In this instalment of Engaged, Thomas Peace discusses decolonization and Indigenization in the teaching of North American history with Marie Battiste, Alan Corbiere, and Sarah Nickel. Over the course of an hour, the conversation explores the meaning of decolonization, Indigenizing the academy, Indigenous resurgence in the Indigenizing of history, assesses specific anticolonial strategies for affecting change in the discipline, and provides advice for history teachers and professors about how to change pedagogies and curriculum. To extend the conversation, we asked the panelists to provide a list of useful resources history teachers and professors can use to learn more about the subjects addressed during the session. Here is their reading list:
· Marie Battiste, Visioning Mi’kmaw Humanities: Indigenizing the Academy (Sydney: Cape Breton University Press, 2016)
· Susan Sleeper-Smith et al., eds., Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
· Marie Battiste, Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013)
· Devon Mihesuah, “Should American Indian History Remain a Field of Study,” in Devon Mihesuah and Angela Cavender Wilson, eds., Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).
· – Mary Jane Logan McCallum, “Indigenous Labor and Indigenous History” American Indian Quarterly 33:4 (Fall 2009): 523-544.
· A Syllabus for History after the TRC
Panelist biographies:
Marie Battiste is a distinguished Mi’kmaw educator from Potlotek First Nation, a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellow, and Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada. She is a professor emerita in the Faculty of Education at the University of Saskatchewan.
Alan Corbiere is an Anishinaabe historian and teacher from M’Chigeeng First Nation and an assistant professor in the Department of History at York University.
Sarah Nickel is a Tk’emlupsemc historian and associate professor of History at the University of Alberta.
Thomas Peace is an associate professor of history at Huron University College and an editor at ActiveHistory.ca.
You can view the webinar on the CHA’s YouTube channel.