Braiding Early Childhood Stories: Therapeutic Counternarratives to Slow Violences

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Ring the Alarm! Activism, Restorative Justice, and Equity for Children, Families, and Communities

Abstract

The discovery of 751 Indigenous people, predominantly children, at the site of a former Catholic school in Saskatchewan is a horrific yet unsurprising discovery given the role of North American schools in systemic colonization and Indigenous erasure.

The slow temporality of this violence––alongside others such as climate change, xenophobia, and structural racism––contrasts with faster, more visible forms of violence such as school shootings and the global pandemic. Each atrocity shines a light on Western education’s toxic legacies in particular ways.

Thinking with the concept of slow violence and Kimmerer's (2003) depiction of moss, we braid four stories from North American contexts to make meaning of slow violence and uncover therapeutics.

Authors

• Will Parnell, Portland State University

• Angela Molloy Murphy, The University of Melbourne

• Elizabeth P. Quintero, California State University - Channel Islands

• Larisa Callaway-Cole, Oklahoma State University - Stillwater