Information regarding Indigenous people must come from what we have to say about ourselves, through our stories and perspectives.
Writer (2008, p. 2)
∵
I write as a guest on North American soil. As a settler educator of European descent, most of my ancestors are not native to this land. From Indigenous scholars and Canadian artists, I’ve learned that my heritage and story influence my perspective (Writer, 2017). Interestingly, conformed settlers who reveal injustices against tribes also model this lesson (e.g., Aiken & Radford, 2018; McCarty, 2018). Let us assume, then, that contributors to the dialogue are expected to openly situate themselves and declare biases. Transparency is a starting place for decolonizing self and society.
Acknowledging and respecting that we who are non-native visitors on Indigenous lands are “guests,” as Indigenous scholars urge, is another such starting place (Iseke-Barnes, 2008; Writer, 2017). Besides being a guest on native land, perhaps it could be said that colonial–settlers enter the critical Indigenous discourse as a visitor, not expert. Being positioned as a guest and visitor in a body of work that does not belong to settlers is, arguably, a decolonizing strategy. Decolonial transformation for settlers participating in decolonization of everything from settler discourse to settlement involves many processes: approaching what belongs to Aboriginal peoples with respectful accord; becoming acquainted with Indigenous perspectives and frameworks; moving from settler ignorance to mindfulness (such as of culturally responsive education); critically examining how rights are viewed within settler societies; applying Indigenous tenets in real-world settings, including learning spaces; and fostering change, reconciliation, and healing through thought and action (Mullen, 2019a, 2020).
Ongoing settler claims to national sovereignty over ancestral home/lands and assertions suppress Indigenous sovereignty, so must be disrupted—this is a thrust in the critical discourse reviewed. Stealing such vast territories from Indigenous tribes has disrupted identities and destroyed communities (Tuck & Yang, 2012), to the peril of educational success and wellbeing for Aboriginal students, worldwide (e.g., McCarty, 2018). Adopting Indigenous lenses to unpack colonial–settler mindsets of domination and entitled ownership (i.e., colonization) put justice and the public good to the test (e.g., Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Gay, 2018).
A supporter of Indigenous rights and an ally, I’m noticing a trend in public recognition of Indigenous land from institutions built on native land (“occupying” would be more accurate) and associations holding conferences. Yet universities and other institutions “have not sufficiently altered their behaviours in relation to Indigenous peoples, despite physically standing on their territories” (McGregor, 2018, p. 825). In other words, “No matter how liberated you are [as an anti-colonial accomplice], if you are still occupying Indigenous lands you are still a colonizer” (Indigenous Action Media, 2014, p. 7).
In a parallel sense, I honor Indigenous literature and artwork, appreciating them as entitled to veneration and a sense of rights. Indigenous sources inform my decolonial ideas and enlarge my capacity to discern what is sacred. Needing to speak for themselves, Indigenous peoples seek to share their own perspectives and words, stories and theories (e.g., Iseke-Barnes, 2009; Verbos & Humphries, 2014; Writer, 2008). A common refrain in the sources analyzed is that Indigenous stories and histories must be told: “Unmasking, exposing, and confronting” colonization, asserted Writer (2008, p. 1), propels her research and activism as an Indigenous person. However, a significant gap in the Indigenous literature across academic disciplines exists: “On the whole, academic or professional journal articles do not focus on Native American or other Indigenous perspectives” (Verbos & Humphries, p. 4). The attempt on my part to address this serious omission is simultaneously an epistemological and political action by which Indigenous voices are both valued and heard in this account.
In the “Indigenous Americas” (Coulthard, 2014), I hold dual citizenship status with Canada and the United States. I was educated in Canada, although the United States has been my home since 1995. At our kitchen table in Halifax, Nova Scotia, my maternal grandmother told stories of being Indigenous. She would gesture to our straight black hair, dark eyes, and brown skin (mine was lighter than my siblings’). While not directly exposed to tribal life or knowing much about our bloodline, through our grandma we embraced our Indigenous heritage. The fact that our family was destitute and uneducated did not seem to dawn on us. With our feeling of ethnic pride, my younger sister, brother, and I developed an attachment to a native identity. However, I harbored a sense of uncertainty, which is why, upon entering college, I withheld the stories and have not identified as Indigenous in job searches, university directories, and so forth.
