2021 Volume 7, Issue 1 ISSN 2575-9922
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Table of Contents1 The Restitution of “Questioning” and Decolonization 1 By Nassim Noroozi Featured Articles on Decolonization and Education Decolonizing Western Political Philosophy 11 By Charles W. Mills Philosophy and the Ethics of Public Alaskan Indigenous Education: A Normative Case Study 35 By B. B. North Finding a Riverview: Anti-Racist Education, Decolonization, and the Development of a District-Wide Wabanaki Studies Curriculum 47 By Fiona Hopper Reciprocal Sympathy in the Thought of Lev Vygotsky and the Indigenous American Metaphor of the Heart: Generating a Unifying Learning Climate with Students from Diverse Cultures 57 By Greg Lendvay Practicing Epistemic Disobedience through Embodying Slow Photography 71 By Reyila Hadeer Does Decolonizing Philosophy Entail Teaching Philosophy as World Literature? 83 By J. Edward Hackett Decolonizing Autoethnography in Kinesiology: Towards Decolonial Water Education 91 Stephanie Woodworth & Caroline Fusco Special Student Section: Decolonization and Education “Is It Too Late to Decolonize?” 111 By Tharonhianén:te Barnes Decolonizing and Deconstructing Education: Learning to Create Space 115 By Sandra Iacovozzi The Colonization of Canada’s Curriculum and Its Effects on Our Societal Knowledge 118 By Alexa LeMarquand High-Key Hierarchy: Coloniality of Knowledge in Music 123 By Jonathan Provost 1 Featured articles have undergone external peer review. Progressive Pedagogical Praxis: The Importance of Adopting Intersectional Frameworks for a Praxis-Oriented Teaching Self 127 By Marie Sakr The Genealogy of Freedom: A Human Rights Perspective 131 By Amanda Sidiras Language & Colonization: Statement of the Problem 134 By Sayeh Sayedayn Journal of School & Society 1 ISSN 2575-9922 7(1) 1-10 ©Author(s) 2021 very snatched lands and resources: we are not The Restitution of dealing with “metaphorical” struggles, so to “Questioning” and speak. It is true that decolonial thinkers have assigned an important role to questioning.1 Decolonization However, and in comparison with the struggle for material and land restitution, the restitution of questioning seems to encompass that very Nassim Noroozi metaphorical essence that scholars have Concordia University cautioned us against.2 Understandably, we are dealing with distinct urgencies that leave us no choice except to prioritize matter over mind, and he invitation to write for this issue of the T put the restitution of material urgencies— Journal of School & Society was itself in the form of rightly—on the top. (Later on, we will see why it a question: “What does decolonization look like is not valid to assume questioning as in education and beyond?” metaphorical.) There was a reason why the invitation Bringing up this caveat is not an analytical revolved around a question. The questioning formality to be mentioned so as to disarm format was not one option amongst many to potential objections. It can itself be the choose from (e.g., a phrase, a sentence, or a continuation of a colonial codification of the question). It was so because I argue that world. Head-shaking or assuming from the “restitution of questioning” is ultimately a beginning that “restitution of questioning is a pressing decolonial struggle. potentially figurative undertaking and therefore I must start with an important caveat about harmful to our struggle” can mean that in our why I used the word restitution as it relates to formulating of the struggle, answers have priority questioning—even though I am aware that over real questions or are preliminary to them coupling the two (restitution and questioning) can be (again, despite the understandable urgency of assumed as problematic: with people attenuated prioritizing struggles). Still, what if assuming by traumatic pasts and with lands occupied and questions or assuming their restitution as “not marred, restitution of questioning does not only pivotal and urgent to decolonization” would be sound non-urgent, but frivolous: a trivial task out along the lines of colonial thinking? of privilege, edging more to lacking in sense, and, The importance of restitution of questioning perhaps, resulting in an understandable shaking gets manifested if we start our discussion from of the head. the following premise: it was the answers that, Restituting inquiry is therefore not amongst other things,3 bulldozed, set in motion, immediately categorized as an urgent struggle or steamrolled colonialism and its exploitations. because we are to allocate—rightly—every To put it more specifically, colonialism was resource possible to cause awareness about the preliminarily premised on answers that preceded 1 Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “On the Coloniality of 3 Nassim Noroozi, “Decolonial Philosophy and Human Rights,” Revista Crítica De Ciências Sociais 114, Education,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, ed. (2017), 117–136. Frantz Fanon, Frantz, Black Skin, White George Noblit (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, Masks (London, UK: Pluto Press, 1967). 