1. Decolonial & Postcolonial
Curriculum
Joelle Zacharia
Russell Kohn

2. 1. Post colonialism and Education: Negotiating a
contested terrain. Pedagogy, Culture and
Society by Rizvi et.al
2. Curricular Theorizing From the Periphery by
Angelina Weenie

3. Post colonialism and education: Negotiating a contested terrain. Pedagogy,
Culture and Society by Rizvi et.al
Thesis:
“Education has a systematically ambivalent relation to post-
colonialism. On the one hand, it is an object of postcolonial critique
regarding its complicity with Eurocentric discourses and practices. On
the other hand, it is only through education that it is possible to
reveal and resist colonialism’s continuing hold on our imagination.
Education is also a site where legacies of colonialism and the
contemporary processes of globalization intersect.” (Rizvi et.al page
257)

4. What is Post-colonialism?
• “Post-colonialism” as a “contested” term within political and theoretical
realms.
• Post-colonialism has a “naming function” that describes the “residual,
persistent, and ongoing effects of European colonialism.”
• Example of Post-colonialism methodologies:
– a.) Subaltern Analysis : A set of methods that focuses on issues of
sociological and economic marginalization within former political
colonies.
– b.) Post-structural Informed Analysis: A set of analysis that focuses on
linguistic structures, textual implications in the realm of power
relationships, and highlights the notion of hybridity. This set of
analysis predominantly deals with methods through which the elites
within the colonies were complicit with the colonizers and the
diaspora colonial subjects who are not resident in the geographic
realm of the former “colonizers.”

5. Functions of Post-colonialism
1.) Draws attention to the way language works in reifying colonial
formation of the colonizers as well as exerts itself through
discursive and linguistic practices.
2.) Highlights ways in which global inequity is perpetuated through the
uneven distribution of resources and colonial modes of
representation.

6. Inspirations for Post-colonial Theory: (pp.251- 252)
 Frantz Fanon and Ranajit Guha are the scholarly inspirations behind the term
 Fanon highlights that the notion of “post” in “post-colonial” is problematic.
 Why is it problematic?
 Legacy of colonialism still exists. Post-colonialism fosters a “complicated
network of complexities” that are perpetuated because the legacy of
colonialism exists.
 Fanon argues that :a.) the “independence from colonial rule does not
mean liberation.” b.) The colonial powers created a distinct “colonial
bourgeioise.” The Colonial Bourgeouis replaced the colonial rulers by
exerting cultural and economic hegemony.

7. Post-colonialism and Globalization: (pp.254-257)-
• Two risks associated with post-colonial theory:
a) Reluctance to differentiate between different experiences of
colonialism and the value it gives to postmodernist notion of
difference and hybridity.
b) How do we locate postcolonial analysis in contemporary
material conditions of globalization?

8.  Globalization represents a complicated flow of networks and
powers. Its new transnational networks describe a hybrid
situation where global capital interests exert sovereignty rather
than nation-states.
 Globalization is rooted in global movements of capital, people,
and ideas.
 Globalization is rooted in the ethic of imperialism and cultural-
economic hegemony.
 Post-colonial analysis not only roots globalization in imperialism
but critiques the neo-liberal Western philosophical and cultural
hegemony that underpins globalization.
 Post-colonial analyses are rooted in deconstruction and
liberation.
 Post-colonialism has enabled the elucidation of the fact that
discursive and cultural practices are not secondary to the
economics of colonialism but are embedded within its logic.

9. Dialectic of Education:
1. Post-colonial studies critique the cultural
presuppositions of “Western education.”
2. Post-colonialism acknowledges that it is only through
education that resistance to Western imperialism can
occur.

10. Curricular Theorizing From the Periphery by Angelina Weenie
• The purpose of this article is to “theorize and articulate a view of curriculum that
is reflective” of the lived experiences of the author and her students from their
peripheral space. (Weenie, 545)
• Weenie traces the curricular experiences of Aboriginal people to colonial
relationship: to eradicate Aboriginal language and culture, to oppress and
marginalize, and to civilize and Christianize Aboriginals. (548)
• At the outset, Weenie explicates her social location as: ‘a Cree woman and
educator, Treaty Indian status, Residential school attendee, University educated in
Saskatoon and presently an educator and administrator in a First Nations
University.’ (Weenie, 546) Her interest in curriculum reform stems from her deep
understanding of the issues faced by Aboriginal youths today.
• Current public school curriculum does not do justice to students who hail from
periphery spaces like Aboriginal students. Weenie suggests “There is a potential
for knowledge expansion when we draw from both traditional and contemporary
forms of knowledge.” (p. 555) It is clear that she is not against contemporary
knowledge taught in Canadian schools, rather she is advocating an inclusive
curriculum that is sensitive to the issues of Aboriginal students.

