I am the new Dean of the Faculty of Education at UVic. I have just finished a 2-year term as the interim director of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC focused on the Climate and Nature Emergency (see Moving With Storms report). I have held a Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change (2014-2022) and the David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education (2022). I am one of the co-founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective (decolonialfutures.net). My latest book "Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity's wrongs and the implications for social activism" was published in 2021.
This masterclass was recorded on December 31, 2022, my last day as David Lam Chair in Multicultur... more This masterclass was recorded on December 31, 2022, my last day as David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education. It presents a social cartography of stacked toxic challenges faced by Indigenous, Black and People of Color (IBPOC) navigating what Sarah Ahmed has called “the will to diversity in academia” (Ahmed, 2012; 2022). Drawing on Sarah Ahmed’s work, as well as other scholars who have taken the “affective turn” in social critique, in this presentation I argue that the institutional will to diversity is not a will or commitment to interrupting the naturalization and normalization of colonialism and/or white supremacy. For more information/resources, please visit:
https://blogs.ubc.ca/davidlamchair/masterclass/
The report "Moving With Storms" presents the highlights and lessons learned from a year-long tran... more The report "Moving With Storms" presents the highlights and lessons learned from a year-long transdisciplinary program focused on the Climate and Nature Emergency (CNE) at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia in 2022/23. The program recognized the CNE as a super-wicked relational challenge driven by colonialism and capitalism and centred Indigenous critiques of false solutions, greenwashing and neocolonialism in the green transition. It invited participants to engage with the CNE as a critical educational inquiry and adopted guiding principles designed to repurpose academic spaces towards redistribution, reparations and restitution. The report offers an example (not a model) that showcases possibilities for pushing the boundaries of what is perceived as imaginable in traditional academic settings. The recording of the online session (e-launch of the report) featuring participants and guests talking about the program can be found here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/movingwithstorms/
The report "Moving With Storms" presents the highlights and lessons learned from a year-long tran... more The report "Moving With Storms" presents the highlights and lessons learned from a year-long transdisciplinary program focused on the Climate and Nature Emergency (CNE) at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia in 2022/23. The program recognized the CNE as a super-wicked relational challenge driven by colonialism and capitalism and centred Indigenous critiques of false solutions, greenwashing and neocolonialism in the green transition. It invited participants to engage with the CNE as a critical educational inquiry and adopted guiding principles designed to repurpose academic spaces towards redistribution, reparations and restitution. The report offers an example (not a model) that showcases possibilities for pushing the boundaries of what is perceived as imaginable in traditional academic settings. The recording of the online session (e-launch of the report) featuring participants and guests talking about the program can be found here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/movingwithstorms/
This is not strictly an academic book, but an educational experiment full of dancing stories, met... more This is not strictly an academic book, but an educational experiment full of dancing stories, metaphors, allegories, creative maps, and exercises that ask you to sit at the limits of our modern desires and imagination. Half-serious warning: don't read it if you are seeking clear-cut answers, easy solutions or self-validation. Two sample chapters are available here. ISBN: 9781623176242
“Beyond a mere critique of modernity, this is a book written for us as people who struggle with the everyday manifestations of modern power. Clear, creative, and cogent, the work offers cutting-edge philosophy at the same time that it furnishes usable guidance for how to cope with the coming perils of colonialism and capitalism. It’s a book for the future, yet written to meet us where we are at right now as individuals living with trauma and facing ethical dilemmas about what it means to take meaningful actions under conditions of complexity.” — KYLE WHYTE, PhD, George Willis Pack Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan
“Asking the question ‘What if racism, colonialism, and all other forms of toxic and contagious divisions are preventable social diseases?’, Hospicing Modernity invites its reader to dare and educate themselves by undergoing a process of self-unmaking. Drawing on and moving beyond traditions of radical pedagogy, such as those inspired by Paulo Freire, the author has created a powerful tool for uncovering, undoing, and recovering from the deadly ways in which modernity also lives and dies as humans experience it subjectively.” — DENISE FERREIRA DA SILVA, PhD, professor at the University of British Columbia Social Justice Institute and author of Toward a Global Idea of Race and Unpayable Debt
This workbook is for people who have some sense that decolonizing higher education is important, ... more This workbook is for people who have some sense that decolonizing higher education is important, including those who have not yet begun this work and don’t know where to start, as well as those who have already begun the work and have become confused, frustrated, or disillusioned along the way.
Decolonization does not simply involve intellectual work, although in higher education contexts this is often the dimension that is most emphasized. It also involves affective work (which entails acknowledging, analyzing, and taking responsibility for processing our often uncomfortable, embodied and emotional responses to the tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties that arise in decolonization efforts); and relational work (which entails mending broken relationships in ways that honour the integrity of this difficult process by focus on the development of deep respect, reciprocity, trust, and consent rather than prioritizing the end or outcome in transactional ways).
For this reason, this workbook does not focus on describing the many ways that colonialism and related systems, including white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and ableism, operate in higher education. There are many important texts that do this work, including many of those listed in the “Additional Resources” at the end of this text. While having a deep understanding of colonialism and its complexities is an essential element of any decolonization effort, in our experience having an intellectual grasp of the harmful effects of colonization does not translate necessarily into a decolonial disposition or orientation. Thus, this text seeks to offer something different.
This publication was produced in the context of the "Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collect... more This publication was produced in the context of the "Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective". It was prepared by Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, Sharon Stein, Rene Suša, Tereza Čajkova, Dani d’Emilia, Elwood Jimmy, Bill Calhoun, Sarah Amsler, Camilla Cardoso, Dino Siwek and Kyra Fay.
We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Musagetes Foundation for the research of the collective, the residencies in Gorca, Slovenia, and the production of this booklet. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Cover image "Earth" by Vanessa Andreotti Website: decolonialfutures.net
This booklet was developed with a specific audience in mind: educators working with global citizenship education in Europe. It presents an overview of the work of the collective and outlines two pedagogical experiments.
The first pedagogical experiment, “Bare Basics” is a program for self or group study consisting of a collection of resources organized around 6 thematic areas (denial of violence, denial of unsustainability, denial of entanglement, how education has helped create the problem, so what/now what?, the difficulties/impossibilities of imagining otherwise).
The second pedagogical experiment is an experiential learning program that we run by request (as a TTT or a residency). It involves mapping, imagination, body and land-based exercises. We invite you to engage with the outline of both programs, starting with our “broccoli seed agreement” on the back of the booklet.
Book launch
This book, written by Elwood Jimmy and myself, with the support of Sharon Stein, wi... more Book launch
This book, written by Elwood Jimmy and myself, with the support of Sharon Stein, will be officially launched at the "with/out modernity" reception on 2 June 2019 at 7 pm at the Fort Camp Lounge room at the Gage Tower, University of British Columbia (copies of the book will be available). With/out modernity is a week-long event that is part of the Humanities and Social Sciences Congress 2019: http://edst.educ.ubc.ca/withoutmodernityposter/ Please come and join us if you are around!
Towards Braiding describes the lessons learned from the first year of an on-going collaborative R&D project between Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti about settler-Indigenous relationships in the Arts sector. This collaboration is hosted and funded by the Musagetes Arts Foundation and involves several modes of relational engagement with Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, scholars, and communities, including visits, gatherings and consultations, addressing 5 "compass" questions:
1. What are the conditions that make possible ethical and rigorous engagement across communities in historical dissonance that can help us move together towards improved relationships and yet-unimaginable wiser futures, as we face unprecedented global challenges?
2. What are the guidelines and practices for ethical and respectful engagement with Indigenous senses and sensibilities (being, knowing, relationships, trauma, place, space and time) that can help us to work together in holding space for the possibility of “braiding” work?
3. How do we learn together to enliven these guidelines with (self-) compassion, generosity, humility, flexibility, depth and rigour, and without turning our back to (or burning out with) the complexities, paradoxes, difficulties and pain of this work?
4. What kind of socially engaged and community anchored Indigenous-led arts-based program can support this process in the long term?
5. What are the expectations in terms of responsibilities of the organization to the place/land and her traditional ancestral custodians from the perspectives of the local Indigenous communities?
This book illustrates how postcolonial theory can be put to work in education. It offers an acces... more This book illustrates how postcolonial theory can be put to work in education. It offers an accessible and handy overview and comparison of theoretical debates related to critiques of Western/Northern hegemony. It presents examples to illustrate how a strand of postcolonial theory was applied in the contexts of educational research/critique, and in pioneering pedagogical projects. This book will help educators to engage with the thinking process from understanding the basic assumptions of postcolonial lenses to the consistent application of these lenses in research/critique and/or in pedagogy and instructional design.
