Teaching as Trespass: Avoiding Places of Innocence

ABSTRACT

Teachers in Canadian public school contexts are attempting to teach about Indigenous knowledges and epistemologies. Given the present state of asymmetrical Indigenous-settler relations, the complexity of this work requires a large breadth of consideration. Our study provides insight into the nuances of teaching Indigenous perspectives and worldviews, and the barriers and motivations for its inclusion in elementary and secondary classrooms. We conceptualize that teachers are “always-already” trespassing on Indigenous Lands and illuminate the enactment of “trespass” by settler teachers as they move their settler teacher identities to a place of “innocence.” Teachers enacted trespass through acts of return, absorption, erasure, and the eliding of settler experiences. We offer important starting points for continued introspection about the roles and responsibilities of teachers working within settler-colonial education structures and ensuing complicity in the historic marginalization of Others. We highlight the possibilities of a curriculum that is treaty-based and enacted with Indigenous collaboration and consultation.

Introduction

This article stems from a larger study that aims to understand the strategies and moves educators use as they engage in teaching about Indigenous perspectives and treaty relationships, and what aspects of their work they found constraining or beneficial. For this article, we focus on the ways in which settler teachers are apprehensive about “trespassing” into areas that are not theirs to claim. We use the term “settler educators” to identify all non-Indigenous educators who work within the settler educational system because they are settlers on this Land, although they may be members of communities that are Indigenous to other Lands (Kelley, 2017). We discuss the strategies settler educators use to express and work through their apprehensions of trespassing while pursuing their work in settler educational systems. We elaborate on the ways teachers enact these strategies through “moves to innocence” (Tuck & Yang, 2012). We explain the complex ways in which teachers are “always-already” trespassing on Indigenous Lands through themes that arose related to settler trespass: acts of return, absorption, erasure, and the eliding of settler experiences. In conclusion, we examine the necessities and possibilities for engaging thoughtfully and critically towards the integration of Indigenous epistemologies through treaty education, which asks teachers to pay attention to the treaties as nation-to-nation, living, breathing agreements for all who live on the Land.

Purpose and context

A myriad of policy documents recognize Indigenous peoples’ histories and worldviews as being relevant to all educators in Canada (Association of Canadian Deans of Education [ACDE], 2010; Ontario Ministry of Education [OME], 2007; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples [RCAP], 1996). The report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC, 2015) includes Calls to Action 62–65 in the educational realm. Among these, Canadian educators are called to teach about Indigenous histories and move toward better understandings of Indigenous epistemologies. While an increasing number of teacher education programs have demonstrated a commitment to taking up this important work (Den Heyer, 2009; Mashford-Pringle & Nardozi, 2013; Vetter & Blimkie, 2011), there are few empirical studies examining how to improve the knowledge-base and experiences of Ontario educators regarding histories and epistemologies of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples. There is an increased urgency for this education and research, as efforts to cancel curriculum improvements through language of “cost-efficiency,” means “a step backwards on our journey towards reconciliation” (Heintzman, 2018, para. 1). We completed this research project within this context, and while trying to understand how teachers’ intentions, experiences and attitudes might ethically shape conversations going forward.

With the guidance of the Principal Investigator, a member of the Anishinaabe Nation, the research team (which includes settler teachers from differing subject positions) ground the research in Indigenous epistemologies. The researchers bring their specific lenses to the process of collecting, analyzing, and writing with and through the data. Daniela was a child when she was forced into exile from Wallmapu (the landmass known as Chile) by the dictatorship in the 1970s. Her perspectives on education are informed by her status as a displaced, racialized, cis, and able-bodied woman. Shawna is an Irish-English-Canadian, settler woman. She brings her lenses as a queer, cis-gendered, able-bodied woman into the research. Mark is a settler descendant of migrants from the Netherlands, and lives and works on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee nations. Jean-Paul is a member of the Dokis First Nation and descended from French-Canadian and Anishinaabek ancestors, parties to the Robinson-Huron treaty of 1850. We recognize the sets of responsibilities that must be fulfilled and attended to, as treaty partners.

Theoretical approach

We begin by recognizing the significance of “Land” (capitalized to show its complexity, as explained in Styres et al., 2013) for all people, as understood within Indigenous perspectives. This approach helps us to counter the strategic investments and inheritances of settler-colonial structures. In an effort to divest from the settler-colonial project, we acknowledge how this system is structured on an ideological foundation that informs all settlers, including settler teachers. Considering the concept of Land as it relates to the settler context and schooling, in particular, helps us to nuance our claim that teachers are always-already trespassing on Indigenous Lands. Acknowledging the Land we live on as Indigenous territory facilitates our understanding of how settler-colonialism is messaged and coded in teaching. To understand the codification of these, we discuss Tuck and Yang’s (2012) settler “moves to innocence,” as a way to frame the unintentional, yet harmful tactics settler teachers employ. Together these perspectives help us to constitute a foundation for our use of the word “trespass” as it pertains to teaching, and to explain how teachers unwittingly continue the act of dispossession through the symbolic realities of power, dominance, and continual genocide on Indigenous Lands (Kulago, 2019), as many are ignorant of the privileges they have (Kanu, 2016).

