Curricular Investments in Extraction: Youth Pathways to the Tar Sands Through Apprenticeship Programs

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: #RiseUp: Youth Activism and Curriculum-Making

Abstract

Tar Sands oil extraction remains a crucial, yet destructive industry in Alberta, Canada. In this paper I trace the Registered Apprenticeship Program (RAP), a trades apprenticeship beginning in secondary school, to examine how gender, sexuality, and race are mobilized to recruit youth into trades programs. I will connect how these forms of identification and belonging work to produce the normalcy of settler extractive capitalism on Treaty 8 lands. I argue that the relationship between vocational public schooling, industry, and the state (as exemplified in the RAP) provides an important place to think through the ways in which youth are invited to participate in a particular settler colonial version of the future.

Author

• Samantha Spady, University of Toronto