This volume bridges the gap between contemporary theoretical debates and educational policies and... more This volume bridges the gap between contemporary theoretical debates and educational policies and practices of global citizenship education. It applies postcolonial theory as a framework of analysis that attempts to engage with and go beyond essentialism, ethno- and euro-centrisms through a critical examination of contemporary case studies and conceptual issues. From a transdisciplinary and postcolonial perspective, this book offers critiques of notions of development, progress, humanism, culture, representation, identity, and education. It also examines the implications of these critiques in terms of pedagogical approaches, social relations and possible future interventions.
In recent years, strategies and initiatives that aim to build global and development awareness ha... more In recent years, strategies and initiatives that aim to build global and development awareness have proliferated in the educational sector in the European context. Educators are encouraged to ‘bring the world into their classrooms’ by addressing global issues such as social justice, interdependence, diversity, human rights, peace, and international and sustainable development. However, very often, approaches to this kind of education address the agenda for international development in a manner that leaves assumptions unexamined and ignores how the agenda itself is re-interpreted in other contexts. Not addressing these different interpretations may result in the uncritical reinforcement of notions of the supremacy and universality of ‘our’ (Western) ways of seeing and knowing, which can undervalue other knowledge systems and reinforce unequal relations of dialogue and power.
Through Other Eyes (TOE) is an international initiative that offers a free online programme of study to enable educators:
To develop an understanding of how language and systems of belief, values and representation affect the way people interpret the world
To identify how different groups understand issues related to development and their implications for the development agenda
To critically examine these interpretations - both Northern and indigenous - looking at origins and potential implications of assumptions
To identify an ethics for improved dialogue, engagement and mutual learning
To transfer the methodology developed in the programme into the classroom context through the analysis and piloting of sample classroom materials (using creative arts and other strategies)
Based on postcolonial and poststructuralist theories, TOE focuses on indigenous knowledge systems as epistemologies (or ways of knowing) that offer different ontological choices (or choices related to the ways we see reality and being) to those of the so-called ‘Western’ mainstream cultures.
TOE offers four learning units comparing indigenous and mainstream perpectives on education, development, poverty and equality. TOE also offers extra resources for the primary and secondary classrooms.
TOE's primary target audience is student teachers in England, however, the resources have been piloted and used in several contexts, including: in-service teacher education, adult education, language classes and higher education courses in several disciplines.
The programme of study is available in two formats: online and in print. The online course is free of charge: participants need to register to use the course and they can send their electronic learning journals to their lecturers by email through the website. The printed classroom sets (of 10 books or more) can be purchased from Global Education Derby using a purchase request form.
TOE was authored and is coordinated by Dr Vanessa Andreotti (University of Canterbury, Aotearoa/New Zealand) and Prof Lynn ario T. M. de Souza (University of Sao Paulo). A reflection on TOE's theoretical framework and the development learning journey can be found in the article:
Andreotti, V., Souza, L. (2008) Translating theory into practice and walking minefields: lessons from the project ‘Through Other Eyes’. International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning, 1(1):23-36
ABSTRACT This reflective article offers an account of important lessons I have been taught as an ... more ABSTRACT This reflective article offers an account of important lessons I have been taught as an educator in the field of global citizenship education over the last 20 years. The article highlights some of the complexities and challenges in this area, with particular attention to problematic patterns of north–south relations and to the role of education in addressing systemic complicities in harm and unsustainability. The stories of practice presented in this article describe pedagogical experimentations in depth education and gesture towards global citizenship education ‘otherwise’.
This paper proposes a tentative methodology to critically evaluate some aspects of the first phas... more This paper proposes a tentative methodology to critically evaluate some aspects of the first phase of the Brazilian international higher education mobility program called Ciencia sem Fronteiras (Science without Borders SwB ) on its undergraduate scholarship share in Canada. The data to be analyzed come from the first Calls (108/2012-109/2012), and three of the monitoring tools designed by the program administrators: the immediate, straightforward data available on the Painel de Controle and Bolsistas pelo Mundo sites (prepared by the program administrators themselves) and expanded with the further information provided (or not) by the students in their Lattes CV (an electronic standardized record of academic life). For this study, we selected the total of 522 students who were placed in the five Canadian universities which presented the largest number of SwB undergraduate students all through the first phase, spent their period abroad and returned to complete their courses in their...
Resumo Nesse artigo, eu apresento, sem nenhum remorso, quatro narrativas visuais que levantam inu... more Resumo Nesse artigo, eu apresento, sem nenhum remorso, quatro narrativas visuais que levantam inumeras questoes sobre educacao sem oferecer nenhuma resposta imediata. Minha intencao e enfatizar o que esta em jogo em nosso esforco coletivo de levar a educacao para alem de disposicoes historicas que cultivam formas de relacoes nocivas e insustentaveis e que limitam nossas possibilidades atuais de imaginacao e de acao. O enfoque deste artigo e a urgencia de posicionar a educacao de uma forma que permita a pluralizacao de relacoes sociais no presente com o intuito de pluralizar as possibilidades de futuros coletivos (Nandy 2000) que possam viabilizar relacoes de alteridade nao-coercisas, especialmente em relacao aqueles que tem sido excluidos do imaginario humanista ocidental (Gandhi 1998, 39). Palavras-chave: modernidade, conhecimento, humanidade, justica
This masterclass was recorded on December 31, 2022, my last day as David Lam Chair in Multicultur... more This masterclass was recorded on December 31, 2022, my last day as David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education. It presents a social cartography of stacked toxic challenges faced by Indigenous, Black and People of Color (IBPOC) navigating what Sarah Ahmed has called “the will to diversity in academia” (Ahmed, 2012; 2022). Drawing on Sarah Ahmed’s work, as well as other scholars who have taken the “affective turn” in social critique, in this presentation I argue that the institutional will to diversity is not a will or commitment to interrupting the naturalization and normalization of colonialism and/or white supremacy. For more information/resources, please visit:
https://blogs.ubc.ca/davidlamchair/masterclass/
The report "Moving With Storms" presents the highlights and lessons learned from a year-long tran... more The report "Moving With Storms" presents the highlights and lessons learned from a year-long transdisciplinary program focused on the Climate and Nature Emergency (CNE) at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia in 2022/23. The program recognized the CNE as a super-wicked relational challenge driven by colonialism and capitalism and centred Indigenous critiques of false solutions, greenwashing and neocolonialism in the green transition. It invited participants to engage with the CNE as a critical educational inquiry and adopted guiding principles designed to repurpose academic spaces towards redistribution, reparations and restitution. The report offers an example (not a model) that showcases possibilities for pushing the boundaries of what is perceived as imaginable in traditional academic settings. The recording of the online session (e-launch of the report) featuring participants and guests talking about the program can be found here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/movingwithstorms/
The report "Moving With Storms" presents the highlights and lessons learned from a year-long tran... more The report "Moving With Storms" presents the highlights and lessons learned from a year-long transdisciplinary program focused on the Climate and Nature Emergency (CNE) at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia in 2022/23. The program recognized the CNE as a super-wicked relational challenge driven by colonialism and capitalism and centred Indigenous critiques of false solutions, greenwashing and neocolonialism in the green transition. It invited participants to engage with the CNE as a critical educational inquiry and adopted guiding principles designed to repurpose academic spaces towards redistribution, reparations and restitution. The report offers an example (not a model) that showcases possibilities for pushing the boundaries of what is perceived as imaginable in traditional academic settings. The recording of the online session (e-launch of the report) featuring participants and guests talking about the program can be found here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/movingwithstorms/
This is not strictly an academic book, but an educational experiment full of dancing stories, met... more This is not strictly an academic book, but an educational experiment full of dancing stories, metaphors, allegories, creative maps, and exercises that ask you to sit at the limits of our modern desires and imagination. Half-serious warning: don't read it if you are seeking clear-cut answers, easy solutions or self-validation. Two sample chapters are available here. ISBN: 9781623176242
“Beyond a mere critique of modernity, this is a book written for us as people who struggle with the everyday manifestations of modern power. Clear, creative, and cogent, the work offers cutting-edge philosophy at the same time that it furnishes usable guidance for how to cope with the coming perils of colonialism and capitalism. It’s a book for the future, yet written to meet us where we are at right now as individuals living with trauma and facing ethical dilemmas about what it means to take meaningful actions under conditions of complexity.” — KYLE WHYTE, PhD, George Willis Pack Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan
“Asking the question ‘What if racism, colonialism, and all other forms of toxic and contagious divisions are preventable social diseases?’, Hospicing Modernity invites its reader to dare and educate themselves by undergoing a process of self-unmaking. Drawing on and moving beyond traditions of radical pedagogy, such as those inspired by Paulo Freire, the author has created a powerful tool for uncovering, undoing, and recovering from the deadly ways in which modernity also lives and dies as humans experience it subjectively.” — DENISE FERREIRA DA SILVA, PhD, professor at the University of British Columbia Social Justice Institute and author of Toward a Global Idea of Race and Unpayable Debt
This workbook is for people who have some sense that decolonizing higher education is important, ... more This workbook is for people who have some sense that decolonizing higher education is important, including those who have not yet begun this work and don’t know where to start, as well as those who have already begun the work and have become confused, frustrated, or disillusioned along the way.
