(In)visible encounters with indigeneity: a way towards decolonizing pedagogies in early childhood education

ABSTRACT

Children’s encounters with Indigeneity in public space might mislead educators into believing that young children are learning decolonizing pedagogies in educational spaces. Drawing on a critical place inquiry of young children’s relationships with place, I examine how a regime of (in)visibility continues to prevent educators and children from engaging with decolonizing pedagogies. To account for regimes of (in)visibility in early childhood, I focus on tools of erasure (i.e. street naming and organization, maps, story time) and tools of illusory visibility (i.e. children’s encounters with a local mural). While a settler colonial regime of (in)visibility does not erase Indigeneity completely, it obscures the damage that colonialism impinges on Indigenous communities to this day. An ongoing examination of practices in early childhood education can only move on to decolonizing pedagogies when education opens up space for imagining an Indigenous future paired with a sense of wonder and thinking otherwise among children and educators.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education
• critical place inquiry
• indigeneity
• decolonizing pedagogies
• settler colonialism

Acknowledgements

The author is thankful for the insightful and generous reviewers’ scholarly comments and suggestions. The study received financial support from the UBC Public Scholar Award.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I acknowledge that affirmative frameworks such as the 2019 British Columbia Early Learning Framework (ELF) offer new understandings of curriculum and pedagogical practices in ECE. In tune with the BC ELF, a number of ECE scholars, researchers, and practitioners in Canada have embarked on projects that aim to decolonize pedagogies and practices and create opportunities for such an endeavor. For example, the Early Childhood Education Network of 32 educators runs an expanded professional development project that supports EC educators through their communities and in partnership with post-secondary institutions and the BC Aboriginal Child Care Society. Pedagogical initiatives like this one offer educators a space to reflect on, imagine otherwise, and propose decolonizing pedagogies.

2 My study was conducted with ethics approval from the University of British Columbia, Canada). The names that I use throughout this article to refer to children, educators, and the neighbourhood streets are all pseudonyms to ensure anonymity and confidentiality.

3 Gentrification has also operated as a mechanism to displace Indigenous communities from the neighbourhood. In the last decade, the levels of poverty among the students attending the elementary school near the childcare centre has pushed low-income families, including those with Indigenous backgrounds, out of the area (Kasman 2015; Ley and Dobson 2008). According to the 2016 Census, the neighbourhood has become less diverse (Statistics Canada 2016). As a result, the demographics of the childcare centre have also changed. According to the childcare centre’s director, the socio-economic status of the families of the centre has also changed over the years. Many of the families had to move out of the area primarily because of the higher rents.

4 The specific details about the mural have been changed to ensure anonymity of the centre.

5 My interest in street art came not only from academic literature, but also from my earlier experience in community engagement projects in Chile. Before immigrating to Canada, I lived and worked in Valparaiso, Chile, a city that displays murals everywhere. As part of my job, I supported community projects led by children, youth, and popular educators. I used to walk with them through their neighbourhoods to get inspired by what their places had to offer. Some of those initiatives focused on their neighbourhoods and culminated in community projects that either investigated the history of those murals or even organized them to paint one. Many of the adults who supported these projects, including some mural artists, referred to the political and social legacy of street art in Chile as the reason they became involved. Among their pedagogical value, these projects strengthened children’s experiences of working with community members across generations and socio-cultural backgrounds.