Pedagogies of land

Land is viewed within Indigenous epistemologies as not just soil and rock, but as animate, spiritual, and in flux (Styres et al., 2013). Pedagogies of Land understand that Land is “the interconnectedness and interdependence of relationships, cultural positioning and subjectivities that extend beyond the borderlands of traditional mainstream conceptualizations of pedagogy” (Styres, 2011, p. 722). Land cannot be owned; it is both teacher and classroom outside of coercion and western pedagogy (Alfred, 2009; Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005; Simpson, 2014; Styres, 2011) and is not just for us, but for all living things for the next seven generations (Styres et al., 2013). This understanding of Land as context and process is incommensurable with settler-colonial understandings of Land as property or profit (Simpson, 2014), and this is at the foundation of our understanding that settlers are always trespassing on Land that was never theirs to claim or own (Seawright, 2014).

Since the time of earliest contact till today, settler-colonialists from England, France, and other European nations have brought with them their epistemologies and ontologies of Land to Turtle Island. This means that our shared treaties have developed from very different ways of understanding Land. Where white settlers understand Land as property and as foundational to capitalism, Indigenous epistemologies across Turtle Island do not view Land as property, but as life, as relational (Alfred, 2009; Kulago, 2019; Wolfe, 2006).

Although the term, “trespass” is linked to understandings of Land as property, Land was never conceptualized as property through Indigenous epistemologies prior to settler contact. Because of this, “‘Indigenous property’ … [is a] paradoxical conjunction, a truncated form of property that can only be fully expressed in the third moment, that is, alienation” (Nichols, 2018, p. 15). For our purposes, we reiterate that settlers are trespassing on a Land that they have stolen and made a commodity.

Deracination: breaking relationships to land and ways of knowing

We understand this Land is Indigenous Land and, since being appropriated by settlers and their possessive logic, is stolen (Bhandar, 2018; Moreton-Robinson, 2015). Nichols (2018) explains that the settler-colonial project of “structured dispossession” (p. 11), is a specific territorial logic of acquisition that shapes Indigenous experiences. The term “dispossession” denotes extractive and proprietary characteristics that were not commonly used pre-forced contact. We prefer the term “deracination” because it captures the “territorial foundation” of Indigenous societies, and subverts the idea that Land is merely a natural resource meant to be appropriated by settlers (Nichols, 2018, p. 11). As explained by Kauanui (2007), “to deracinate is to displace a people from their own territory, place, or environment—literally, to uproot” (p. 139).

At the core of our theoretical approach, we acknowledge that the stealing of this Land was not a past event, but continues through settler-colonial processes (Hurwitz, 2014; Tupper, 2014; Wolfe, 2006). Settler-colonialism is a social, political, and economic structure that strategically organizes the appropriation of Land through the ongoing eradication, displacement, and replacement of Indigenous peoples and whereby non-Indigenous people benefit materially from stolen Land (Hurwitz, 2014; Wolfe, 2006). This structure transcends the material realms and enforces a physical, cultural, and symbolic logic of extermination (Wolfe, 2006), although extermination is not the only way in which to destroy communities of people (Woolford, 2009). For example, from the mid-19th century until 1970 it was a legal right for white settlers to homestead on any crown land in Canada’s westernmost province, British Columbia, and thereby claim it as their own in perpetuity through preemption. This left Indigenous communities who have generational, spiritual, and cultural ties to the Land disconnected from that Land, which was thereafter the legal property of white settlers (Bhandar, 2018). Deracination projects such as this perpetuated the breakage of Indigenous relationships to Land—a “key component to group life”—(Woolford, 2009, p. 89) and interrupted generational cultural patterns. The intentional destruction of group identity has resulted in ontological and epistemological erasure.

This deracination—catalyzed by the logics of settler-colonialism—is discursively and materially inscribed into all aspects of life including schooling, in the form of curriculum, policy, mandates, and the spaces and places of learning (Calderon, 2014; Patel, 2016; Snelgrove et al., 2014). Importantly, we consider schooling as white property (Harris, 1993), and teachers as arbiters of the act of possession and deracination, “in which culture (equating to whiteness) and property ownership (equating to white forms of use of the natural world) gave ‘legitimacy’ to settler colonialism” (Bang et al., 2012, p. 303). As political subjects, settler teachers embody particular ideological colonial norms seen as “natural and objective rather than socially or ideologically constructed” (Bang et al., 2012, p. 303). They are the bedrock of this settler colonial-structure.

Settler teachers’ moves to innocence

We mobilize the term settler “moves to innocence” made prominent by Tuck and Yang (2012) that built on the works of Mawhinney (1998), to explain how settlers aim to reconcile their guilt and complicity in settler-colonialism, as well as to rescue settler futurity and remain innocent (see also Calderon et al., 2021). Tuck and Yang (2012) explain how settlers aim to create a path for “easy” reconciliation, when in fact there is much that “is irreconcilable within settler-colonial relations” (p. 4) and must be attended to. Moves to innocence create the path where settlers remain in control of their futures. A willingness to trespass by sharing their knowledge, power, and importance in the settler education system, becomes a requirement of settler futurity.