Decolonization does not simply involve intellectual work, although in higher education contexts this is often the dimension that is most emphasized. It also involves affective work (which entails acknowledging, analyzing, and taking responsibility for processing our often uncomfortable, embodied and emotional responses to the tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties that arise in decolonization efforts); and relational work (which entails mending broken relationships in ways that honour the integrity of this difficult process by focus on the development of deep respect, reciprocity, trust, and consent rather than prioritizing the end or outcome in transactional ways).
For this reason, this workbook does not focus on describing the many ways that colonialism and related systems, including white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and ableism, operate in higher education. There are many important texts that do this work, including many of those listed in the “Additional Resources” at the end of this text. While having a deep understanding of colonialism and its complexities is an essential element of any decolonization effort, in our experience having an intellectual grasp of the harmful effects of colonization does not translate necessarily into a decolonial disposition or orientation. Thus, this text seeks to offer something different.
This publication was produced in the context of the "Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collect... more This publication was produced in the context of the "Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective". It was prepared by Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, Sharon Stein, Rene Suša, Tereza Čajkova, Dani d’Emilia, Elwood Jimmy, Bill Calhoun, Sarah Amsler, Camilla Cardoso, Dino Siwek and Kyra Fay.
We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Musagetes Foundation for the research of the collective, the residencies in Gorca, Slovenia, and the production of this booklet. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Cover image "Earth" by Vanessa Andreotti Website: decolonialfutures.net
This booklet was developed with a specific audience in mind: educators working with global citizenship education in Europe. It presents an overview of the work of the collective and outlines two pedagogical experiments.
The first pedagogical experiment, “Bare Basics” is a program for self or group study consisting of a collection of resources organized around 6 thematic areas (denial of violence, denial of unsustainability, denial of entanglement, how education has helped create the problem, so what/now what?, the difficulties/impossibilities of imagining otherwise).
The second pedagogical experiment is an experiential learning program that we run by request (as a TTT or a residency). It involves mapping, imagination, body and land-based exercises. We invite you to engage with the outline of both programs, starting with our “broccoli seed agreement” on the back of the booklet.
Book launch
This book, written by Elwood Jimmy and myself, with the support of Sharon Stein, wi... more Book launch
This book, written by Elwood Jimmy and myself, with the support of Sharon Stein, will be officially launched at the "with/out modernity" reception on 2 June 2019 at 7 pm at the Fort Camp Lounge room at the Gage Tower, University of British Columbia (copies of the book will be available). With/out modernity is a week-long event that is part of the Humanities and Social Sciences Congress 2019: http://edst.educ.ubc.ca/withoutmodernityposter/ Please come and join us if you are around!
Towards Braiding describes the lessons learned from the first year of an on-going collaborative R&D project between Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti about settler-Indigenous relationships in the Arts sector. This collaboration is hosted and funded by the Musagetes Arts Foundation and involves several modes of relational engagement with Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, scholars, and communities, including visits, gatherings and consultations, addressing 5 "compass" questions:
1. What are the conditions that make possible ethical and rigorous engagement across communities in historical dissonance that can help us move together towards improved relationships and yet-unimaginable wiser futures, as we face unprecedented global challenges?
2. What are the guidelines and practices for ethical and respectful engagement with Indigenous senses and sensibilities (being, knowing, relationships, trauma, place, space and time) that can help us to work together in holding space for the possibility of “braiding” work?
3. How do we learn together to enliven these guidelines with (self-) compassion, generosity, humility, flexibility, depth and rigour, and without turning our back to (or burning out with) the complexities, paradoxes, difficulties and pain of this work?
4. What kind of socially engaged and community anchored Indigenous-led arts-based program can support this process in the long term?
5. What are the expectations in terms of responsibilities of the organization to the place/land and her traditional ancestral custodians from the perspectives of the local Indigenous communities?
This book illustrates how postcolonial theory can be put to work in education. It offers an acces... more This book illustrates how postcolonial theory can be put to work in education. It offers an accessible and handy overview and comparison of theoretical debates related to critiques of Western/Northern hegemony. It presents examples to illustrate how a strand of postcolonial theory was applied in the contexts of educational research/critique, and in pioneering pedagogical projects. This book will help educators to engage with the thinking process from understanding the basic assumptions of postcolonial lenses to the consistent application of these lenses in research/critique and/or in pedagogy and instructional design.
This volume bridges the gap between contemporary theoretical debates and educational policies and... more This volume bridges the gap between contemporary theoretical debates and educational policies and practices of global citizenship education. It applies postcolonial theory as a framework of analysis that attempts to engage with and go beyond essentialism, ethno- and euro-centrisms through a critical examination of contemporary case studies and conceptual issues. From a transdisciplinary and postcolonial perspective, this book offers critiques of notions of development, progress, humanism, culture, representation, identity, and education. It also examines the implications of these critiques in terms of pedagogical approaches, social relations and possible future interventions.
In recent years, strategies and initiatives that aim to build global and development awareness ha... more In recent years, strategies and initiatives that aim to build global and development awareness have proliferated in the educational sector in the European context. Educators are encouraged to ‘bring the world into their classrooms’ by addressing global issues such as social justice, interdependence, diversity, human rights, peace, and international and sustainable development. However, very often, approaches to this kind of education address the agenda for international development in a manner that leaves assumptions unexamined and ignores how the agenda itself is re-interpreted in other contexts. Not addressing these different interpretations may result in the uncritical reinforcement of notions of the supremacy and universality of ‘our’ (Western) ways of seeing and knowing, which can undervalue other knowledge systems and reinforce unequal relations of dialogue and power.
Through Other Eyes (TOE) is an international initiative that offers a free online programme of study to enable educators:
To develop an understanding of how language and systems of belief, values and representation affect the way people interpret the world
To identify how different groups understand issues related to development and their implications for the development agenda
To critically examine these interpretations - both Northern and indigenous - looking at origins and potential implications of assumptions
To identify an ethics for improved dialogue, engagement and mutual learning
To transfer the methodology developed in the programme into the classroom context through the analysis and piloting of sample classroom materials (using creative arts and other strategies)
Based on postcolonial and poststructuralist theories, TOE focuses on indigenous knowledge systems as epistemologies (or ways of knowing) that offer different ontological choices (or choices related to the ways we see reality and being) to those of the so-called ‘Western’ mainstream cultures.
TOE offers four learning units comparing indigenous and mainstream perpectives on education, development, poverty and equality. TOE also offers extra resources for the primary and secondary classrooms.
TOE's primary target audience is student teachers in England, however, the resources have been piloted and used in several contexts, including: in-service teacher education, adult education, language classes and higher education courses in several disciplines.
The programme of study is available in two formats: online and in print. The online course is free of charge: participants need to register to use the course and they can send their electronic learning journals to their lecturers by email through the website. The printed classroom sets (of 10 books or more) can be purchased from Global Education Derby using a purchase request form.
TOE was authored and is coordinated by Dr Vanessa Andreotti (University of Canterbury, Aotearoa/New Zealand) and Prof Lynn ario T. M. de Souza (University of Sao Paulo). A reflection on TOE's theoretical framework and the development learning journey can be found in the article:
Andreotti, V., Souza, L. (2008) Translating theory into practice and walking minefields: lessons from the project ‘Through Other Eyes’. International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning, 1(1):23-36
ABSTRACT This reflective article offers an account of important lessons I have been taught as an ... more ABSTRACT This reflective article offers an account of important lessons I have been taught as an educator in the field of global citizenship education over the last 20 years. The article highlights some of the complexities and challenges in this area, with particular attention to problematic patterns of north–south relations and to the role of education in addressing systemic complicities in harm and unsustainability. The stories of practice presented in this article describe pedagogical experimentations in depth education and gesture towards global citizenship education ‘otherwise’.
