Decolonize Me


Hi there - I'm Robin, and my blog is called, "Decolonize Me."  A quick glance at my photo might tell you why this blog is necessary.  I am a settler Canadian with mixed European ancestry stemming from England, Norway, Germany, Scotland, and Ireland.  After I commissioned my DNA profile from ancestry.ca it became clear, in addition to my translucent skin color, that I'm about as white as it gets. Prior to receiving my ancestry results I was cognitively aware of my whiteness, but the confirmation of my genealogy shifted my consideration of whiteness from my head to the emotional domain of my heart.  

In the past decade or so I've become increasingly aware of my situated-ness as a white person and settler in the North American colonial project.  I have done a lot of learning about the colonial history, structures, and processes that I have been complicit in.  I am a scholar of higher education and I have a keen interest in exploring decolonial approaches to my practice, though I have been met with my own frustration in this as I've encountered a lot of explicit and implicit resistance.  In the face of this resistance, I acknowledge that I have more learning to do, and that I ought to make this learning visible so others can see what it looks like.  Perhaps, for white settlers like me, this will help to mitigate some of the fear and anxiety associated with decolonial learning.  

So, this blog is about my learning, about my attempt to move towards decolonizing myself as I also attempt to advocate for a decolonial agenda in the systems where I work.  I'm going to back up as far in time as I can so that I can attempt an authentic un-learning of my colonial impulses.  I'll try to be as descriptive as I can in reference to my own emotions, behaviors, and thoughts as I engage in this process, and I always welcome a conversation to unpack things further.  


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