Disrupting the Settler Colonial University: Decolonial Praxis and Place-Based Education in the Okanagan Valley (British Columbia)

Gahman, Levi and Legault, Gabrielle (2019) Disrupting the Settler Colonial University: Decolonial Praxis and Place-Based Education in the Okanagan Valley (British Columbia). Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30 (1). pp. 50-69.

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Abstract

This article demonstrates how decolonial Placed-Based Education can disrupt a settler colonial academic status quo. We begin by situating our analysis in the unceded Syilx Territories of the Okanagan Valley (British Columbia, Canada) and proceed by illustrating how both taken-for-granted colonial epistemologies and banal exnominations of white supremacy remain orthodox within mainstream Canadian higher education. We next define “decolonial praxis” by drawing from insights offered by critical feminist, anti-racist, and Indigenous scholars and community organizers before moving into a summary of how we embraced theories and strategies of decolonization coupled with Place-Based Education in an introductory Gender and Women’s Studies course. We conclude with our response to the ongoing exclusions being reproduced by neoliberal universities that result from the primacy they grant to Western knowledges and rationales. The piece reveals how decolonial place-based methods can be leveraged against settler colonial institutions, discourses, and logics to unsettle their claims to legitimacy, land, and authority over learning.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Decolonization, settler colonialism, white supremacy, critical pedagogy, Place-Based Education
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	18 Jan 2019 16:47
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 01:06
DOI:	10.1080/10455752.2017.1368680
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3031497