This paper proposes a tentative methodology to critically evaluate some aspects of the first phas... more This paper proposes a tentative methodology to critically evaluate some aspects of the first phase of the Brazilian international higher education mobility program called Ciencia sem Fronteiras (Science without Borders SwB ) on its undergraduate scholarship share in Canada. The data to be analyzed come from the first Calls (108/2012-109/2012), and three of the monitoring tools designed by the program administrators: the immediate, straightforward data available on the Painel de Controle and Bolsistas pelo Mundo sites (prepared by the program administrators themselves) and expanded with the further information provided (or not) by the students in their Lattes CV (an electronic standardized record of academic life). For this study, we selected the total of 522 students who were placed in the five Canadian universities which presented the largest number of SwB undergraduate students all through the first phase, spent their period abroad and returned to complete their courses in their...
Resumo Nesse artigo, eu apresento, sem nenhum remorso, quatro narrativas visuais que levantam inu... more Resumo Nesse artigo, eu apresento, sem nenhum remorso, quatro narrativas visuais que levantam inumeras questoes sobre educacao sem oferecer nenhuma resposta imediata. Minha intencao e enfatizar o que esta em jogo em nosso esforco coletivo de levar a educacao para alem de disposicoes historicas que cultivam formas de relacoes nocivas e insustentaveis e que limitam nossas possibilidades atuais de imaginacao e de acao. O enfoque deste artigo e a urgencia de posicionar a educacao de uma forma que permita a pluralizacao de relacoes sociais no presente com o intuito de pluralizar as possibilidades de futuros coletivos (Nandy 2000) que possam viabilizar relacoes de alteridade nao-coercisas, especialmente em relacao aqueles que tem sido excluidos do imaginario humanista ocidental (Gandhi 1998, 39). Palavras-chave: modernidade, conhecimento, humanidade, justica
ABSTRACT This article invites us to consider the task of education as we face the end of the worl... more ABSTRACT This article invites us to consider the task of education as we face the end of the world as we have known it. The first part of the article gives an overview of global and educational challenges, drawing attention to how formal education has been complicit in the reproduction of historical and systemic violence, as well as unsustainability. This section also offers a distinction between educational approaches that focus on personal empowerment and the mastery of knowledge and skills, and educational approaches that see the role of education in association with the non-coercive re-arrangement of desires and with responsibility before will. The second part of the paper presents a psychoanalytic experiment that attempts to create a space and the dispositions necessary for difficult conversations about the role of education in preparing us all to confront the potential for social and ecological collapse in our lifetime.
Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 2016
ABSTRACT This article presents some reflections on the dynamics, paradoxes and gaps in academic d... more ABSTRACT This article presents some reflections on the dynamics, paradoxes and gaps in academic discussions of international development education, especially in initiatives related to international experiential service learning and global citizenship education. I focus on the difficulties of starting important conversations about social historical processes that systemically reproduce material, discursive and political inequalities using the concepts of exceptionalism and coloniality. In the second section, key challenges of intelligibility are discussed, and an example of the complexities of introducing a pedagogical tool to address the problems I have identified is offered. I conclude with important questions to be asked when pushing the boundaries of international development education in Canada.
This article focuses on the geo- and body-politics of knowledge production related to global citi... more This article focuses on the geo- and body-politics of knowledge production related to global citizenship education. It introduces a set of concepts and questions, developed in the work of (mainly) Latin American scholars, that problematise Eurocentric conceptualisations of modernity, globalisation, knowledge and ‘being’ with several implications for education. Through conceptual tools that engage the ‘darker side of modernity’, the ‘coloniality
The different meanings attributed to 'global citizenship education'depend on contextual... more The different meanings attributed to 'global citizenship education'depend on contextually situated assumptions about globalisation, citizenship and education that prompt questions about boundaries, flows, power relations, belonging, rights, responsibilities, otherness, interdependence, as well as social reproduction and/or contestation. Where is one speaking from as a 'global citizen', or a 'global educator'? When conceptualised through the Western canon (eg, through Rawls and Dower) in mainstream literature, the threats and ...
This masterclass was recorded on December 31, 2022, my last day as David Lam Chair in Multicultur... more This masterclass was recorded on December 31, 2022, my last day as David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education. It presents a social cartography of stacked toxic challenges faced by Indigenous, Black and People of Color (IBPOC) navigating what Sarah Ahmed has called “the will to diversity in academia” (Ahmed, 2012; 2022). Drawing on Sarah Ahmed’s work, as well as other scholars who have taken the “affective turn” in social critique, in this presentation I argue that the institutional will to diversity is not a will or commitment to interrupting the naturalization and normalization of colonialism and/or white supremacy.
This presentation was created for colleagues who identify as IBPOC as a way to visibilize the complexities, paradoxes, risks, costs, burdens and price we pay as we navigate academic spaces where the naturalization and normalization of colonialism and cultural supremacy are uninterrupted. Since this masterclass was created specifically for an IBPOC audience, it will use language and analyses that may be triggering, or cause cognitive and emotional dissonance, to people who do not identify as IBPOC. If you want to watch this presentation and you are not IBPOC, I ask you to take a step back to observe any resistance, anxiety or discomfort that may emerge for you. If you would like to explore what this discomfort, anxiety and/or resistance can teach you, you will find a list of resources as well as the David Lam Chair report on this link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/davidlamchair/masterclass/.
Interview conducted by Sonja Richter from the Center for Global Learning in Schools (Germany) at ... more Interview conducted by Sonja Richter from the Center for Global Learning in Schools (Germany) at the Congress on Global Citizenship Education (WeltWeitWissen-Kongress) in Bonn which took place in april 2016.
This was a presentation given at the International Principals' Confederation Convention in Helsin... more This was a presentation given at the International Principals' Confederation Convention in Helsinki on 5/08/2015.
This set of depth education diagnostic exercises was created as a thought experiment for settlers... more This set of depth education diagnostic exercises was created as a thought experiment for settlers to engage with some of the tensions and complexities that often emerge in discussions about returning lands to Indigenous peoples in what is currently known as Canada. The set of exercises is grounded on the current context of Indigenous land dispossession in Canada and based on a fictional campaign to support Indigenous Nations to share governance of lands and have stolen lands returned to them. Diagnostic exercises, like the ones presented here, are different from prescriptive exercises. Diagnostic exercises are meant to provoke different responses and to invite you to sit with the diversity and complexity of these responses within and around you. In this sense, they serve as a stimulus for inquiry, where your responses (how you are receiving and processing information and the emotions associated with them) become the real content of the exercise. The exercises were also designed to support you to familiarize yourself with some of the common dynamics that emerge when difficult issues are presented, like settler complicity in colonial violence or Indigenous aspirations for land back.
Panel contribution to the ESD versus Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany on 14 November 20... more Panel contribution to the ESD versus Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany on 14 November 2017. This conference was organized by the ESD Expert Net and happened as a parallel event to COP23, the UN Climate Change Summit.
The term 'global citizenship' has many interpretations. The approach to global citizenship I justify as essential for climate change conversations today is different from traditional conceptualizations that tend to focus on prescribed values and competencies that extend the concerns and good will of national citizens outwards. I argue that the global citizenship that could make a difference for the unprecedented challenges facing the planet and humanity today needs to propel human existence beyond a single story of progress, development and human evolution: beyond exchange value and consumerism, identities and belonging defined by territorial borders, the separation of humans from nature and the totalizing rationality of individualism.
This poem was written in a difficult context of backlash towards immigrants in a small city in th... more This poem was written in a difficult context of backlash towards immigrants in a small city in the North of Finland.
This article explores the concepts of transnational and critical literacies in developmentand glo... more This article explores the concepts of transnational and critical literacies in developmentand global citizenship education. Critical literacy, as defined in this text, emphasizesthe need for a careful examination of collective social scripts (e.g. of progress,knowledge, belonging, and identity) as a practice of responsible intellectualengagement across all sectors. Transnational literacy is defined as an examinationof the dynamics of globalisation and how it can be negotiated. In the first part ofthis article, I introduce the concept of critical literacy in global citizenship educationoffering examples of my own academic and pedagogical practice in this area.In the second part, I introduce the idea of transnational literacy with examplesfrom international development education. In the last part, I present a cartographywith four different “root” narratives as a stimulus for dialogue and analyses thatuses both critical and transnational literacies and that may clarify concepts andopen new possibilities for thinking and practice in education.
