Decolonization, Reinhabitation and Reconciliation: Aboriginal and Place-Based Education

Abstract

Aboriginal/Indigenous education is being increasingly emphasized in Faculties of Education across Canada. Through self-study as an instructor of a mandatory course in Aboriginal education in a Faculty of Education, the author is exploring the use of local, place-based education in the fostering of cross-cultural understanding of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians as having interrelated histories and contemporary realities in Canada. Place-based education has the potential to further the goals of Aboriginal education: to serve Aboriginal learners as a tool of resurgence and sovereignty, to disrupt racialized perceptions of Aboriginal peoples, to create awareness of the cultural location of all peoples and pedagogies, and to create right relation between the peoples and the lands of Canada through decolonization, reinhabitation, and reconciliation.