Understanding Grief as an Ethnic Studies Praxis

• In Event: Grief as a Portal to the Past, Present, and Future: Narratives of Educators of Color

Abstract

Objectives & Research Question
During the 1960s, Students and Educators of Color grieved spaces and opportunities in education that reflected their experiences. To tend to and lean into this collective grief, they demanded the inclusion, access, and autonomy that was noticeably absent in their education. The start of Ethnic Studies opened up possibilities for humanizing liberatory education. Tintiangco-Cubales et al. (2014) synthesize the educational purpose (the “ARC” of Ethnic Studies) that developed from the 1960s Ethnic Studies movement: Access, Relevance, and Community. ARC provides a trajectory of how we can sustain the legacy of Ethnic Studies. ARC can also serve as a pathway for students and teachers to tend to their grief, in which they need access to necessary relevant resources and community to engage in collective healing. Thus, this paper explores the question: How can Ethnic Studies inform understandings of grief in the context of education?

Frameworks
I draw from Freire’s (1970) definition of praxis and assert that grief “cannot be purely intellectual but must involve action; nor can it be limited to mere activism, but must include serious reflection….” (p. 65). Through the lens of Ethnic Studies, we are able to be in right relationship with grief (Weller, 2015)—we accept grief’s invitation to “build capacity for community care and collective well-being” (Jadallah, 2024, p. 202), honor our bodymindspirit (Calderón et al., 2012; Cariaga, 2019; Lara, 2002), and meaningfully engage in both individual and collective reflection of our grief.

I introduce an emerging conceptual and embodied journey I call Waves of Grief:
● Past (Memories): Remembering our ancestors through past experiences, lessons, and artifacts
● Present (Metabolizing): Processing our individual and collective grief with the necessary resources and conditions
● Future (Meaning making): Creating our legacies as future ancestors

I emphasize this as a journey instead of a “framework” or a “model” to resist the traditional concepts of research by humanizing grief as a journey toward healing.

Methods & Findings
I share my autoethnography (Ravitch & Carl, 2021) that centers my experiences with grief as a high school Ethnic Studies teacher and as a teacher educator in an Ethnic Studies Pathway program. Drawing from archival data of lessons, projects, journal entries, student evaluations, and kuwentuhan (Francisco, 2014; Sacramento & Daus, 2025) from 2020–2025, I explore how my grief journey has allowed me to engage in the three essential questions that Ethnic Studies calls us to reflect on: (1) Who am I?, (2) Who is my family and community?, and (3) What can I do to bring social justice to my community and the world? (Mabalon, 2016).

Significance
The relationship between grief and Ethnic Studies has the potential to shift the terrain of education to be more humanizing, particularly for Students and Educators of Color. When I reflect on what it means to engage in healing, I often return to my learnings and teachings of Ethnic Studies. There is much to learn through the lens of Ethnic Studies, especially how it teaches us to make space for grief in and beyond the classroom.

Author

• Lauren Arzaga Daus, University of California - Los Angeles