In our discussions of settler educators and their moves to innocence, we recognize the problematics of corralling people with different positionalities with regards to settlerhood using binary terms (Hurwitz, 2014; Snelgrove et al., 2014; Tuck & Recollet, 2016), but our choice is not arbitrary. We acknowledge that each community’s story of arrival differs, as do the relationships that they have with settler-colonial forms of government, social structures, and value systems. Yet, each and every person is ensnared in settler-colonial state processes and ideologies (Snelgrove et al., 2014). Complex relationships between Black people, people of color, and forced settlers exist within (and outside of) settler-colonial structures and ideological imperatives (Amadahy & Lawrence, 2009; Smith, 2012). The necessary distinction must be made between settler colonists and those who are the targets of exploitation; such as the descendants of people who were brought to this territory through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The term “settler educators” is an inaccurate rendering of Black positionality and simplifies Black educators’ relationships to this Land and the land of their ancestors who were Indigenous to other Lands (Kelley, 2017), and we do not purposely refer to Black educators as settlers. We understand that anti-Black racism is a cemented pillar of the settler-colonial project (Smith, 2012), and “the structuring difference between settler colonization and enslavement” is corollary to deracination (Sexton, 2020, p. 102). While a two-dimensional descriptive lens of “settler educators” is a limitation, our goal is to increase an understanding that irregardless of positionality relationships, all are responsible for enacting treaty relationships in our teaching.

The inevitability of trespass when white settler structures remain intact

It is with the above theoretical perspectives that we understand the term “trespass” as a purposeful reminder of the proprietary usage of Land by settlers. Centrally, we see trespass as the literal wrongful intrusion onto the Land. White settlers were not invited and yet continue to enact trespass through global colonial structures of imperialism, displacement, and forced removal of bodies and resources from Lands. On these Lands, we understand trespass as something that cannot be resolved within the current settler-colonial frameworks and system. As long as white settler structures remain intact, where Land is seen as property in the capitalist system, settlers will be trespassing on Land that is not theirs to claim. We do not see trespass as inevitable or destined, but we are clear about the intentions of its design and its incompatibility with the goals of settler decolonization and Indigenous epistemologies. Settler teachers cannot avoid trespass and will always be trespassing when teaching on stolen Lands and within colonial institutions that aim to be not responsible to the Land.

Trespass lies in the historical and present realm because the Land is home to the people, languages, traditions, beliefs, social structures, and stories of Indigenous nations that developed and grew with this Land. White settlers and their ideologies developed and grew in other Lands where place “has been abstracted, divided, and bordered into a component of reality rather than the progenitive holism that Indigenous knowledge systems begin with” (Marker, 2018, p. 453), and these ideologies have been transplanted onto this Land in a very literal trespass. Settlement has meant Indigenous erasure and purposeful ignorance of treaties (Kulago, 2019; Tupper, 2014), and has been an ongoing process to make room for the transplanted and trespassing of people and societies of settlers. This trespass is created in a “third space,” where Land was never property; nonetheless dispossession created a new understanding of “property-generating theft” (Nichols, 2018, p. 22). With this historical understanding, it becomes clear that a space of innocence for settlers does not exist in settler institutions, including educational ones.

In another sense, settler-colonial societies have been working deliberately to trespass on Indigenous Lands and in the lives of Indigenous peoples. Bhandar (2018), building on Harris (1993), and discussing Palestinian dispossession, substantiates how proprietary notions of land are coded into the vocabulary of law, as tools for the maintenance of settler-colonialism. These tools are beholden to the racially-constructed signifiers of settler and “native,” which act discursively to produce the ideological and material advances we call trespass. This is the case in the establishment of the Indian Act in Canada which is a settler government policy that formally legislates and organizes communities and identities of Indigenous peoples, imposition of residential schooling, limiting of treaty rights, outlawing of languages and traditional practices, removal of children from communities, infringements on sovereignty, limiting of commerce, forced relocation, enfranchisement, formal erasure of entire nations and communities, and intentional destruction of Indigenous Lands and resources (Imai, 2015; Kulago, 2019; RCAP, 1996; TRC, 2015). In each of these instances, settlers may attempt a move to innocence by distancing themselves from the policies of governments (Dion, 2007). However, this space is unavailable because the everyday functions of settler society including its education system on Indigenous Lands are contingent on the effects of these policies and practices (Kanu, 2016; Kulago, 2019). The exploitation of Indigenous Lands for resource extraction allows wealth and energy to fuel settler commerce, as well as our homes and schools. The restriction of treaty rights permits settler practices such as summer cottaging on lakes that have been cleared of manoomin wild rice (Carleton, 2016). The erasure of Indigenous languages and practices allows the dominance of European languages for social interactions and academic publications (such as this one). In each of these examples, the complicity of all members of settler society is laid bare and settler-colonialism is re-centered. From this position we argue that as long as settler structures remain, trespass is unavoidable for all non-Indigenous people living in settler-colonial societies established through settler-colonial ideologies on stolen land (Seawright, 2014).

