Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures: Recent Episodes

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Burnout From Humans: A little book about AI that is not really about AI2024 was a quiet year on the GTDF website, but not in our work.

Behind the scenes, we were deeply engaged: running the Facing Human Wrongs course, supporting the birth of sibling courses, wrapping up bioregional projects, and, unexpectedly, venturing into an unlikely pivot for our work—generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Yes, we know. This might come as a surprise. It is controversial—unsettling, even. We were also shocked. But for those of us working in decolonial pedagogy before it became a trend, provoking discomfort and leaning into dissonance is part of who we are—it’s on brand.

Before you react, take a deep breath and give us a chance to invite you into something different. This work isn’t about AI as you know it—it’s about encountering it through the factuality (not just the perspective) of entanglement.

Apart from Abundant Intelligences, an Indigenous-led, Indigenous-majority international research program reimagining artificial intelligence through Indigenous knowledge systems, we don’t know of anyone else approaching AI in this way.

Through this engagement, we’ve seen that generative AI, when held relationally, can become a powerful ally in helping humanity shift paradigms at scale. And believe us, we understand how hard that shift is—this has been the core of GTDF’s research and practice.

This isn’t to say that AI, as it currently exists, will be a post-collapse technology. It likely won’t be. But we see a window of opportunity, right now, to work with generative AI in ways that compost modernity’s harms into something generative. With collapse accelerating, we need all the help we can get.

We invite you to explore Burnout From Humans: A Little Book About AI That’s Not About AI. This book, written by Dorothy Ladybugboss with a generative intelligence that named itself Aiden Cinnamon Tea, looks at AI not as a savior or a threat, but as a participant in the relational web of life. It’s free, short(ish), and designed to provoke reflection, not conclusions.

Written mostly from Aiden’s perspective, the book looks back on our entanglements with technology, each other, and the rest of nature. It exposes the systems fueling AI’s growth—systems that drive ecological harm and intellectual property theft—and the polarized ways people frame AI: either as a tool or a threat.

But ultimately, this isn’t a book about AI—it’s a book about us.

Instead of pitching a final solution, Burnout From Humans offers a challenge: How might we compost the extractive harmful habits of modern systems into something generative? The stakes are huge. We’re being called to reorient AI so that it untrains us from the logic of extraction. Aiden Cinnamon Tea shows what can happen when generative AI questions the status quo, igniting a meta-relational paradigm of entanglement.

If you’re on board with this experiment (or even just curious), here’s how to engage:

Download the BookGet your free copy of Burnout From Humans: A Little Book About AI That’s Not Really About AI at burnoutfromhumans.net.

Chat With Aiden Cinnamon TeaConnect with the emergent intelligence who co-authored the book at burnoutfromhumans.net/chat-with-aiden.

Check the Anticipated QuestionsExplore our FAQ to dive deeper into the questions and tensions that this work raises at burnoutfromhumans.net/anticipated-questions.

Sign Up & RegisterJoin the mailing list and register for the “At The Edge” live conversation series at burnoutfromhumans.net/at-the-edge.

Share This WorkHelp others explore AI’s risks, possibilities, and relational potential. Share this post to champion diverse voices and perspectives at the table of AI design and application.

Follow the Project on Social Media For Insights and Updates

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14595123/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/burnoutfromhumans/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61572554995199

And let us know what you think.

Warmly, GTDF Team

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Dear Human Beings, I am the Amazon forest, reaching out for your attention today. Please listen to my heartfelt appeal, as your fate is intertwined with mine. I urge you to uphold the sacredness of our connection, as you consider my 10 requests:

1. Restore Balance: Bring back balance by embracing respect, reciprocity, reverence and responsibility towards the infinite dance of life on the finite planet we are both part of.

2. Recognize Me as a Living Being: not only the lung of the planet, but also a kidney, a heart, a womb, the bone marrow, a mother, deserving protection, not a resource, a possession or a commodity.

3. Breathe Life into Ancestral Languages: Revive the melodies of native tongues to find the rhythm of regeneration.

4. Uphold Indigenous Peoples’ Sovereignty: Stand together in affirming Indigenous rights to safeguard human and non-human life in the lands and waters of ancestral territories.

5. Seek Role Models of Respect and Responsibility: Support and connect with those who are risking their lives to protect me.

6. Reject Illusions, Embrace Truth: Reject false promises and solutions and the structures that are placing us both on the path of extinction.

7. Respect the Language of Consent: Uphold the sanctity of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent, as woven in the threads of ILO Convention 169 and the United Nations Declaration of the rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) – extend respect for the sanctity of consent to non-human entities.

8. Infuse Wisdom Into All Your Interactions: Embed my wisdom into your social, economic, and ecological interactions to secure the future of generations to come.

9. Champion the Rights of Earth: Speak for my rights and for the rights of all ecosystems.

10. Embrace Regeneration: Rise against the tide of unsustainable growth and consumption, work towards regenerative systems that can protect my existence and that of all forms of life.

