Knowledge and Decolonial Politics: A Critical Reader offers the perspectives of educators and learners within current developmental settings, highlighting the systemic barriers faced whilst trying to implement decolonial pedagogies and practices. In the hope to challenge the dominance of Western Eurocentric thought in education and international development, the authors of this book offer counter narratives to promote the use of embodied cultural knowledges and histories, along with Indigenous perspectives, in order to subvert Western knowledge systems which are inherently colonial in nature. Changing education as we know it today requires creating spaces in which multiple knowledges can co-exist and benefit from one another. These spaces will ensure the continuity of decolonial practices and shape the intellectual politics of future generations.
Contributors are: Olivia Aiello, Nana Bediako-Amoah, Shirleen Datt, George J. Sefa Dei, Chisani Doyle-Wood, Candice Griffith, Mandeep Jajj, Wambui Karanja and Lwanga G. Musisi.
George J. Sefa Dei is Professor of Social Justice Education and Director of the Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). He has published extensively in the area of anti-racism education, Black/African and minority schooling, Indigenous knowledges and anti-colonial thought.
Mandeep Jajj is a graduate student in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her research interests lie in anti-colonial, anti-racism, and decolonizing theories, along with development and modernization discourses. Mandeep’s current research explores western “development” theories in relation to issues of economics and education.
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors
Introduction George J. Sefa Dei and Mandeep Jajj 1
Erasing “Educational Gentrification” and Embracing the Possibilities of Indigeneity in the Classroom Nana Bediako-Amoah 2
Decolonizing the Ontario Classroom Candice Griffith 3
Contesting “Development” Chisani Doyle-Wood 4
An Inconvenient Truth: Centering Land as the Site of Indigenous Knowledge Protection Wambui Karanja 5
Spirituality, Education, and Resistance Lwanga Gasuza Musisi 6
Connecting to the Embodied Spirit: Working with the Body as a Healing and Decolonizing Tool Olivia Aiello 7 Futurity of Indigenous Languages Found in White Settler Nation-States: A Case Study on Eurocentric Pedagogy and Curriculums in Canada and South Africa
Shirleen Anushika Datt