We view trespass as a deliberate act; both in acknowledgment of the reality of settler-hood, and because “Land theft” is not a metaphor (Tuck & Yang, 2012). The idea of a correct, and therefore untroubled, path to teach about Indigenous perspectives and settler-Indigenous histories ignores the ongoing reality of this work. Settler teachers are always and already trespassing in places that are not for them. The option to avoid the teaching through Indigenous epistemologies is not open to settler teachers because treaty relationships demand attention. Rather than seeking a place of innocence, it is imperative that educators remember that they are situated in a place of trespass, and then move in this space with awareness and intention.

Methodology

Our data includes reflections from approximately 130 pre- and in-service teachers at a professional development conference about including Indigenous perspectives in the classroom. The participants included Indigenous, white, and non-Indigenous racialized educators with varying levels of experience working in settler education systems who wanted to learn and share together about this work. This research was conducted using a narrative inquiry methodological approach (Clandinin, 2006), which relied on the productive nature of sharing stories (Chase, 2013). An emphasis on storytelling reflected the communal value of personal and shared stories, allowing teachers to reflect on their practice and engage in a dialogic re-membering of their own pedagogies (Coulter et al., 2007).

As three of the authors are settler teachers and researchers, we take on the responsibility to highlight the specific trespasses of other settler teachers who participated in the research. The settler teachers came from numerous backgrounds and experiences, some being racialized, others white. Regardless of intersectionalities, positionality, category of identity, and racialized differences, all non-Indigenous teachers working in settler institutions are encompassed in our definition of settler teachers. Indigenous participants in the conference shared stories alongside settler teachers, and their responses have informed our broader understanding of the research context. However, in this article we bring attention to the themes of settler trespass through information shared by settler participants, rather than speaking on behalf of the Indigenous participants in the conference. In doing so, we do not wish to center settler-hood—our approach is to divest from it by better understanding how it operates in teaching contexts.

The participants attended a one-day conference about learning to “teach in Indigenous ways,” and opted-in to one of four research sessions. The research groups included: individual guided narrative writing, dramatic storytelling, collaborative visual arts relational mapping, and a talking circle. Participants were asked to examine three areas of their teaching practice: (1) the multiple ways in which they incorporate Indigenous perspectives and knowledges into their teaching practices, (2) the successes they have had in this area, and (3) the barriers they have faced doing so. These prompts were issued to center Indigenous epistemologies and discern which frameworks and strategies offer the possibility of critical interventions to colonial knowledge in education settings. Through an emergent coding process (Saldaña, 2016), the research team highlighted themes and significant concepts that were evident in the participants’ stories of their teaching experiences. The stories that participants shared through the research groups often echoed one another and presented valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities that they face in their teaching within colonial systems of education. In this article, we focus on the types of barriers educators faced and elaborate on the ways in which settler teachers reproduce processes of deracination and trespass through three specific tactics: acts of return, absorption, erasure, and eliding of difference as part of the settler experience of moving towards “innocence” (Tuck & Yang, 2012).

In consideration of the above, we strive to do things in the manner of treaty teachings from our place of teaching and living (Tupper, 2014). In our context, we were guided by Anishinaabe teachings and values to ensure ethical conduct throughout all our research processes (Absolon, 2011; Wilson, 2008). We are informed by the seven sacred teachings: respect, love, wisdom, bravery, humility, honesty, and truth (Benton-Benai, 1988) in all actions, including research, knowing, and relating. These are to be carried out “in a good way,” which in the Anishinaabe worldview of mino-bimaatisiiwin means striving for balance and harmony of all life (LaDuke, 1992; Simpson, 2011). Similarly, our context directs us to the Haudenosaunee teachings, which advise us to move forward in our research and writing having a “good mind,” which is one of three principles of peace, explained by Mohawk Elder, Jake Swamp (2010). Having a good mind includes the processes of finding peace within ourselves, putting our peace to work, and then working together to accept these principles of peace, which is what we aim to do with this research (Swamp, 2010). We recognize these values as being pertinent within treaty education, discussed at the close of this article.

Findings

At the time of the conference, many non-Indigenous teachers were in the process of developing a personal sense of awareness of the inequities brought about by settler-colonial structures and the ensuing devastation on Indigenous communities. National discourses around Reconciliation stemming from Calls to Action 62 and 63 of the TRC (2015) edified the importance of taking up this work in classrooms. Almost all teacher-participants explained that they felt committed to bringing Indigenous histories into their classrooms, which is likely what brought them to the professional development conference. We suggest that some teachers have begun to understand this personal sense of trespass because they have learned to historicize their teaching contexts and recognize the ongoing treaty relationships that constitute all people on Turtle Island. We agree that this is a positive step in the right direction—although attached with caveats to heed and pitfalls to avoid. The data demonstrates teachers’ understandings of asymmetrical settler-Indigenous relations on Turtle Island (Regan, 2010), the effects of Indigenous erasure, exclusionary institutional practices, and the underlying reality of Land theft in trespassing (Bhandar, 2018; Seawright, 2014). For pre-service teachers, these understandings were linked to compulsory components of their programs that impelled them to “include” Indigenous content and teachings into their classes.