The growing pressure to decolonize and Indigenize cultural and educational organizations has expo... more The growing pressure to decolonize and Indigenize cultural and educational organizations has exposed the paradoxes and difficulties of developing more generative relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, including non-Indigenous communities that are themselves targets of systemic violence. Our work examines the complexities and paradoxes of decolonization and Indigenization, including multiple understandings, conflicting aspirations, contradictory desires, institutional instrumentalizations, heterogeneity within and between Indigenous communities and enduring limitations of efforts in this area. This article offers an analysis of common harmful patterns of relationship that are often reproduced in efforts to "include" Indigenous peoples in non-Indigenous organizations in what is known as Canada. We emphasize that these patterns are difficult to communicate/translate to non-Indigenous audiences, and therefore we invite readers to engage with these patterns using different points of entry. We start with an overview of the work of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures arts/research/ecology collective and the "Towards Braiding" mode of inquiry, which provide the context for our work. Next, we use this mode of inquiry to present three telling scenarios that illustrate how Indigeneity is consumed in non-Indigenous contexts and institutions. We conclude the article with a reflection about the difficult path towards non-consumptive modes of engagement with Indigenous peoples grounded on long-term relations rooted in trust, respect, reciprocity, consent and accountability i and where difficult conversations can happen without relations falling apart.
For organizations starting this journey…
If you find yourself in a position to “include” Indigeno... more For organizations starting this journey… If you find yourself in a position to “include” Indigenous peoples and perspectives in your organization, then there are many practical, ethical, and educational dimensions and implications to consider before and while doing so. In particular, it is important to consider how your invitation might end up reproducing harmful patterns of relationship and representation, even if your intention is to do just the opposite. The following questions may help you think through your expectations, your intentions, and the impact of your choices, and to think systemically how these are rooted in a larger social and historical context. We offer both general guiding questions for reflection and discussion, as well as point to some “red flags” that commonly emerge in the context of these engagements and which warrant pause and further consideration before pursuing efforts to include Indigenous peoples and perspectives.
In this article I use tapestry as a metaphor to present threads in the work of scholars who have ... more In this article I use tapestry as a metaphor to present threads in the work of scholars who have problematized the affective and intellectual economies of colonial modernity, and who have pointed to the difficulties of translating perspectives and mobilizing horizons of hope that are not intelligible within modernity’s parameters of intelligibility.
New and resurgent movements to decolonise higher education are increasingly found throughout the ... more New and resurgent movements to decolonise higher education are increasingly found throughout the globe in the context of settler colonies, former colonies, and former colonial metropoles alike. As Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars located in what is currently known as Canada, in this chapter, we reflect on what we have learned from mainstream efforts to address the country’s history of harm toward Indigenous peoples, and specifically, to address the ongoing role of higher education in colonialism. These efforts have created precarious openings for not only reflecting on but also transforming universities within a still-colonial society. Without dismissing the possibilities enabled by these openings, we find that in practice many circular patterns emerge that reproduce underlying colonial ways of knowing, doing, desiring, and being that make up the primary infrastructures of modern modes of existence. While the mainstream academic imperative would require that we follow-up this diagnosis with prescriptive solutions for how to interrupt these colonial patterns in order to arrive at a predetermined decolonised future (decolonisation as a singular event), we suggest instead that decolonisation requires a long-term commitment to sit with and work through our individual and collective investments in harmful patterns so that we might disinvest from them and learn to be otherwise (decolonisation as an ongoing process). Particularly in the context of contemporary crises that are themselves a product of harmful and unsustainable modes of life – climate change, political instability, economic insecurity – only the latter approach to decolonisation offers the potential to open up new possibilities for current and future generations to learn to live together differently on a finite planet. Our conception of decolonisation takes on a holistic view, one that transcends or rather challenges an anthropocentric worldview and begins to take seriously our collective commons as the starting point for conversation around justice, in its substantive form. Further, in this context, the need for alternative horizons of possibility takes on a renewed urgency.
We begin the chapter by briefly reviewing the primary dimensions of colonialism and current efforts to address colonialism in the Canadian higher education context, so as to situate our contribution. Then, we review critical commentaries on the limits of approaches to decolonisation that are premised on the inclusion of (Indigenous) difference and do little to address the underlying colonial conditions of possibility for the institution. Rather than diagnose the problem of inclusion as one of tokenism that can be addressed through more radicalised inclusion (e.g. centring marginalised knowledges), we suggest that inclusion itself is a flawed proposition as it presumes the underlying continuity of what we diagnose as an inherently unsustainable and violent system with its accompanying set of institutions and subjectivities. In order to gesture toward what might be possible if we did not presume that the modern/colonial university can or should be salvaged, we propose two pedagogical invitations that gesture toward the decolonisation of higher education as a complex, multi-layered process of learning to be otherwise: 1) Starting and staying with the complexities and difficulties involved in making change, including the structural complicity of those making change, so as to develop the necessary stamina for long-term transformation; 2) Drawing on Santos’s notion of an ecology of knowledges and ignorances, while developing the ability to discern the contextually-relevant gifts and limitations of all ways of knowing, so as to ultimately cultivate socially, historically, and ecologically accountable pluralistic propositional thinking.
Decolonising Development in Education: Rethinking, Reframing and Reimagining Possibilities, 2024
If we cannot face, process, and compost the harms in which we are implicated, there is literally ... more If we cannot face, process, and compost the harms in which we are implicated, there is literally zero chance of weaving something different. keywords: human wrongs; single story; systemic violence; fractured relationships; unsustainable future This is a pre-print of a poem to be published in the book "Decolonising Development in Education: Rethinking, Reframing and Reimagining Possibilities" edited by Crain Soudien and Moira V. Faul.
For nearly five centuries, universities around the globe have contributed to colonial social rela... more For nearly five centuries, universities around the globe have contributed to colonial social relations and unsustainable ecological practices (Andreotti et al., 2015; Boggs & Mitchell, 2018; Boidin, Cohen, & Grosfoguel, 2012; Chatterjee & Maira, 2014; Grande, 2018; Hunt, 2022; La Paperson, 2017; Minthorn & Nelson, 2018; Patel, 2021; Stein, 2022; Stewart-Ambo & Yang, 2021; Tachine, 2022; Wilder, 2013). Many higher education institutions have been funded (directly or via donors) through the profits made through the slave trade and the expropriation and exploitation of dispossessed lands. University educators have played a central role in preparing graduates to serve as professionals who operationalize structures of domination and extraction in various sectors of society (Pidgeon, 2022). University researchers have also produced knowledge that has rationalized and operationalized the advancement of racial and colonial violence (genocide) (Wilder, 2013), ecological degradation (ecocide) (La Paperson, 2017), and the destruction as well as the appropriation of non-Western knowledge systems (epistemicide) (Dennis & Robin, 2020; Simpson, 2004; Tuhiwai Smith, 1999).
Over the past ten years, in response to social movements calling for racial and de-/anti-colonial justice, a growing number of colleges and universities around the world have made public commitments to address their legacies of colonialism and slavery. Such commitments take the form of public apologies, name changes, land acknowledgements, and various pledges to support students, faculty, and students of colour. However, critical scholars and activists point out that apologies, aspirational statements, and symbolic gestures of inclusion will ring hollow if they are not accompanied by more substantive commitments to enact restitution and interrupt ongoing colonial relations (Ahenakew, 2016; Daigle, 2019; Pidgeon, 2016; Jimmy & Andreotti, 2021). Critics observe these commitments tend to be calibrated by a perceived imperative to transcend complicity in harm in order to ensure the seamless futurity of the institution, rather than by a commitment to substantively repair that harm (Stein, 2022).
In this contribution, we offer a social cartography of different possible approaches to addressing universities’ roles in racial and colonial violence. In doing so, we invite critical and self-reflexive engagements with the assumptions and goals that orient these different approaches, rather than collapsing all conversations about racism and colonialism into matters of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). While we remain uncertain whether it is possible for universities to “right the wrongs that brought them into being” (Belcourt, 2018), we emphasize our collective responsibility to do the work of confronting the historical and ongoing role of universities in genocide, ecocide, and epistemicide, and mobilizing possibilities to enact material, relational, and epistemic repair alongside affected communities. Rather than assume we must know how to undertake this work at the outset, we suggest treating it as an ongoing, self-implicating inquiry through which we learn from the inevitable mistakes and failures alongside the successes of different, inherently limited, contextually relevant interventions in practice.
