Decolonizing Indigenous Education

Drawing on treaties, international law, the work of other Indigenous scholars, and especially personal experiences, Marie Battiste documents the nature of Eurocentric models of education, and their devastating impacts on Indigenous knowledge. Chronicling the negative consequences of forced assimilation, racism inherent to colonial systems of education, and the failure of current educational policies for Aboriginal populations, Battiste proposes a new model of education, arguing the preservation of Aboriginal knowledge is an Aboriginal right. Central to this process is the repositioning of Indigenous humanities, sciences, and languages as vital fields of knowledge, revitalizing a knowledge system which incorporates both Indigenous and Eurocentric thinking.

Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada thinks boldly about how to make space for Indigenous knowledges and have an honest discourse on truth and reconciliation. By engaging with Indigenous epistemologies and strategies, the contributors navigate the complexities of the decolonization and indigenization of post-secondary institutions. What is needed in this field is less theorizing and more action: the contributors offer practical steps on how one might positively transform the Canadian academy. Through this lens of action-based solutions, each of the fifteen chapters advances critical scholarship on issues of pedagogy, curriculum, shifting power dynamics, and challenging Eurocentric perspectives in higher education. With contributions from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics from across Canada and in varying academic positions, Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada provides a unique perspective specific to the Canadian education system. Featuring discussion questions, further reading lists, and practical examples of how to engage in decolonization work within the academy, this text is an essential resource for students and scholars studying Indigenous knowledges, education and pedagogies, and curriculum studies.

Indigenous and decolonizing perspectives on education have long persisted alongside colonial models of education, yet too often have been subsumed within the fields of multiculturalism, critical race theory, and progressive education. Timely and compelling, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education features research, theory, and dynamic foundational readings for educators and educational researchers who are looking for possibilities beyond the limits of liberal democratic schooling. Featuring original chapters by authors at the forefront of theorizing, practice, research, and activism, this volume helps define and imagine the exciting interstices between Indigenous and decolonizing studies and education. Each chapter forwards Indigenous principles - such as Land as literacy and water as life - that are grounded in place-specific efforts of creating Indigenous universities and schools, community organizing and social movements, trans and Two Spirit practices, refusals of state policies, and land-based and water-based pedagogies.

"Indian Education for All explains why teachers and schools need to privilege Indigenous knowledge and explicitly integrate decolonization concepts into learning and teaching to address the academic gaps in Native education. The aim of the book is to help teacher educators, school administrators, and policy-makers engage in productive and authentic conversations with tribal communities about what Indigenous education reform should entail"--

Exploring the relationship between the role of education and Indigenous survival, Digital Storytelling in Indigenous Education is an ethnographic exploration of how digital storytelling can be part of a broader project of decolonization of individuals, their families, and communities. By recounting how a remote Indigenous (Métis) community were able to collectively imagine, plan and produce numerous unique digital stories representing counter-narratives to the dominant version of Canadian history, Poitras Pratt provides frameworks, approaches and strategies for the use of digital media and arts for the purpose of cultural memory, community empowerment, and mobilization. The volume provides a valuable example of how a community-based educational project can create and restore intergenerational exchanges through modern media, and covers topics such as: Introducing the Métis and their community; decolonizing education through a Métis approach to research; the ethnographic journey; and translating the work of decolonizing to education. Digital Storytelling in Indigenous Education is the perfect resource for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of Indigenous education, comparative education, and technology education, or those looking to explore the role of modern media in facilitating healing and decolonization in a marginalized community. .

This important book on Land Education offers critical analysis of the paths forward for education on Indigenous land. This analysis discusses the necessity of centring historical and current contexts of colonization in education on and in relation to land. In addition, contributors explore the intersections of environmentalism and Indigenous rights, in part inspired by the realisation that the specifics of geography and community matter for how environmental education can be engaged. This edited volume suggests how place-based pedagogies can respond to issues of colonialism and Indigenous sovereignty. Through dynamic new empirical and conceptual studies, international contributors examine settler colonialism, Indigenous cosmologies, Indigenous land rights, and language as key aspects of Land Education. The book invites readers to rethink 'pedagogies of place' from various Indigenous, postcolonial, and decolonizing perspectives. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

This volume is a collection of research cases illustrating the interrelationships among education, dominance and identity in historical- and contemporary contexts. The cases reflect particular ways in which local-, group, and indigenous identities have been affected by a dominant discourse, how education can support or undermine identity, and how languages (including dominant and sub-dominant languages) and the language of instruction in schools are at the centre of challenges to hegemony and domination in many situations. Examining the issues in their research, the contributors reveal how members of minority-, disadvantaged-, or dominated groups (and the teachers and parents of children in their schools) struggle for recognition, for education in their own language, for acceptance within larger society, or for recognition of the validity of their responses to reform initiatives and policies that address a wider agenda but that fail to take into account key factors such as perceptions and subaltern status.Collectively, the chapters document research employing a variety of methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives, illustrating an array of universal and global issues in the field of comparative and international education. However, each of the cases its own unique character, as research findings and as personal reflections based on the authors' experiential knowledge in particular social, cultural and political contexts. The contexts and regional settings include Chile, Canada, the United States, Hungary and elsewhere in East-Central Europe, France, Germany, Spain, Malaysia, Tanzania, South Africa, Cyprus, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.