Decolonize Me

I place a photo of an iris here as a distraction, hoping that maybe you'll look at it instead of reading words about how imperfect I am.  I didn't realize the truth of this until the image was already on the page, and it dawned on me that I was saying nothing about an iris in this post.  What does an iris have to do with perfectionism as a troubling and troublesome by-product of white feminism?   Maybe I should explain what's really going on.  I have been part of a group of folks at my university who are interested in catalyzing learning about, and action against, white feminism. White feminism is feminism enacted in service of white supremacy – often unknowingly, but always dangerously.  In other words, white feminism is about feminism applied solely to gender-based inequality.  It doesn’t take intersectionality into account, or the ways that social identities overlap in systems of oppression.  White feminism essentially erases the identities o...

I'm currently participating in a course called "Climate, Complexity, and Relational Accountability," led by the magnificent Vanessa Andreotti .  At the heart of it, I think the course is about decolonizing our relationships with land, self, emotion, spirit, and other humans...  which is thematically resonant with the Decolonizing Educational Relationships book and many other works. In the course, learners have been offered an invitation to read, watch, and do a number of activities to deepen our learning experience.  I've taken up the invitation to engage in a walking exercise called " re-turning time ," and it's literally and figuratively taken me to all kinds of places.   The exercise is conceptualized as a forest walk, with the option to do the walk in whatever outdoor spaces are accessible.  I chose to do the exercise three times: once in my back yard, once in the city, and once on the forest trails adjacent to Royal Roads University campus.  Ther...

  Pictured here is a great gray owl, named Farley, who looked directly into my soul.  I met Farley when I recently visited the North Island Wildlife Recovery Center; he's a permanent resident of the center because he was hit by a car and is no longer able to fly.  I'm introducing you to Farley because he is directly associated with who I'm accountable to.   Prior to a few years ago, I had never, ever thought about who or what I was accountable to, outside of my immediate family.  As I started to learn more about Indigenous ways of knowing I noticed Indigenous friends and colleagues speaking about entire communities they were accountable to.  Although I have historically worked in education and done a fair bit of community engaged work, I have not considered needing to answer to a broader community regarding my own behavior.   I recently read Sae Hoon Stan Chung's chapter in New Directions for Teaching and Learning called The Courage to be Alt...