The data indicated that a substantial number of teacher practitioners inadvertently used practices that actively engage trespass on Indigenous Lands, as their epistemologies and practices are rooted in white settler-colonial logics and systems (Seawright, 2014). Our analysis illustrates how tactics used by educators—although not done purposefully—enact moves to innocence (Tuck & Yang, 2012). We argue that these educators’ moves often begin from an intention to avoid an unavoidable trespass. Teachers simultaneously recognized that despite a hesitancy to trespass, they chose to reflect and pause not as a reflection of inaction, but as an effective solution to learn more, sit in discomfort, and reflect prior to making critical pedagogical decisions (Carroll et al., 2020). In this sense, teachers found openings in many subject areas, as a way of making amends with the past, through their practice.

The themes that arose in our analysis are: acts of return, absorption and erasure, and the eliding of difference and experiences. The transactional term acts of return refers to how teacher participants grant time and openings to create the conditions for the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives into an otherwise white settler curriculum (Calderon, 2014; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013). Specifically, settler teachers feel that they are giving back time and space for the teaching of Indigenous perspectives. Acts of return do not happen in a vacuum and require that absorption take place. We refer to absorption as the convention of including or integrating Indigenous knowledges into an existing structural and value system that has naturalized settler-colonial norms (Seawright, 2014; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013). Absorption has consumptive qualities and is related to erasure, which denotes the practice of replacing Indigenous concerns, issues, and perspectives with the settler self (Tuck & Yang, 2012). Eliding difference and experiences describes how teachers’ personal experiences of marginalization act as a dual function that is both generative and also adversely unfavourable to Indigenous allyship. This is explained in Tuck and Yang (2012) as the “fantasy of mutuality,” where “claims to pain then equate to claims of being an innocent non-oppressor” (p. 16). All of these actions, explained below, wrest spaces for Indigenous voices and continue the literal and metaphorical trespass of settler teachers on Indigenous Lands as they attempt to engage through Indigenous perspectives.

“Giving the Indigenous cultures a place in the classroom”: trespass as the act of return

Variations on the concept of inclusion as a method of compensation were prevalent in the data. This compensation was characterized as retribution, an offering or return of teaching “spaces” for which Indigenous content has been historically relegated to the margins. The spaces referred to time allotments and inclusion of Indigenous issues, histories, and perspectives. This was contemplated as an act of bestowing, where the settler teacher shared space to teach the vastness that is Indigenous content (also illustrating the problem that Indigenous content does not exist in the singular). The notion of giving space for the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives was apparent in many cross sections of data, with Indigenous content often described as an attachment or appendage to an otherwise settler curriculum (Calderon, 2014; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013). The following participants illustrate this:

Something that stands out to me the most is the importance of giving (emphasis added) the Indigenous cultures a place in the classroom. This can be done through incorporating (emphasis added) their perspectives in different subject areas rather than teaching solely from the government-settler perspective.

And,

I think that for too long our society has othered or hidden the perspectives, cultures, and ways of knowing of so many groups of people. As a teacher, I believe I have been afforded a position in which I can help to change that, to make even the slightest difference! I feel that by including those who have been excluded we stand to gain so much more as a society—we stand to gain wholesomeness.

By definition, an act of return implies that something was taken, which in itself is an acknowledgment of intrusion and trespass. It also highlights the way that this third space has been created, where Land is now linked to ownership (Nichols, 2018). This action of returning or giving space focuses on the settler self and re-centers the settler as a voice of authority. The question of who has the authority to include and teach Indigenous perspectives and content was certainly a consideration for participants. In this context, teaching becomes code for “replacement” (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013). Teaching on behalf of others limits a more horizontal walking alongside others (Carroll, 2019; Mohanty, 2003); here settler teachers must recognize their ongoing trespass and work with and for Indigenous community initiatives outside of the white settler lens and curriculum (Seawright, 2014).

Good intentions aside, when settler educators bring Indigenous perspectives into their classrooms with the frame of inclusion, it is merely just another “difference” or “Other” perspective to fit into the settler-colonial curriculum—a curriculum created due to the deracination of Indigenous Nations (Bhandar, 2018; Seawright, 2014). Inclusion ensures the colonial curriculum remains intact and settlers’ futures remain firmly planted on the Land, continuing to trespass and benefit from stolen Land and resources. When teachers “share” a pedagogical space with and for the benefit of historically-marginalized Others, they are exposing themselves as actors of infringement and encroachment and constructing a space to assuage settler guilt of their trespass (Tuck & Yang, 2012). They are in essence practicing elements of trespass on land that has been commodified through white settler ideologies (Seawright, 2014).

“To rebuild and replace knowledge that was lost and subjugated in the past”: trespass as absorption and erasure

Erasure and absorption in this case refers to a settler-colonial re-inscription—or “settler futurity”—which results in symbolic and material dispossession of Indigenous identity and self-determination (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013). It is not surprising that many teachers reproduce harm; it is, in fact, an expected byproduct of the structure of settler-colonialism and ongoing trespass. Even when teachers actively challenge how this unfolds in their practice, they must develop an awareness of how existing curricula were created through ongoing processes of settler futurity and deracination (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013), as well as how the teachers carry these ideological values while acknowledging their continual trespass (Seawright, 2014).