11. Weenie’s vision of Aboriginal Curriculum
• Weenie advocates an Aboriginal curriculum that would benefit the
education of aboriginal students who are victims of socially related issues
and power relations.
• The core components of aboriginal curriculum include “literature, art,
songs, languages, culture, stories, spirituality, ceremonies and ethos of
Aboriginal people.”
• She recommends a context –sensitive and culture-sensitive curriculum
that is sensitive to student needs and guides them on a journey to
understanding one self and “an awareness of what should inform their
practice and research. (Weenie, 545)
• Weenie (2008) advocates memory work, the medicine wheel, and
traditional knowledge of Elders in education.
• Weenie observes how students in her class “were happier and more
motivated when they engaged in experiential learning activities.” (547)
This can be traced back to their roots and relationship with the Earth and
in terms of their culture and language.

12. Whose and what knowledge counts?
• Weenie raises the issue of “whose knowledge and what knowledge
is recognized.” (546) Hence in order to understand Aboriginal
curriculum, ‘it is essential to critique notions of power and
knowledge as part of an ongoing project to dismantle the cultural
and epistemological heritage of Eurocentrism.’ (549)
• Aboriginal curriculum “is about overcoming colonial mentality by
creating an emancipatory framework and confronting the…
messiness” (549) She proposes a curriculum that is representative
of the historical, social and political context reflective of Aboriginal
world view and philosophy. (550)

13. Future of Aboriginal Curriculum
• Weenie advocates the need for an Aboriginal curriculum based on
the worldviews and philosophy of Aboriginal people that will
benefit all levels of Aboriginal education. She has reached this
conclusion based on her lived experience and cultural reality.
• Aboriginal culture and language must be nurtured and cultivated in
Aboriginal curriculum (554) to validate their identity and to
empower students to succeed in mainstream education.
• Curricular theorizing must be “an act of imagination that is a
patterned integration of our remembered past, perceived present
and our anticipated future.” (552)

14. 3. Teaching Treaties as (un)Usual Narratives
By: Jennifer Tupper & Michael Cappello
4. A Treaty Right to Education
By: Sheila Carr-Stewart

15. Canada as Metropole I
•Subreenduth (2010) discusses the concept of Metropole in contrast to
the Colony. The Metropole is the colonizing nation, exerting its control over
the existing people by way of a “Civilizing Mission” (Kanu, 2003).
•In the Context of Canada and its emergence as an independent nation, the
Native People of Canada had been treated as an internal group, a to people
needing indoctrination into the dominant society and suppression by way of
marginalizing efforts (Tupper & Cappello, 2008).
•”The narrative of this province [Saskatchewan] is imagined and produced
primarily through the foundational story of the pioneer. THERE ARE OTHER
STORIES, HOWEVER..” (Tupper & Cappello, 2008).

16. Canada as Metropole II
•As Canada exerted herself through the development of a unique nation, it
donned the imperialist cap of Britain through dealing with “others” within, the
Aboriginal People. As Tuck (2012 )mentions “In order for the settlers to make a
place their home, they must destroy and disappear the Indigenous peoples who
live there”.
•The identification and maintenance of the way “savage image” is controlled by
way of education among other things, even through Postcolonial effort exerted
by way of the Treaty Resource Kit, in the province of Saskatchewan. The kit,
being designed and implemented as through it emerges from a “white box”
(Tupper & Cappello, 2008).
•Kanu (2003) maintains that historically, “How education and schooling were
used as the medium for developing in the colonized other the required sense of
psychological subordination.” What remains worthy of teaching and mainstream
is telling of what it leaves out.

17. Postcolonial Education in Saskatchewan: Facing History I
• Despite the option of Secondary School students to take a course devoted
to Native Studies within their Social Science options, Tupper & Cappello
(2008) mention that the majority of students take History, leaving a 14%
of students enrolled in Native Studies (Saskatchewan Learning, 2006).
• The Postcolonial efforts within the curriculum requires the confrontation
of the past, and the “crisis” of colonial damage such as this method
mentioned by Richardson (2002) “A mandatory history course in each
province that includes a minimal list of people and events critical of
Canadian history.
• To confront the past, most specifically the misunderstandings and issues
stemming therein of the Numbered Treaties through a Treaties Resource
Kit (http://www.otc.ca/).