2016). 2 Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang "Decolonization is not a Metaphor," Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012). Journal of School & Society 2 ISSN 2575-9922 7(1) 1-10 ©Author(s) 2021 their questions in one way or another, or To demonstrate how this problem premised on answers that were camouflaged as contributed to colonialism, we will look at two questions. Once this is illustrated, then we might case of questions that were fundamental in get a glimpse as to why the restitution of shaping colonial legacies and struggles. We will questioning becomes an ultimate and pressing see how, in each case, X is articulated in the struggle for decolonization. Answers being the syntaxes of the questions and were preliminary to preliminary modes through which colonialism them. proliferated—or according to which colonial inquiries were created and expanded upon in First Case of Colonial Questions: debate—sounds like a grand claim. Especially since, as we will see, it is the questions that have “Are the Amerindians Human become classical debate points.4 Beings?” It was the answers that, This first question was asked by an infamous amongst other things, conquester, Fernandez de Oviedo. To see how bulldozed, set in motion, or an answer had been preliminary to it, we can start with Enrique Dussel’s commentary on the steamrolled colonialism and its question: “The [European philosopher] asked, exploitations. along with Fernández de Oviedo, "are the Amerindians human beings?" That is, “are they For this context, we define “preliminary” as Europeans, and therefore rational animals?”5 foundational, initiating, determining, and that Inquiries about whether or not Indigenous which identifies the threshold and scope of the people have souls and are therefore human questions that were created by the encounters of requires as one of the premises of the question the European conquesters with the rest of the to leave the Native American definition of world. Now that we have defined “preliminary,” humanity outside the [European] definitions of we can move on to the problem of “answers humanity: or, at the very least, it requires a certain being preliminary to colonialism” in the suspicion of the opinions that consider them following way, and with the help of Derrida’s inside this concept. Here, X is present in the concern about “questions”: when and if X following form: the ultimate “civilized human” determines and is articulated in the syntax of a being the European one. X is thus preliminary to question in an encounter with the new. X can be the question about the Amerindian human one particular definition of a concept which is beings: it has initiated it, it has been formative in presented as the ideal and all-encompassing the structure of the question. Here, the European definition of that concept, and therefore definition of the human seems to be “an answer presumed as an ideal answer. Therefore, that has already initiated itself beneath the mask whatever does not correspond to X would be of the question”6 about the encountered human assumed problematic. beings. 4 In the following discussion, I draw upon Lewis Hanke, 5 The actual quote is much more layered and had to All Mankind is One: A Study of the Disputation between adapted for my purposes. See Enrique Dussel, Philosophy Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepulveda in 1550 on of Liberation, trans. Aquila Martinez and Christine the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the American Indians Morkovsky (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985), 2. (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994). 6 See Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978). Journal of School & Society 3 ISSN 2575-9922 7(1) 1-10 ©Author(s) 2021 Dussel also astutely notes the destructive role Second Case of Colonial of the answers. In Dussel’s interpretation, however, the answer is assumed as having been Questions: “Should Indians be created in response to the question, as he expands Educated?” “How Much Should on the consequences of this very response: They Be Educated?” “Are They The theoretical response was of little Becoming Too Educated”? importance. We are still suffering from the practical response. The Amerindians were The second set of questions that were formative suited to forced labor; if not irrational, then in the solidification of colonialism was asked by at least they were brutish, wild, those who implemented and imagined underdeveloped, uncultured because they did educational policies. not have