Good intentions do not exempt settler teachers from attaching to grand colonial narratives and reinscribing paternalism. When engaging with the reality of trespass, one participant voiced their intention to “rebuild and replace knowledge that was lost and subjugated in the past.” This is a great start to recognize the calculated erasure of Indigenous Nations’ cultures and knowledges through settler curricula (Calderon, 2014). Another participant told us, “since I am going to be an educator in a Canadian classroom, part of being Canadian is knowing about the Indigenous side of Canadian-ness.” This teacher is not only essentializing Indigenous uniqueness, but also names an Indigenous mass as belonging to Canada, thereby ignoring antecedent histories. This sentiment of essentialized historical Indigenous identity as absorbed into present-day Canadian culture was shared by a participant, when speaking about teaching “Canadian culture” to newcomer students, echoed the others and said, “understanding how [Indigenous] culture has really shaped who we are today, as well so they can understand Canadian culture and the Indigenous voice in that.” These examples demonstrate how teachers use the proverbial umbrella to simultaneously suppress and encompass Indigenous peoples through deracination.

One teacher participant highlighted the important concern that Indigenous perspectives and identities are often absorbed into generalized narratives of Canadian multiculturalism (Dion, 2007), and said, “I’ve also seen a lot of Indigenous perspectives considered as a multicultural perspective, which has a number of issues that make that problematic, because it’s not the same thing.” Equating Indigenous identities and cultures with those of settlers within an inclusive multicultural framework, often perpetuates the absorption of Indigenous plurality and erasure of Indigenous peoples’ specific connections to Land (Sinke, 2020).

Some participants did recognize the important connections between Indigenous peoples and Land, yet perpetuated absorption and erasure by equating Indigenous knowledges with learning about nature, in general, without specific inclusion of Indigenous teachers, pedagogies, or the realities of trespass. One participant referred to the paintings of the Group of Seven as an entry point for students into Indigenous knowledge, because, “You could relate that maybe into a field trip where you take your students out into nature and have a conversation around that as well. Love and respect for nature.” Another participant cautioned against what they had seen as the over-romaticization of nature as a means to automatically understand Indigenous perspectives and said, “in particular, with the nature trope, it’s easy to over romanticize that with good intentions. It’s important to be aware of that.” In these participant responses, we can see how educators can be complicit in using nature as a stand-in for specific Indigenous knowledges and thereby absorbing Indigenous perspectives into generalized notions of human connection to the natural world (Seawright, 2014). These perspectives of the participants illustrate how absorption and erasure are performed in teaching through the act of including the “Other” into a colonial system without recognizing or reflecting on continual settler trespass and Indigenous struggles for sovereignty (Moreton-Robinson, 2015).

Eliding difference and experiences, and the use of colonial equivocation

At this point it is important to reiterate the complexities inherent in a discussion of settler trespass, and acknowledge that it is not only through colonization that settlers have arrived in the Land and territory of Indigenous peoples (Hurwitz, 2014; Snelgrove et al., 2014; Tuck & Recollet, 2016). Discussions of the complicity of non-white people living on Turtle Island have been highlighted by Lawrence and Dua (2005), Dei (2011), and Cannon (2013). We direct the reader to the importance of this discussion because the necessary responses to Indigenous erasure are different for people of color and white settlers (Amadahy & Lawrence, 2009). However, in both cases it is clear to us that all non-Indigenous people living on Turtle Island are implicated by their presence in the work of acknowledging and addressing Indigenous erasure on this Land, as well as lifting up Indigenous presence. One participant shared,

especially in that the majority of the people in the program are white people and as a woman of color, I’ve always been the one that has spoken out about these issues of privilege and settler-colonialism, and at some point I was like, you know what, this is exhausting, I can’t be the token woman of color speaking about these issues.

In settler-colonial institutions where differences are homogenized, racialized people and Indigenous people’s issues can be seen as the same issue (Tuck & Yang, 2012), and the weight of “diversity” issues can be shouldered by those who are marginalized.

In one subsection of the data that included participants who identified as Black or as people of color, we noted that eliding difference is one way in which teaching Indigenous knowledges acts as trespass. It was characteristic for othered teachers to elide difference and highlight a common perceived shared history of being excluded to the margins of society (Tuck & Yang, 2012). One teacher noted,

one of my participants had a Jewish background, and the way that she would do it is she would talk about her Jewish heritage, and she would say, well what other marginalized people are here in Canada? And then it kind of created this cultural bridge for students to participate in.

Another respondent told us, “As a visible minority myself, I think that what resonated with me the most was the critical need our society has to create inclusive spaces in which our children can learn and grow.” Settler teachers used colonial equivocation to mobilize experiences of oppression and equated these as colonization. Research by Haig-Brown (2009) indicates that students reconnect to their racialized backgrounds through their own historical legacies when interfaced with the genocidal histories of Turtle Island. Enlisting experiences of exclusion to engage in the teaching of Indigenous content illustrates a commonly-referred entry point for teachers with experiences of marginalization.

