpose of overturning the colonial structure and realizing Indigenous liberation” (Waziyatawin & Yellowbird, 2005, p. 5) provides ways to change education, to change our curriculum and pedagogies, to provide a relevant and respectful educational process for our Indigenous students, for all our students.
After clarifying concepts central to the work of decolonization and TribalCrit (Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, 2005), we develop the contours of what we call “a critical settler consciousness” and chronicle examples of schools that offer curriculums and programs that center indigenous knowledges and practices. As we looked at a sample of schools that are centering Indigenous knowledges and practices and using decolonizing curriculums and pedagogies, we found two forms of decolonization: immersion style or integrated style schools. We conclude the paper with a discussion of questions that remain central to the work of decolonizing the curriculum and schools.

Authors

• Stephany RunningHawk Johnson, Local Contexts
  Presenting Author

• Anthony Angel Keola Birano, Washington State University
  Presenting Author