18. Postcolonial Education in Saskatchewan: Facing History II
• The Treaties Kit has been instituted to offset the “complex notions of race
and privilege that remain central to the functioning of our society”
(Tupper & Cappello, 2008). Offering teachers concrete lesson plan ideas,
to help further the meaning of decolonial education, paying greater
attention to the narrative of the other, and the colonial hurt and imprint
left on them until now.
• The experiences and misunderstandings that ensued through the
Numbered Treaties and bringing them to light, works at opening up
students to understand and “enabled them to speak out loud the things
that previously would have been ignored or silenced.” (Tupper &
Cappello, 2008).
• “Non-Aboriginal students do not have a sense of how their own economic
and social privileges can be connected to, and produced through, treaties.
(Tupper & Cappello, 2008).

19. The Old Consistent Undertones of Colonialism in a Postcolonial
Aboriginal Education Initiative in 21st Century Canada I
•According to Tupper & Cappello (2008), the decolonizing efforts
maintained through the introduction of the Teaching Treaties Resource Kit,
fail in their ability to decolonize, integrate and support the Aboriginal
Culture of Saskatchewan.
•Treaties between Canada and the Native People are an important part of
“understanding the process of Empire building, using curriculum and
pedagogy to control the mind of the colonized”(Kanu, 2003). The colonized
are the Native People, who have been denied proper access to education in
accordance with what they need as a culture, for ultimate survival.

20. The Old Consistent Undertones of Colonialism in a Postcolonial
Aboriginal Education Initiative in 21st Century Canada II
•Tracing the steps of where, why and how Aboriginal Education in Canada reflects
a continuation of the colonialist legacy requires historical analysis.
• Native studies as a separate social science course option furthers the colonialist
agenda by holding on to the notion of the “other”.
•The intention of Native Studies as a postcolonial endeavor to celebrate and
include is diluted so long as it is served inside of a “white box” of separate course
entity and as Kanu (2003) mentions “Controlling the mind of the colonized” for an
seemingly endless, period of cultural devastation.
•The “traditional livelihood” was essentially “taken away” (Carr & Stewart, 2001),
from First Nations deeming traditional culturally true forms of education almost
entirely futile in the development of an economically sound community which
would need to thrive anew in a

21. The Role of Treaties in Postcolonial Education I
•Tupper and Cappello (2008) apply the term “cultural genocide” as a
description of the intent of using schools as instruments for the proactive
acculturation and assimilation into the culture of the emerging Canadian
Metropole.
•Examination of history in Saskatchewan serves as a model for the “sustained
privilege” (Tupper & Cappello, 2008) and dominance of one culture over the
Native People.
•Tupper and Cappello (2008) argue that the true value of confronting
education’s promotion of dominance and bringing Aboriginal issues in history
to the forefront can allow for an exchange of global ideas and sensitivities.

22. The Role of Treaties in Postcolonial Education II
•Over the many years, despite introducing curricular initiatives of promoting
awareness of the flaws in white dominant, Canadian responsibility towards
Aboriginal Treaties- the issues grow further.
•In this sense, Education in Canada has followed a model that spoken of by
Franz Fanon, in the 4 phases of Colonization through education namely phase
4: up-keeping a higher race through the division of dominant and marginalized
citizens
• Tupper & Cappello (2008) understand that the Aboriginal People as “other”
is kept as other through a curriculum slant favoring the colonial “pioneer
narrative as the only story worth telling”.

23. The Role of Treaties in Postcolonial Education III
•”…A sense of self is only possible through an annihilation or ‘emptying out’ of
the other, whether discursively or materially” McCarthy and Dimitriades (2000).
Canada has been slowly selecting a narrative that elevates, distinguishes and
highlights the achievements, struggles, values and culture in line with
“Eurocentric Forms of Knowledge” (Subreenduth, 2010).
•Tupper & Cappello (2008) consider the concept of cultural annihilation
powered through education; As being carried out through ongoing exclusion of
the stories which are unique to the Native People of Saskatchewan within the
curricular model that has been in use through all of its modifications for over
100 years. ..maintaining the dominant narrative and the suppression of the
other.

24. The Progression of Postcolonialism in Canada I
• The 1867 Constitution Act, section 91 (24), vested all legislative authority
for Indians and Indian lands in the federal government. As a result, First
Nations education was defined as a federal responsibility and separate
from provincial responsibility for education (Carr- Stewart, 2001)
• Postcolonialism as it exists on the continuum of Imperialism and colonial
curriculum strives to both include Native People but also at the same
time, encourage and promote “Cultural Legitimacy.” (Kanu, 2003).
• Carr and Stewart (2001) consider the over 100 year Treaty history
between the Federal Government and First Nations to outline an
educational commitment, and plan merely offers “limited educational
services not as a treaty right, but as an assimilationist mechanism through
its own criteria, the Indian Act.”
• The Treaties, have isolated the First Nations from both their own way of
life and unique culture of education, as well as the from the economically
beneficial dominant educational system (Carr & Stewart, 2001).