Eliding differences may be productive, insofar as it is used solely as an entry point to understanding or to align common interests with Indigenous struggles, and may help teachers to understand the power structures at play in society. We caution that it cannot be used as a personal platform to find sameness; this move ignores the complicated realities of trespass on stolen Land (Tuck & Yang, 2012). Initially, eliding experiences helps teachers to better detect injustice in relation to Indigenous issues; complexity arises when it is used to find parity with Indigenous experiences, thereby undermining treaty obligations for settlers, and treaty rights for Indigenous kin. We do not wish to diminish any one person’s experiences with structures of exclusion, power, and privilege, but we do urge teachers to find teaching pathways that create leverage for Indigenous perspectives. One way is to teach students about Indigenous contributions (Toulouse, 2014). Because settlers cannot afford to speak on behalf of others, this is an effective tool that bypasses the appropriation of Indigenous teachings. Teachers can articulate their own experiences in a way that does not abbreviate, limit, or asterisk opportunities and roles for Indigenous voices. This approach helps to counteract the practice of legitimizing Indigenous voices through settler eyes and requires relationships built on treaty relationships to be established and cared for.

Correlating Indigenous experiences to highlight similarity of background carries its own set of precautions about trespass. For one, settler teachers of color have inherited the rights and responsibilities held in treaty understandings (Haig-Brown, 2009). Anyone “belonging on this land” (Sehdev, 2011, p. 265) has been constituted historically through various treaties and proclamations (OME, 2007; Rollo, 2014), therefore, as treaty beneficiaries, marginalized, racialized and minoritized people have responsibilities. Second, equating Indigenous experiences with those of other marginalized people diminishes the importance of declarations and treaties that establish Indigenous rights that are distinctively about long-term territorial and cultural use and not race. Settler teachers who come from marginalized or racialized communities and who attempt to use a threshold of historical exclusion—however real it might be—actually dilute Indigenous rights held under treaty. This highlights another point of trespass, which is that Indigenous rights are constituted by a series of treaties and declarations that name special statuses and protections not provided for the general mass of people (Rollo, 2014).

As we can see, teachers who aim to do well can involuntarily be complicit in acts of trespass. The possibilities within this work are complicated and require learning the histories of the Land we teach and are trespassing on, a deep self-reflection of our positionalities, ideologies, and responsibilities (Seawright, 2014), and continually re-evaluating our relationship and commitments to the Land and its peoples. Teachers can mitigate these risks by proceeding with a “good mind,” as advised by Mohawk Elder, Jake Swamp (2010), or working within oneself and with one’s community for peace through understanding treaty relationships. Possibilities for moving beyond the normative and exploitative relationships between settlers and Indigenous peoples requires an understanding that we are all treaty people with responsibilities to one another and to the Land on which we live and work. The rights and responsibilities of settler teachers can be situated around friendship and peace treaties; these highlight different roles and expectations that must be attended to carefully.

The necessities and possibilities of teaching within treaty education

Curriculum work of the nature we are discussing, engages unavoidable breach; attempts to naturalize and “include” Indigenous epistemologies will always veer dangerously close to cultural appropriation. With all of the complexities and ramifications of teaching with Indigenous perspectives, how can teachers ensure that they challenge settler-colonialism without inadvertently reinforcing it? This situation sounds impassable, even futile, so where is the possibility in the midst of committing continued trespass on Indigenous Lands? How can educators predicate their practice using perspectives that unequivocally center the Land and its people? In order to recognize the trespass settler teachers are enacting, they must understand and teach the treaties and historical agreements in their context. Attending to the interstice of ethical possibility and relationality and taking up the work of walking with Indigenous kin means that teachers should bind their pedagogical choices to existing treaty and Land teachings, which offer an important marker for change in educational spheres. This imperative can position settler teachers to center teachings on terms set by Indigenous peoples themselves. We heard this call to abide by the rules of established treaty and land agreements from many of the participants:

I learned that it was first important to acknowledge our … relationship with the territory where we are learning and the local Indigenous people, which was that we are settlers or colonizers on Indigenous land … Unless we were Indigenous we … are benefitting from the colonization of this land … the acknowledgment of this relationship is important.

Treaties are nation-to-nation agreements that bind everyone on the land of that treaty, and specifically to Indigenous kin. They are historically constituted, living and breathing agreements to ensure “the good life” to all. Treaties underscore how relationships have been historically enacted and lived, requiring everyone to respectfully connect to Indigenous practices, governance structures, languages, and values in non-consumptive and non-exploitative ways (Tupper, 2014).

Historically, the original intent and spirit of treaties were ignored by settlers who willingly eroded its foundation by installing regimes of violence aimed at provoking Indigenous erasure (Seawright, 2014; Tupper, 2014). Actualized and symbolic assault continues in much the same way today, thus, teachers must recognize that they are complicit in these ruptures and fulfill responsibilities to work against these systems. Teachers must, where relevant, unequivocally say that they, too, are treaty people and uphold the original meanings of treaties and center them in their teaching. Introducing these literacies as early as possible at the beginning of formal schooling is crucial for young learners (Ngai & Koehn, 2011).

It is vital for settler teachers to understand how treaties shape the present and future, beginning with what was originally brought to treaties, by whom, and for what purposes. Craft (2014) recalls that treaties “are solemn agreements between peoples. In order to interpret and implement a treaty, we look to its spirit and intent and consider what was contemplated by the parties at the time the treaty was negotiated” (p. 7). Craft also explains that treaty stories provide “important insights into the values, norms, principles, and laws of indigenous people” (p. 21).

