Undoing human supremacy and white supremacy to transform relationships: An interview with Megan Bang and Ananda Marin

Abstract

Megan Bang (Ojibwe and Italian descent) is a Professor of the Learning Sciences and Psychology at Northwestern University and is currently serving as the Senior Vice President at the Spencer Foundation. Dr. Bang’s research focuses on the complexities of navigating multiple meaning systems in creating and implementing more effective and just learning environments in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics education. Ananda Marin (African American, Choctaw [non-enrolled], European American descent) is an Assistant Professor of Social Research Methodology in UCLA’s Department of Education and faculty in American Indian Studies. Her research explores questions about the cultural nature of teaching, learning, and development. This interview with two Indigenous scholars provides educators with a chance to explore the possibilities of Indigenous worldviews on their climate change praxis. The scholars ask educators to consider how white and human supremacy are perpetuated in current educational paradigms. They discuss the necessity of transformations between relationships between humans and the natural world in fighting climate change. Bang and Marin underline the importance of education that immerses children in learning with places, paying attention to embodied, relational, axiological, and world-building dimensions of storying with lands.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Megan Bang

Megan Bang (Ojibwe and Italian descent) is a Professor of the Learning Sciences and Psychology at Northwestern University and is currently serving as the Senior Vice President at the Spencer Foundation. Dr. Bang studies dynamics of culture, learning, and development broadly with a specific focus on the complexities of navigating multiple meaning systems in creating and implementing more effective and just learning environments in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics education. She focuses on reasoning and decision-making about complex socio-ecological systems in ways that intersect with culture, power, and historicity. Central to this work are dimensions of identity, equity and community engagement. She conducts research in both schools and informal settings across the life course. She has taught in and conducted research in teacher education as well as leadership preparation programs.

Ananda Marin

Ananda Marin is an Assistant Professor of Social Research Methodology in UCLA’s Department of Education and faculty in American Indian Studies. As a learning scientist, she uses video-ethnographic methods and participatory design research to explore questions about the cultural nature of teaching, learning, and development. A primary goal of her work is to desettle and broaden conceptualizations of cognition and learning in ways that are consequential to the communities she partners with and the field of education. To do this, she draws upon Indigenous ways of knowing and sociocultural theories to: (1) develop research on learning across a variety of activities including the everyday (i.e. forest walks) and the professional (e.g. teaching, ensemble performances) and (2) co-design learning contexts with communities that are in right relations with Indigenous lands/waters.

Sandi Wemigwase

As an Anishinaabekwe, Sandi Wemigwase is Odawa from Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians located in Harbor Springs, Michigan. A doctoral candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), Wemigwase’s work aims to influence the experiences Indigenous students have at post-secondary institutions. Wemigwase’s doctoral research explores how universities understand indigeneity with current self-identification practices and why the implementation of a new process of identification would demonstrate an understanding of indigeneity that closer resembles how Indigenous people see themselves. Box-checking only highlights a racial or ethnic understanding of indigeneity, but through Indigenous introductions, her study will attempt to present an outside-of-the-box understanding of indigeneity. Using Indigenous ways of introducing oneself can offer a new way to identify Indigenous students and provide universities with a more accurate understanding of indigeneity.

Preeti Nayak

Preeti Nayak is a PhD candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her research examines how racialized high school teachers and community educators across Southern Ontario engage youth on issues of climate justice. Broadly, she is interested in how educators enact local climate justice pedagogies that make sense of epistemic diversity and racial justice, in the context of the climate crisis.

Fikile Nxumalo

Fikile Nxumalo is Assistant Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, where she directs the Childhood Place Pedagogy Lab. She is also affiliated faculty in the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on anti-colonial place-based and environmental education.