With the controversies these days around false (and presumed) claims to heritage, I initiated a search for the “truth” of my familial lineage. In 2018, we received the results from 23andMe DNA testing. While prone to accuracy concerns, based on genotype data, the ancestry reported is mainly European, with seriously “degraded” North American Aboriginal ancestry since 1780. The supposedly objective truth about our heritage did not prove consoling. In actuality, degradation as a lens onto our inherited selves caused emotional pain. We face this contradiction in our identity. With my sister, I continue to have lengthy, detailed discussions about our ancestry. The 23andMe results served as the genesis of my deeper introspection about identity issues raised in this book. How we position ourselves and are positioned as Indigenous and settler selves is on the minds of many scholars, artists, and activists, some of whom are named in these pages.
Despite the ambiguity of my heredity and ethnic elusiveness, I’ve been socialized within predominantly White institutions in North America. A colonial framework that silences Aboriginal worldviews, knowledges, and cultures is the norm. In my U.S. educational leadership program, I teach aspiring education leaders who are experienced classroom teachers. Using social justice lenses, the curriculum and leadership courses I teach are grounded in concepts of justice, politics, culture, diversity, and identity. A moral imperative in my discipline anchors contemporary professional standards: Future education leaders need to be prepared within the new context of public education in accordance with 21st-century standards that support diversity, equity, and relevant learning, as well as tenets of care, compassion, and critique (e.g., Center on Great Teachers and Leaders, 2016). The expectation is for leadership and governance, curriculum and instruction, teaching and learning to be student centered as well as ethical, culturally attuned, and diversity minded (Mullen, 2017; Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2016).
At the time of discovery that brought me to the idea for this book, though, I had no agenda other than to open myself up to new learning about Indigenous education and share the results. The more I read from critical perspectives, the more glaring a deficit appeared in 21st-century standards and research, including advocacy discourse. Being bypassed were Indigenous issues, primarily injustices stemming from colonization that affect student success and wellness. This paradigmatic problem is both recognized and addressed herein.
To return for a moment to what I was being taught as a child, in my mainstream public school in Halifax, we learned about Aboriginal tribes, activities, foods, and shelter in a detached way. By detached, I mean that Indigenous perspectives on culture, politics, and education were sidestepped. Colonization was not a topic of conversation, let alone debate, and national sovereignty was assumed without reference to the struggle for tribal sovereignty. Resistance and associated concepts of responsibility, decolonization, and sovereignty in Indigenous life belonged to a distant future. Needless to say, White privilege, power, and control were invisible—left intact. Like my peers, I was not exposed to Indigenous views of life, history, and events, certainly not cultural genocide and such deplorable tactics as American Indian residential schools in Canada (see Coulthard, 2014). To know that an Indigenous point of view existed was beyond reach.
You could say that we were being miseducated. Not cultivated to recognize settlers as foreign invaders and ourselves as colonial–settlers, and the nation and its institutions as a colonial settlement, we were perpetuating the minoritizing of Aboriginal peoples. From the 1970s through the early 1990s, my schooling period in Ontario’s rigorous education system, there was still no mechanism that identified the Indigenous worldview and such facets as psychic trauma and political resiliency. Value-laden, ethnocentric systems through which the Caucasian race assumes dominance and entitlement were implicit in my educational experience (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2015). No Indigenous justice topics were taken up during my schooling years.
Thus, in my Canadian landscape that spanned two provinces, there was no discourse around our prejudice, discrimination, and genocide as settlers or what it might mean to take responsibility for our actions. Nor was there talk about justice along the lines of how we needed to unsettle settlement, and transform ourselves and our world, in order to fully support Aboriginal students with culturally responsive education (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Gay, 2018); humanize Indigenous citizens and bridge the divide through solidarity (Tuck & Yang, 2012); recognize the repercussions of colonization and the demands of decolonization (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2012); become collectively accountable for advocacy, truth, and reconciliation (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [TRC], 2015); and discontinue cultural genocidal practices and acknowledge their existence (TRC, 2012, 2015)
“Outing” myself as a colonial–settler and Indigenous ally, I look to Aboriginal perspectives on de/colonization to be re-educated. This is my path of restoration and reconciliation. I join a growing number of scholars who produce race-conscious discourses in service of human and civil rights, engage pedagogies of discomfort, and teach/present/publish cultural perspectives and pioneering interventions. In Canada and the United States, some settlers express solidarity through literature, art, and movements. Non-Indigenous Canadian progressives include both educators (e.g., Nardozi, 2017) and scholars who, in rarer cases, coteach higher education courses with elders (e.g., Kitchen & Raynor, 2013). In educational circles, such actions build critical awareness and advance an increasingly unified front by beginning with modest numbers, such as student groups. But consider the bar. According to the grassroots collective referenced earlier asserted, “The work of an accomplice in anti-colonial struggle is to attack colonial structures and ideas” (Indigenous Action Media, 2014, p. 7).