The original spirit and intent of the treaties offer ways forward together and the possibility of nurturing relationships on “political, spiritual and intellectual grounds” (Craft, 2014, pp. 20–21). Youngblood Henderson (in Sehdev, 2011) states that treaties are a “distinct vision of how to live well with the land with other peoples by consent and collaboration” (p. 269). Implicit in this agreement is the maintenance and renewal of relationships as a lived, recursive “process of making and keeping good relations” (Sehdev, 2011, p. 273). We are all treaty members and extending our understanding of how treaties are enacted and what they mean is imperative to renewing more ethical relationships.

One way to think through treaty education, is to view it as both content and process. It is content insofar as it represents cumulative Indigenous presence and voices. As process, treaty can be a living enactment that challenges settler-colonial biases and norms and facilitates the curricular shifting of colonial assumptions. We concur with Tupper (2014) in considering “treaty education as a curricular intervention to disrupt the ways people often view the past in relation to present Aboriginal-Canadian relations” (p. 482), as well as relations in other settler contexts. Highlighting primordial obligations of settlers to understand how custom, tradition, and perspectives have shaped these treaties, allows settler educators to do their part in bringing balance to the current asymmetry of settler-colonial relationships.

Treaty education may not provide all the answers for teachers, but is a good start to ensure that any teaching of Indigenous content—currently sidelined in curriculum offerings—be governed by Indigenous wisdom teachings. This means educators should be continually reflecting on the treaties of the Land on which they teach and teach through these understandings, instead of adding treaty understandings to the colonial curriculum (Seawright, 2014).

For educators going forward with a treaty-centered focus, it is incumbent on them to initiate collaborative relationships. These must be carefully attended to and conceived of with full participation of traditional knowledge holders and Indigenous communities. Careful attention must be given to how this might translate into teaching Indigenous ways of knowing by teachers, who may potentially be settlers, teaching diverse sets of students, including Indigenous students. The context is highly situational and will depend on the educator, their subjectivities, and the Land on which they teach. We also are mindful of places in the west, north, and east of present-day Canada and places in the US where no Land cessions were negotiated, and thus where Aboriginal title still exists without treaty, making the territories unceded. Where there is no binding treaty, educators are also responsible for adhering to the wisdom teachings of wherever they may teach, as they hold a plethora of guiding principles.

If treaty provides opportunities to challenge existing relationships (Tupper, 2014), then the substance of teaching must invite forward understandings derived from specific treaty areas. This can come from knowing and adhering to treaty understandings, which can only be determined by where (geographically, historically, and culturally) one is residing, teaching, and working. Although treaty obligations may bring about greater harmony, they cannot bring about absolution. Treaty responsibilities and settler responsibility do not transcend the issue of trespass. Obviating from trespass is not possible, but it is possible to do our work more judiciously, with “a good mind” (p. 15). Acting on our treaty obligations can mitigate to what extent trespass will carry itself out or be shaped. Through treaty, we can learn to walk alongside Indigenous communities, knowledges, and support resurgence initiatives (Carroll, 2019).

This article focused on the theorization of trespass, but the practical implications of treaty education are a pertinent point of departure for educators. Further research will look at the structural barriers that impede naturalizing Indigenous knowledges and expand on how cultural, geographical, and contextually-specific knowledge and treaty are understood and negotiated by educators in their practice. Important starting points to these conversations might include: what roles traditional knowledge holders want with respect to treaty education in settler-colonial institutions such as schools; the ways educators are successfully and carefully aligning treaty education within the mandates of their school boards; how practitioners find mentors, opportunities, and resources premised on thoughtful relationships, and do the heavy lifting so the work does not rest solely on elders; and how diverse pedagogical walking or narrative methodologies might act as complementary catalysts to treaty education.

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

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2016-1496].

Notes on contributors

Daniela Bascuñán

Daniela Bascuñán is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. As a teacher, she engages a practitioner inquiry stance with elementary students. Daniela’s classroom work sensitizes young children to consider their lived stories, learn about historical asymmetries found in colonial narratives of encounter, and explore contested current issues. She guides students to consider expanded notions of kinship as they explore their place in the world.

Shawna M. Carroll

Shawna M. Carroll identifies as a queer white settler woman, and was born and raised west of Toronto, with Irish and English ancestry. She graduated from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Development. Shawna is currently working as a senior assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education at Okayama University in Japan, teaching anti-oppressive and anti-colonial English teaching and research methods.

Mark Sinke

Mark Sinke is an elementary school teacher who lives on the territory of Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Nations in Hamilton, Ontario, and has his PhD in Curriculum Studies at the University of Toronto. Mark is a settler whose family moved onto Indigenous lands following the Second World War, and his research focuses on how students in public elementary schools figure the worlds of their school experience when they learn settler-Canadian and Indigenous histories in social studies classrooms.

Jean-Paul Restoule

Jean-Paul Restoule is a professor and chair of the Department of Indigenous Education at the University of Victoria on Lekwungen territory. Raised in Orangeville, Ontario, he is Anishinabe, and a member of the Dokis First Nation. Formerly a professor of Indigenous Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, his research includes bringing Indigenous knowledge to online learning and encouraging teachers to take up Indigenous education in their professional practice.