Anticolonial Frameworks and Ethical Commitments for Teaching Indigenous Literatures: Developing the Indigenous Literatures Café

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Pedagogy and Indigenous Spaces (Table 9)

Abstract

We offer our work as a pedagogical guide for introducing Indigenous literatures, asserting that Indigenous literatures must be taught in ways that align with anti-racist praxis and promote liberatory thinking. Our work considers the delivery of newly developed Indigenous literature courses within the lens of Indigenous cultural safety and ethical encounters/engagements with Indigenous literatures. Finally, by imagining resurgence as an overall medicine bundle for holding community narratives of strength and Indigenous brilliance, we consider the pedagogical possibilities highlighted through the works of authors recently featured in the Indigenous literatures café book club to offer three theoretical gifts—Maternal Essence, Homeplace, and Intergenerational Resilience—that contribute to an overall framework of teaching through resurgence and advancing anti-colonial literacies and Indigenous futurities.

Authors

• Jennifer Brant, University of Toronto - OISE

• Gayatri Thakor, University of Toronto - OISE

• Erenna Morrison, University of Toronto - OISE

• Jasmine Rice, University of Toronto - OISE