In these pages, you’ll encounter Indigenous scholars and practitioners, my textual mentors and guides. I feel compelled to share my new understandings while working toward fundamentally aligning my behavior in equitable, socially just ways. Brought forth are Indigenous perspectives on de/colonization of contemporary education and society through the varied expressions of research, art, and media.
Entering the discourse as an outsider is problematic on different levels, I realize. An anonymous reviewer of my review of literature on Indigenous issues (i.e., Mullen, 2020), however, characterized it as “informative” and “an important, relevant, and noble area of research.” Owing to the encouraging and constructive feedback from academics unknown to me, I’ve also presented on indigeneity at (inter)national conferences, including in Canada. Articles in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in others’ books have followed (Mullen, 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2020). The feedback conveys an impression of this work as having the capacity to educate about present-day Indigenous phenomena through decolonial consciousness and rights-based education. Canadian Aboriginal artists also saw merit in this book upon reviewing passages in advance of providing permission to include their art and my interpretation of it.
As a colonial–settler addressing readers who are settlers, what I have to impart is potentially thought provoking and meaningful, if not educative. Like the settlers who reviewed my materials and attended my lectures, a broader audience might gain appreciation of the wide-ranging issues involved in de/colonization and work toward decolonizing every aspect of our life-worlds. I realize that this book deserves scrutiny owing to my outsider status and the fact that Indigenous peoples want to speak for themselves. This tension exists in these pages wherein impactful cultural knowledge with relevance to education is imparted. Another point worth mentioning is that my articulation of critical tribal views and sacred Indigenous stories based on an eclectic database might not be enough to overcome inherent settler flaws and limitations. Like Robinson, White, and Robinson (2019) have acknowledged, I know that I cannot speak for Indigenous peoples or those cited, so my book is “a reflection of their sharing of themselves” and my understanding of their offerings as critics, visionaries, leaders, researchers, artists, and change agents.
However, I write with the hope that non-Indigenous academics, educators, and leaders can be not only engaged as readers but also recruited in the effort to decolonize education and society. It is my belief that many more settlers who want to contribute to an equitable society are capable of supporting humanitarian agendas where there is strong leadership and momentum in this direction. I also write for all children in the hopes of a better tomorrow. May the seeds of equitable laws, policies, systems, and practices be sown for their sake. I come from a place of bridging with Indigenous peoples and the academics, artists, and activists among them who inform and teach, and who inspire hope and seek reconcilation.
Consider the public good and the possibilities of shared benefit across all races and societies. In economic terms, lighthouses serve as a standard example of the public good—no ship is excluded from using its services, and no ship’s use detracts from other ships’ uses (University of Arizona, n.d.). Lighthouses, located at a vital or hazardous place, assist with navigation over water.
The Inuksuk, too, may have been used to guide travelers in the far north. These Indigenous stone landmarks sit where natural landmarks are uncommon. Inuit and other Indigenous peoples of the Arctic region of North America created this landmark. Inuksuk means “something that acts for or performs the function of a person” and the statues resemble a human form (“Inuksuk,” 2019). Traditionally, the Inuksuk statues represent safety, trust, and reassurance in overcoming hardship. Symbolism endures of leadership, friendship, and interdependence—a reminder of our dependence upon one another. Metaphorically, the Inuksuk embodies the public good.
You could say that the power of public interest is people. The empowerment of Indigenous rights today comes from all who advocate for the betterment of society and who listen to the pleas—students, teachers, parents, professors, education leaders, policymakers, legislators, and other allies (reformed settlers). A politics of humanity specific to race, justice, and solidarity informs this broader conversation. Inspirational sources are many, among them Mohawk university teacher Angus-Monture (1995), who said that non-Aboriginal peoples (settlers) could be of “great assistance if they assisted us in turning the conversation around” in Canada to demand accountability (pp. 253–254). Allies are needed across all nations to advance the discourse to bring about reconciliation and healing in and beyond education systems. The Inuksuk, like the lighthouse, can be called upon as a beacon of the public good.
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