Teaching

What is decolonization, why is it important, and how can we practice it? 

"In Decolonization is Not a Metaphor Tuck and Yang argue that the language of decolonization is often superficially adopted in moves of 'settler innocence'--moves that perpetuate ideas that settlers have a reduced or no responsibility in colonizing Indigenous land and people...According to Tuck and Yang, a common move of settler innocence occurs when people rely too heavily on the notion to ‘decolonize your mind,’ thinking, or knowledge...they note that while this can feel radical and transformative, it is not the sole or final step in decolonization. We cannot only dedicate ourselves to thinking about decolonizing, we must act to decolonize...Decolonization calls for decentering the narrative by which settlers romanticize Indigenous beliefs and surface culture (indigenization). It calls instead for deconstructing settler-imposed systems that continue to oppress Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. Moves of settler innocence domesticate decolonization’s demands of undoing colonialism, eliminating its gendered and racialized hierarchies, and establishing Indigenous sovereignty. The danger of the decolonization metaphor (such as ‘decolonize your mind’) is that it prevents us from actually decolonizing. 'It recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future' rather than recentering Indigenous futures and sovereignty (Tuck and Yang 2012, 3, 35). A settler future is one where settlers can continue to benefit from colonialism and perhaps be minimally aware of their settler privileges...securing an Indigenous future necessitates substantive decolonial actions--actions we must explore and learn to implement. Framing who decolonization work is about and for is an integral step in moving forward with effective decolonial action."

Decolonization Is for Everyone | Nikki Sanchez | TEDxSFU

• "colonization is contingent on historical amnesia"
• "the intergenerational trauma thats also had to happen for settler people to be complicit in such a violent history" and "historical bystander trauma"

"dispel this myth today that decolonization is the work of indigenous people whether you have ancestors that were colonizers or colonized we are all colonized people we need to come together to do [the work of decolonization] with one another equally accepting our roles our locations our privileges and ways in which we can start to move towards a future that looks like healing that looks like justice that looks like dismantling systems of oppression...I've worked with a lot of settler people who really want to do something about this but they don't know where to begin and they feel paralyzed with guilt and shame about this truly ugly history that we've all found ourselves in...this history is not your fault but it absolutely is your responsibility" 

• indigenization by indigenous people (linguistic revitalization, ceremony, land based practice, land based defense) vs decolonization as "work that belongs to all of us"
• "what we can do is we can start to put spokes in wheels of oppression of movements that create our our social systems of inherent inequity"
• "learn who you are and where you came from. address the oppressive systems and histories that enable you to occupy the territory you now do. learn whose land you live on and what has been done to them. find out how you benefit from that history and activate one strategy wherein you can use your privilege from which to dismantle that. share the knowledge that the work of decolonization is for everyone"

decolonization looks like..."living without paralyzing guilt/shame of your identity and the social identity you have inherited" and "giving up social and economic power and privilege that directly disempowers, appropriates and invisiblizes others" and "dismantling patriarchy" and "doing the work to find out who you are, where you came from, and how you got here and committing to build communities that work together to find out where we are going (together) and what our individual roles and responsibilities are in this process" and "celebrating who we are and connecting the unique knowledge we each bring work together to solve our global challenge" 

"ask yourself what you can do in your lifetime what you can do today and in your work and with your passions and with your gifts to start to dismantle a history that none of us should be proud of so that maybe we can offer our an inheritance for our future and ancestors for not only a planet that's livable but a social system and community that's equitable and just"