Many pedagogies that seek to address the climate and nature emergency (CNE) promise hope and solu... more Many pedagogies that seek to address the climate and nature emergency (CNE) promise hope and solutions for an idealized future. In this article, we suggest these pedagogies are rooted in the same modern/colonial system that created the CNE and other ‘wicked’ socio-ecological challenges in the first place, and thus they are not well-suited for preparing students to navigate these challenges. We also ask what kind of climate education could invite students to interrupt the reproduction of colonial futures, and deepen their sense of social and ecological responsibility in the present. As one possible response to this question, we offer an outline for climate education otherwise, which seeks to prepare students with the stamina and the intellectual, affective, and relational capacities that could enable more justice-oriented coordinated responses to current and coming challenges.
This workbook provides an invitation to non-Indigenous (especially white) people to begin some of... more This workbook provides an invitation to non-Indigenous (especially white) people to begin some of the learning and unlearning that is a precondition for decolonizing work in ways that do not create more (uncompensated) labour for Indigenous people. This workbook also seeks to prepare those who engage with it to create more space for the complexities, tensions, discomforts, and contradictions that are inevitably involved in the practice of decolonization. We issue an invitation to non-Indigenous people to ‘grow up’ and out of their presumed entitlements and exceptionalisms, and into a sense of responsibility not premised on calculated, perceived benefits.
This chapter presents an approach to "educating for global citizenship" that the authors call glo... more This chapter presents an approach to "educating for global citizenship" that the authors call global citizenship otherwise. This approach to global citizenship education (GCE) invites learners to decenter themselves, deepen their sense of responsibility, and disinvest from harmful desires so that we might learn to (co)exist differently on a shared planet. Global citizenship otherwise is partly inspired by decolonial, postcolonial, and Indigenous critiques that denaturalize the harmful underside of the shiny promises offered by nation-states, global capital, universal knowledge, and separability, which we have summarized as the primary dimensions of the metaphorical "house modernity built".
This text weaves together Indigenous teachings that affirm that if we approach the potential, lik... more This text weaves together Indigenous teachings that affirm that if we approach the potential, likelihood or inevitability of the collapse of our current system with relational maturity, sobriety and accountability we will be taught to heal our relations and coexist differently with each other and the Earth. This text was collaboratively written by a collective of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, artists, educators, and activists from the Global North and South. The collaborative process was coordinated by Cash Ahenakew, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples’ Health and Wellbeing.
Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education (NJCIE), 2020
In this article, we reflect on learnings from our collaborative efforts to engage with the comple... more In this article, we reflect on learnings from our collaborative efforts to engage with the complexities and challenges of decolonization across varied educational contexts within the Americas. To do so, we consider multiple interpretations of decolonization, and multiple dimensions of decolonial theory and practice. Rather than offer normative definitions or prescriptions for what decolonization entails or how it should be enacted, we seek to foster greater sensitivity to the potential circularities in this work, and identify opportunities and openings for responsible, context-specific collective experiments with otherwise possibilities for (co)existence. Thus, we emphasize a pedagogical approach to decolonization that works with and through complexity, uncertainty, and complicity in order to “stay with the trouble.”
Historicizing Curriculum Knowledge Translation on a Global Landscape, 2021
In this chapter I weave a tapestry of theoretical threads that combine postcolonial, decolonial a... more In this chapter I weave a tapestry of theoretical threads that combine postcolonial, decolonial and psychoanalytical concerns and that (to a great extent) inform the work of the "Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures" arts/research collective, of which I am a part. The thread-insights are intentionally organized in a non-linear way, requesting from the reader the labor of contextualization and re-contextualization as an effort of co-weaving reciprocity. The weaving interlaces threads in the works of David Scott, Leela Ghandi, Ashis Nandy, Ananya Roy, Ilan Kapoor, Michalinos Zembylas, Nick Mitchel, Gayatri Spivak and Denise Ferreira da Silva, with Carl Mika's work being woven across all threads. The patterns that are woven in this process attempt to visibilize problematic normalized affective and intellectual economies focused on mastery, progress and universality at work in different attempts to critique and transform the world through human agency and imagination. They highlight the limits of modern-colonial frames of desire and intelligibility in terms of wording-the-world to control it, and the onto-epistemic difficulties of wanting, hoping and imagining something genuinely different from the parameters of reality, existence and desirability that one has inherited. The conclusion of this chapter outlines selected aspects of the work of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective and the collective's modest attempts to issue an invitation for horizons of hope to be set beyond what is imaginable within "the house modernity built". David Scott's thread In 'Refashioning futures: Criticism after postcoloniality', David Scott (1999) presents an empathetic critique of representational and epistemological claims that have been emphasized in postcolonial theory as foundational for justice-to-come (see also Andreotti 2014). In his critique, he focuses on the 'essentialism versus non-essentialism debate', drawing attention to how it reinforces a circular intellectual economy of competition for a position of epistemic privilege. He shows that the unexamined terms of intelligibility normalized in this intellectual economy severely constrain what can be imagined, asked, wanted or talked about in the actual debate. He illustrates this by showing how anti-essentialist modes of critique attempt to expose the naivety of essentialist positions using an 'epistemological law' (p. 9) that declares that cultures are heterogeneous, subjectivities are inscripted in language, identities are fluid, community borders are constructed, and so on. This strategy of delegitimisation and dismissal of essentialism, according to Scott, is used to establish epistemological superiority by historicizing answers to questions that are left unexamined. Scott explains: The anti-essentialists are not interested in what constellation of historically constituted demands may have produced the supposedly 'essentialist' formulations. They are not interested in determining what the strategic task at hand was or what the epistemic and ideological material conditions were that formed the discursive
Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education., 2020
In this article, we reflect on learnings from our collaborative efforts to engage with the comple... more In this article, we reflect on learnings from our collaborative efforts to engage with the complexities and challenges of decolonization across varied educational contexts within the Americas. To do so, we consider multiple interpretations of decolonization, and multiple dimensions of decolonial theory and practice. Rather than offer normative definitions or prescriptions for what decolonization entails or how it should be enacted, we seek to foster greater sensitivity to the potential circularities in this work, and identify opportunities and openings for responsible, context-specific collective experiments with otherwise possibilities for (co)existence. Thus, we emphasize a pedagogical approach to decolonization that works with and through complexity, uncertainty, and complicity in order to "stay with the trouble."
Internationalization continues to be a priority within many Canadian universities. While it is im... more Internationalization continues to be a priority within many Canadian universities. While it is imperative to attend to the ethical dilemmas that accompany the intensification of internationalization, different ethical frameworks operate according to different orientating assumptions. In this paper, we seek to pluralize and deepen conversations about the ethics of internationalization by illustrating how three global ethics approaches address questions of international student mobility, study and service abroad, and internationalizing the curriculum. We conclude by emphasizing the need for both scholars and practitioners to engage in multi-voiced, critically-informed analyses, and dissensual conversations about complex ethical dilemmas related to internationalization.
The Huni Kui Indigenous people are an integral part of the Amazon Rainforest. They don't differen... more The Huni Kui Indigenous people are an integral part of the Amazon Rainforest. They don't differentiate between humans and nature. For them, there is only "nature" and humans are part of it. They have historically put their lives on the line to protect the Amazon biome and, like other Indigenous land-and water-protectors, many of their leaders have lost their lives in the fight against
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https://blogs.ubc.ca/davidlamchair/masterclass/
ISBN: 9781623176242
“Beyond a mere critique of modernity, this is a book written for us as people who struggle with the everyday manifestations of modern power. Clear, creative, and cogent, the work offers cutting-edge philosophy at the same time that it furnishes usable guidance for how to cope with the coming perils of colonialism and capitalism. It’s a book for the future, yet written to meet us where we are at right now as individuals living with trauma and facing ethical dilemmas about what it means to take meaningful actions under conditions of complexity.”
— KYLE WHYTE, PhD, George Willis Pack Professor of Environment
and Sustainability at the University of Michigan
“Asking the question ‘What if racism, colonialism, and all other forms of toxic and contagious divisions are preventable social diseases?’, Hospicing Modernity invites its reader to dare and educate themselves by undergoing a process of self-unmaking. Drawing on and moving beyond traditions of radical pedagogy, such as those inspired by Paulo Freire, the author has created a powerful tool for uncovering, undoing, and recovering from the deadly ways in which modernity also lives and dies as humans experience it subjectively.”
