How "Fear" Reproduces Settler Structures: Moving Beyond Discourses of Fear and Becoming Imperfect Accomplices

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: Presencing Beyond Borders of Self/Others

Abstract

In this paper we explain how teachers can subvert settler colonial epistemology in their classrooms to become ‘imperfect accomplices.’ Drawing on a larger project, we focus on the ways non-Indigenous teachers understood their role in teaching Indigenous content and epistemologies through their lenses of ‘fear,’ which we re-theorize as ‘anxiety.’ These anxieties were enacted by the educators in two ways: stopping the teaching of Indigenous content and epistemologies, or a productive pausing for self-reflection. We explain how stopping education outside of settler colonial epistemology is based on structures that impose fear to go outside of that epistemology. We then examine how some teachers pause within these structures of ‘fear’ and explain three strategies to become ‘imperfect accomplices.’

Authors

• Shawna Carroll, Okayama University

• Mark Sinke, University of Toronto

• Daniela Bascuñán, Toronto District School Board 

• Jean Paul Restoule, University of Victoria