Contemporary Colonialism and Reconciliation in Teacher Education: A Decolonial Gesture Through Ethical Relationality

• In Event: Indigenous-Settler Relations in the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Era: The End of the Beginning

Abstract

In this paper, the authors trouble the notion that post-secondary institutions are currently able to move beyond simple acknowledgements of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) Calls to Action for reconciliation in education, and offer pedagogical opportunities for instructors in teacher education to gesture towards decolonial possibilities. Following the important work of scholars Taiaiake Alfred (2008), Glen Coultard (2014), Eva Mackey (2016), Pam Palmater (2015), and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2011), the authors recognize the ongoing settler-colonial project in Canada, and Indigenous resurgence that has been a prominent response. With a view to supporting Indigenous resurgence through education, and a movement from acknowledgements to pedagogical actions, the authors note the specific awareness required in recognizing educational institutions as a part of settler governance structures that continue to be powerful actors in erasing and obscuring colonial realities in support of settler-colonial futurity (Marker, 2006; Simpson 2014; St. Denis 2011). The authors argue that this more robust recognition of the settler-colonial project within educational spaces will support an end to the tentative beginnings of support for the Calls to Action and gesture to more substantive action.
Considering colonialism as a fundamentally relational problem that naturalizes Indigenous dispossession and colonial logics of separation, the authors engage theorization on ethical relationality following the work of Dwayne Donald (Donald, 2012, 2016) in their pedagogical theorizing and approach. The authors recognize these relational priorities as supporting recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous knowledges in the territories in which they live and teach as guiding their pedagogical responsibilities (Archibald, 2008). The authors theorize their collaborative practices as providing pedagogical opportunities, wherein they are able to strategically engage with their positionalities as Indigenous and Settler instructors to draw attention to relational priorities across difference, and provide opportunities to unlearn colonial logics of separation with their students and themselves. Through their collaborative co-teaching and designing Indigenous course requirements in teacher education based in relationality and Indigenous knowledges, the authors elaborate four pedagogical themes that provide gestures towards decolonial possibilities in teacher education: Embodied Decolonial Relations; Storying a Relation to Land/Indigenous territories; Ethical Relationality as an Educational Practice; and Learning to Become Whole Human Beings through Interrelatedness.

Authors

• Amy M Parent, The University of British Columbia

• Jeannie Kerr, University of Winnipeg