— DENISE FERREIRA DA SILVA, PhD, professor at the University of British Columbia Social Justice Institute and author of Toward a Global Idea of Race and Unpayable Debt
Decolonization does not simply involve intellectual work, although in higher education contexts this is often the dimension that is most emphasized. It also involves affective work (which entails acknowledging, analyzing, and taking responsibility for processing our often uncomfortable, embodied and emotional responses to the tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties that arise in decolonization efforts); and relational work (which entails mending broken relationships in ways that honour the integrity of this difficult process by focus on the development of deep respect, reciprocity, trust, and consent rather than prioritizing the end or outcome in transactional ways).
For this reason, this workbook does not focus on describing the many ways that colonialism and related systems, including white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and ableism, operate in higher education. There are many important texts that do this work, including many of those listed in the “Additional Resources” at the end of this text. While having a deep understanding of colonialism and its complexities is an essential element of any decolonization effort, in our experience having an intellectual grasp of the harmful effects of colonization does not translate necessarily into a decolonial disposition or orientation. Thus, this text seeks to offer something different.
We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Musagetes Foundation for the research of the collective, the residencies in Gorca, Slovenia, and the production of this booklet. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Cover image "Earth" by Vanessa Andreotti Website: decolonialfutures.net
This booklet was developed with a specific audience in mind: educators working with global citizenship education in Europe. It presents an overview of the work of the collective and outlines two pedagogical experiments.
The first pedagogical experiment, “Bare Basics” is a program for self or group study consisting of a collection of resources organized around 6 thematic areas (denial of violence, denial of unsustainability, denial of entanglement, how education has helped create the problem, so what/now what?, the difficulties/impossibilities of imagining otherwise).
The second pedagogical experiment is an experiential learning program that we run by request (as a TTT or a residency). It involves mapping, imagination, body and land-based exercises. We invite you to engage with the outline of both programs, starting with our “broccoli seed agreement” on the back of the booklet.
This book, written by Elwood Jimmy and myself, with the support of Sharon Stein, will be officially launched at the "with/out modernity" reception on 2 June 2019 at 7 pm at the Fort Camp Lounge room at the Gage Tower, University of British Columbia (copies of the book will be available). With/out modernity is a week-long event that is part of the Humanities and Social Sciences Congress 2019: http://edst.educ.ubc.ca/withoutmodernityposter/
Please come and join us if you are around!
Towards Braiding describes the lessons learned from the first year of an on-going collaborative R&D project between Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti about settler-Indigenous relationships in the Arts sector. This collaboration is hosted and funded by the Musagetes Arts Foundation and involves several modes of relational engagement with Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, scholars, and communities, including visits, gatherings and consultations, addressing 5 "compass" questions:
1. What are the conditions that make possible ethical and rigorous engagement across communities in historical dissonance that can help us move together towards improved relationships and yet-unimaginable wiser futures, as we face unprecedented global challenges?
2. What are the guidelines and practices for ethical and respectful engagement with Indigenous senses and sensibilities (being, knowing, relationships, trauma, place, space and time) that can help us to work together in holding space for the possibility of “braiding” work?
3. How do we learn together to enliven these guidelines with (self-) compassion, generosity, humility, flexibility, depth and rigour, and without turning our back to (or burning out with) the complexities, paradoxes, difficulties and pain of this work?
4. What kind of socially engaged and community anchored Indigenous-led arts-based program can support this process in the long term?
5. What are the expectations in terms of responsibilities of the organization to the place/land and her traditional ancestral custodians from the perspectives of the local Indigenous communities?
ISBN: 978-0-9877238-9-5
Through Other Eyes (TOE) is an international initiative that offers a free online programme of study to enable educators:
To develop an understanding of how language and systems of belief, values and representation affect the way people interpret the world
To identify how different groups understand issues related to development and their implications for the development agenda
To critically examine these interpretations - both Northern and indigenous - looking at origins and potential implications of assumptions
To identify an ethics for improved dialogue, engagement and mutual learning
To transfer the methodology developed in the programme into the classroom context through the analysis and piloting of sample classroom materials (using creative arts and other strategies)
Based on postcolonial and poststructuralist theories, TOE focuses on indigenous knowledge systems as epistemologies (or ways of knowing) that offer different ontological choices (or choices related to the ways we see reality and being) to those of the so-called ‘Western’ mainstream cultures.
TOE offers four learning units comparing indigenous and mainstream perpectives on education, development, poverty and equality. TOE also offers extra resources for the primary and secondary classrooms.
TOE's primary target audience is student teachers in England, however, the resources have been piloted and used in several contexts, including: in-service teacher education, adult education, language classes and higher education courses in several disciplines.
The programme of study is available in two formats: online and in print. The online course is free of charge: participants need to register to use the course and they can send their electronic learning journals to their lecturers by email through the website. The printed classroom sets (of 10 books or more) can be purchased from Global Education Derby using a purchase request form.
TOE was authored and is coordinated by Dr Vanessa Andreotti (University of Canterbury, Aotearoa/New Zealand) and Prof Lynn ario T. M. de Souza (University of Sao Paulo). A reflection on TOE's theoretical framework and the development learning journey can be found in the article:
Andreotti, V., Souza, L. (2008) Translating theory into practice and walking minefields: lessons from the project ‘Through Other Eyes’. International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning, 1(1):23-36
https://blogs.ubc.ca/davidlamchair/masterclass/
ISBN: 9781623176242
“Beyond a mere critique of modernity, this is a book written for us as people who struggle with the everyday manifestations of modern power. Clear, creative, and cogent, the work offers cutting-edge philosophy at the same time that it furnishes usable guidance for how to cope with the coming perils of colonialism and capitalism. It’s a book for the future, yet written to meet us where we are at right now as individuals living with trauma and facing ethical dilemmas about what it means to take meaningful actions under conditions of complexity.”
— KYLE WHYTE, PhD, George Willis Pack Professor of Environment
and Sustainability at the University of Michigan
“Asking the question ‘What if racism, colonialism, and all other forms of toxic and contagious divisions are preventable social diseases?’, Hospicing Modernity invites its reader to dare and educate themselves by undergoing a process of self-unmaking. Drawing on and moving beyond traditions of radical pedagogy, such as those inspired by Paulo Freire, the author has created a powerful tool for uncovering, undoing, and recovering from the deadly ways in which modernity also lives and dies as humans experience it subjectively.”
— DENISE FERREIRA DA SILVA, PhD, professor at the University of British Columbia Social Justice Institute and author of Toward a Global Idea of Race and Unpayable Debt
Decolonization does not simply involve intellectual work, although in higher education contexts this is often the dimension that is most emphasized. It also involves affective work (which entails acknowledging, analyzing, and taking responsibility for processing our often uncomfortable, embodied and emotional responses to the tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties that arise in decolonization efforts); and relational work (which entails mending broken relationships in ways that honour the integrity of this difficult process by focus on the development of deep respect, reciprocity, trust, and consent rather than prioritizing the end or outcome in transactional ways).
For this reason, this workbook does not focus on describing the many ways that colonialism and related systems, including white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and ableism, operate in higher education. There are many important texts that do this work, including many of those listed in the “Additional Resources” at the end of this text. While having a deep understanding of colonialism and its complexities is an essential element of any decolonization effort, in our experience having an intellectual grasp of the harmful effects of colonization does not translate necessarily into a decolonial disposition or orientation. Thus, this text seeks to offer something different.
We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Musagetes Foundation for the research of the collective, the residencies in Gorca, Slovenia, and the production of this booklet. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Cover image "Earth" by Vanessa Andreotti Website: decolonialfutures.net
This booklet was developed with a specific audience in mind: educators working with global citizenship education in Europe. It presents an overview of the work of the collective and outlines two pedagogical experiments.
The first pedagogical experiment, “Bare Basics” is a program for self or group study consisting of a collection of resources organized around 6 thematic areas (denial of violence, denial of unsustainability, denial of entanglement, how education has helped create the problem, so what/now what?, the difficulties/impossibilities of imagining otherwise).
The second pedagogical experiment is an experiential learning program that we run by request (as a TTT or a residency). It involves mapping, imagination, body and land-based exercises. We invite you to engage with the outline of both programs, starting with our “broccoli seed agreement” on the back of the booklet.