25. The Progression of Postcolonialism in Canada II
• If Postcolonial curriculum claims to unmask and confront the policies of
imperialism in education, textbooks and teacher training and undo
curriculum as a tool for colonialism (Subreenduth, 2010) then it must live
up to commitments made in the Numbered Treaties namely to provide
equitable staff, schools, and materials to First Nations (Carr-Stewart,
2001)
• Undoing the Colonialist mindset must begin with the process that
Subreenduth (2010) calls “Naming”, essentially exposing the Indian Act,
and subsequent Treaties 1-7 as failing to provide equitable, formal
education as a form of identifying the “historical burden”(Crowley &
Matthews, 2006).
• The intention of the Indian Act needs to be acknowledged as having solely
colonialist and assimilationist purposes, designed to highlight the
distinction between settlers and immigrants (Tuck, 2012 ) while trying its
best to promote through education an Aboriginal Student with “English
Tastes, opinions, morals and intellect” (Macauly, 1971).

26. “A Century of Educational Neglect” (Carr & Stewart, 2001)
• Carr - Stewart, (2001) quotes the House of Commons Debates in 1946,
maintaining that “While there are 130,000 Indians in the country, our
education and training of these people take care of only about 16,000. Of
this number enrolled, only 883 reach grade 7,324 reach grade 8, and
seventy-one reach grade 9. I notice in three of the provinces there are no
grade 9 students. (p.5489)”.
• Treaties were structured to "civilize ... protect and cherish this helpless
Race" (Dickason, 1996, p. 225).
• The “other stories” spoken of as items for neglect in the dominant pioneer
narrative by Tupper & Cappello (2008) can be revamped using Willinsky’s
(2006) model of building on global themes offering choices to students
who can explore with openness and acceptance, a range of human rights
struggles, “self determination, faith and celebration of unique cultural
values through everyday curricular activities.

27. Looking Ahead: A New Approach to Decolonial Curriculum in Canada
• Integrate Native Studies (the course) into the general curriculum, in both
pedagogy and policy.
• Differentiate between assimilation/ acculturation and skill building for
economic participation of Aboriginal People (Carr - Stewart, 2001).
• Willinsky (2006) mentions that themes which are inherently Postcolonial can
be applied and used to open up the classroom (and change it into a
definitively decolonial space)- such as self determination, human rights,
faith.
• Individual teachers should seek alternatives to Treaty education, which is
bound by the bias of the Federal Government, which has even recently
denied what has been long standing recurring treaty language such as
Aboriginal centred- reserve school programming, physical infrastructure
building, teacher salaries (Carr - Stewart, 2001)
• Identify and effectively “cross examine” (Subreenduth, 2010) the use of
curriculum as a tool for civilizing those which need no further civilizing, but
merely equitable and inclusive educational experiences.

28. Looking Ahead: A New Approach to Decolonial Curriculum in Canada II
•Individual teachers should seek alternatives to Treaty education, which is
bound by the bias of the Federal Government, which has even recently denied
what has been long standing recurring treaty language such as Aboriginal
centred- reserve school programming, physical infrastructure building, teacher
salaries (Carr - Stewart, 2001)
•Identify and effectively “cross examine” (Subreenduth, 2010) the use of
curriculum as a tool for civilizing those which need no further civilizing, but
merely equitable and inclusive educational experiences.
•In discussing the issue of colonialism and race in South Africa and Australia,
Crowley & Matthews (2006) see the need for “reconciliation” to bare
“witness to the path of the democracy or the histories of race struggle.” Thus,
a process of identification, and admittance is needed in order to fully move
forward at authentic postcolonial education.

29. References
Kanu, Yatta. (2003). Curriculum as cultural practice: Postcolonial imagination.
Journal Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 1(1), 67-81.
Willinsky, John. (2006). High school postcolonial: As students ran away with
theory. In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as cultural practice: Postcolonial
imaginations (pp. 95-115). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Rizvi, Fazal., Lingard, Bob & Lavia, Jennifer. (2006). Postcolonialism and
education: Negotiating a contested terrain. Pedagogy, Culture and Society,
14(3), 249-262.
Weenie, Angela. (2008). Curricular theorizing from the periphery. Curriculum
Inquiry, 38(5).
Tupper, Jennifer & Cappello, Michael. (2008). Teaching treaties as (un)usual
narratives. Curriculum Inquiry, 38(5).
Carr-Stewart, Sheila. (2001). A treaty right to education. Canadian Journal of
Education, 26(2), 125-143.
Tuck, Eve. (2012). July 4, 2012. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy,9 (2), pg.
129-131. ,
Crowley, Vicky & Matthews, Julie. (2006). Pedagogy Culture & Society, 14
(2).pg.266-277.