This book, written by Elwood Jimmy and myself, with the support of Sharon Stein, will be officially launched at the "with/out modernity" reception on 2 June 2019 at 7 pm at the Fort Camp Lounge room at the Gage Tower, University of British Columbia (copies of the book will be available). With/out modernity is a week-long event that is part of the Humanities and Social Sciences Congress 2019: http://edst.educ.ubc.ca/withoutmodernityposter/
Please come and join us if you are around!
Towards Braiding describes the lessons learned from the first year of an on-going collaborative R&D project between Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti about settler-Indigenous relationships in the Arts sector. This collaboration is hosted and funded by the Musagetes Arts Foundation and involves several modes of relational engagement with Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, scholars, and communities, including visits, gatherings and consultations, addressing 5 "compass" questions:
1. What are the conditions that make possible ethical and rigorous engagement across communities in historical dissonance that can help us move together towards improved relationships and yet-unimaginable wiser futures, as we face unprecedented global challenges?
2. What are the guidelines and practices for ethical and respectful engagement with Indigenous senses and sensibilities (being, knowing, relationships, trauma, place, space and time) that can help us to work together in holding space for the possibility of “braiding” work?
3. How do we learn together to enliven these guidelines with (self-) compassion, generosity, humility, flexibility, depth and rigour, and without turning our back to (or burning out with) the complexities, paradoxes, difficulties and pain of this work?
4. What kind of socially engaged and community anchored Indigenous-led arts-based program can support this process in the long term?
5. What are the expectations in terms of responsibilities of the organization to the place/land and her traditional ancestral custodians from the perspectives of the local Indigenous communities?
ISBN: 978-0-9877238-9-5
Through Other Eyes (TOE) is an international initiative that offers a free online programme of study to enable educators:
To develop an understanding of how language and systems of belief, values and representation affect the way people interpret the world
To identify how different groups understand issues related to development and their implications for the development agenda
To critically examine these interpretations - both Northern and indigenous - looking at origins and potential implications of assumptions
To identify an ethics for improved dialogue, engagement and mutual learning
To transfer the methodology developed in the programme into the classroom context through the analysis and piloting of sample classroom materials (using creative arts and other strategies)
Based on postcolonial and poststructuralist theories, TOE focuses on indigenous knowledge systems as epistemologies (or ways of knowing) that offer different ontological choices (or choices related to the ways we see reality and being) to those of the so-called ‘Western’ mainstream cultures.
TOE offers four learning units comparing indigenous and mainstream perpectives on education, development, poverty and equality. TOE also offers extra resources for the primary and secondary classrooms.
TOE's primary target audience is student teachers in England, however, the resources have been piloted and used in several contexts, including: in-service teacher education, adult education, language classes and higher education courses in several disciplines.
The programme of study is available in two formats: online and in print. The online course is free of charge: participants need to register to use the course and they can send their electronic learning journals to their lecturers by email through the website. The printed classroom sets (of 10 books or more) can be purchased from Global Education Derby using a purchase request form.
TOE was authored and is coordinated by Dr Vanessa Andreotti (University of Canterbury, Aotearoa/New Zealand) and Prof Lynn ario T. M. de Souza (University of Sao Paulo). A reflection on TOE's theoretical framework and the development learning journey can be found in the article:
Andreotti, V., Souza, L. (2008) Translating theory into practice and walking minefields: lessons from the project ‘Through Other Eyes’. International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning, 1(1):23-36
This presentation was created for colleagues who identify as IBPOC as a way to visibilize the complexities, paradoxes, risks, costs, burdens and price we pay as we navigate academic spaces where the naturalization and normalization of colonialism and cultural supremacy are uninterrupted. Since this masterclass was created specifically for an IBPOC audience, it will use language and analyses that may be triggering, or cause cognitive and emotional dissonance, to people who do not identify as IBPOC. If you want to watch this presentation and you are not IBPOC, I ask you to take a step back to observe any resistance, anxiety or discomfort that may emerge for you. If you would like to explore what this discomfort, anxiety and/or resistance can teach you, you will find a list of resources as well as the David Lam Chair report on this link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/davidlamchair/masterclass/.
http://fachstelle-glis.de/interview-mit-vanessa/
The term 'global citizenship' has many interpretations. The approach to global citizenship I justify as essential for climate change conversations today is different from traditional conceptualizations that tend to focus on prescribed values and competencies that extend the concerns and good will of national citizens outwards. I argue that the global citizenship that could make a difference for the unprecedented challenges facing the planet and humanity today needs to propel human existence beyond a single story of progress, development and human evolution: beyond exchange value and consumerism, identities and belonging defined by territorial borders, the separation of humans from nature and the totalizing rationality of individualism.
If you find yourself in a position to “include” Indigenous peoples and perspectives in your organization, then there are many practical, ethical, and educational dimensions and implications to consider before and while doing so. In particular, it is important to consider how your invitation might end up reproducing harmful patterns of relationship and representation, even if your intention is to do just the opposite. The following questions may help you think through your expectations, your intentions, and the impact of your choices, and to think systemically how these are rooted in a larger social and historical context. We offer both general guiding questions for reflection and discussion, as well as point to some “red flags” that commonly emerge in the context of these engagements and which warrant pause and further consideration before pursuing efforts to include Indigenous peoples and perspectives.
We begin the chapter by briefly reviewing the primary dimensions of colonialism and current efforts to address colonialism in the Canadian higher education context, so as to situate our contribution. Then, we review critical commentaries on the limits of approaches to decolonisation that are premised on the inclusion of (Indigenous) difference and do little to address the underlying colonial conditions of possibility for the institution. Rather than diagnose the problem of inclusion as one of tokenism that can be addressed through more radicalised inclusion (e.g. centring marginalised knowledges), we suggest that inclusion itself is a flawed proposition as it presumes the underlying continuity of what we diagnose as an inherently unsustainable and violent system with its accompanying set of institutions and subjectivities. In order to gesture toward what might be possible if we did not presume that the modern/colonial university can or should be salvaged, we propose two pedagogical invitations that gesture toward the decolonisation of higher education as a complex, multi-layered process of learning to be otherwise: 1) Starting and staying with the complexities and difficulties involved in making change, including the structural complicity of those making change, so as to develop the necessary stamina for long-term transformation; 2) Drawing on Santos’s notion of an ecology of knowledges and ignorances, while developing the ability to discern the contextually-relevant gifts and limitations of all ways of knowing, so as to ultimately cultivate socially, historically, and ecologically accountable pluralistic propositional thinking.
keywords: human wrongs; single story; systemic violence; fractured relationships; unsustainable future
This is a pre-print of a poem to be published in the book "Decolonising Development in Education: Rethinking, Reframing and Reimagining
Possibilities" edited by Crain Soudien and Moira V. Faul.
Over the past ten years, in response to social movements calling for racial and de-/anti-colonial justice, a growing number of colleges and universities around the world have made public commitments to address their legacies of colonialism and slavery. Such commitments take the form of public apologies, name changes, land acknowledgements, and various pledges to support students, faculty, and students of colour. However, critical scholars and activists point out that apologies, aspirational statements, and symbolic gestures of inclusion will ring hollow if they are not accompanied by more substantive commitments to enact restitution and interrupt ongoing colonial relations (Ahenakew, 2016; Daigle, 2019; Pidgeon, 2016; Jimmy & Andreotti, 2021). Critics observe these commitments tend to be calibrated by a perceived imperative to transcend complicity in harm in order to ensure the seamless futurity of the institution, rather than by a commitment to substantively repair that harm (Stein, 2022).
In this contribution, we offer a social cartography of different possible approaches to addressing universities’ roles in racial and colonial violence. In doing so, we invite critical and self-reflexive engagements with the assumptions and goals that orient these different approaches, rather than collapsing all conversations about racism and colonialism into matters of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). While we remain uncertain whether it is possible for universities to “right the wrongs that brought them into being” (Belcourt, 2018), we emphasize our collective responsibility to do the work of confronting the historical and ongoing role of universities in genocide, ecocide, and epistemicide, and mobilizing possibilities to enact material, relational, and epistemic repair alongside affected communities. Rather than assume we must know how to undertake this work at the outset, we suggest treating it as an ongoing, self-implicating inquiry through which we learn from the inevitable mistakes and failures alongside the successes of different, inherently limited, contextually relevant interventions in practice.
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/beyond-doomism-and-solutionism-in-response-to-climate-change/