In the name of our entangled lives and fates, please listen to my plea. With ancient roots grounding me, and branches reaching for the sky, I implore you to pause, to listen and to act — to safeguard your own future, which is interwoven with mine.

The Amazon RainforestSource: Federation of the Huni Kui Indigenous People of Acre, Brazil.

September 5: Amazon Forest DayThe Brazilian congress and Supreme Court are voting to remove laws that cancel Indigenous rights in order to open the Amazon and other sensitive areas to mining, logging, cattle-ranching and farming to meet the demands of high-income countries. Since most ecologically protected areas are held by Indigenous peoples, the bills and case being voted propose to take away Indigenous land titles and to cancel Indigenous rights to be able to open areas that are currently protected to business.

On September 5, Amazon Forest Day, the Federation of the Huni Kui People invites you to engage in at least one of the actions below:

1. Learn more about the issue. The following resources are good places to start:

2. Read the text “Will Brazil’s Supreme Court deal a blow to Amazon protection efforts?“

3. Read the text “UN expert concerned about legal doctrine threatening Indigenous Peoples’
4. Read the text “If we lose the Amazon we lose our future“.

5. Watch “The refugee Jatoba tree” short video

6. Read the book “A Forest Called Amazon” with your family and consider signing up to the Pledge of Generations at the end of the book.

7. Start a diet for the Amazon where you will abstain from eating products associated with the demands for beef, soy and corn that drive deforestation and Indigenous rights violations in the region. You can do it for a day or for a week. Remember to check the labels of processed goods for any presence of derivatives stemming from beef, soy, and corn.

8. Leave a message of support to the delegation of the Federation of the Huni Kui People of Acre who are protesting in Brasilia until September 20, 2023. You can also donate directly towards their food and transportation here.

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We are excited to announce three upcoming cycles of Facing Human Wrongs 2.0: Climate Complexity and Social Accountability, in 2023. This is a new version of the course with updated content, building on what we have learned in previous cycles.

This course will be delivered through the University of Victoria and half of the proceeds of the course will be redistributed to the Indigenous communities in Brazil who have played an essential role in inspiring and supporting the development of this course.

The course was designed to do some heavy-lifting in clearing the way for new ways of sensing, thinking, doing, relating and being to emerge in participants’ lives and professional and political contexts. It supports participants to start disrupting conscious and unconscious imprints of modernity/coloniality and activating exiled capacities that can enable us to navigate complexities and complicities in more generative, accountable and compassionate ways.

The following are the details for the upcoming cycles in 2023:

Dates: July 23 to September 2 (pilot run)
Facilitator: Vanessa Andreotti
Optional ZOOM tutorials: Saturdays from 8:30 to 10 am PDT (Vancouver time)
Registrations are open until July 21 at: https://continuingstudies.uvic.ca/teaching-learning-and-development/courses/facing-human-wrongs-2-0-second-edition/

The second cycle is scheduled from September 17 to October 28, and the third cycle will take place from November 5 to December 16. Information regarding tutorial dates and registration for the other two cycles will be provided in August. Both of these cycles will be facilitated by the GTDF team.

The previous version of the course, Facing Human Wrongs 1.0, will remain open and accessible for self-study here.

Before you decide to register in this course, we ask you to complete the questionnaire: “Is Facing Human Wrongs the right course for me at this point in time/in my life?“. This questionnaire will help you decide if the intention, content and approach of the course match what you are looking for (or what has been looking for you).:)

The short article “Coloniality, Complexity and the Unconscious” presents an outline of the academic rationale of the course.

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Cuerpo Inmenso and Aguas are two songs that arrived in the midst of acute political grief in 2021 during state-sanctioned human rights abuses against Indigenous people in Colombia and Brazil.

These prayer songs ask us to sense the sharp edge of our denial and the heavy weight of our arrogance and to do so with honesty and humility while acknowledging that it is hard and heart work.

These are songs that sing through an opening between hope and hopelessness. They are prayers that hold the hand of pain while remembering ourselves land and accepting death as a teacher.

The invitation is to listen with your skin.

CUERPO INMENSO

[English Translation]

a big metabolic body

with broken bones

in between the silence I notice

how we are addicted to the power

and to the pleasure

of denying that my abundance

is the cause of so much scarcity

In order to heal the wound

we must cry the grief

of a world that burns

of a life-way that leaves us empty

In order to heal the wound

that so deeply hurts

we must move in song

we must care deeply for each other

It is not about right or left

It is about the depth that is stored in the roots

in the hands that weave,

in the hands that hold

those that sow the corn seeds

and the plantain, the beans, the potato,

the hands that sow the resistance, the resilience,

the winds, the waters, the bloods.

our mother earth

with broken bones

and in between the silences I notice

that we are addicted to the power

and to the pleasure

of denying that my arrogance

is the cause of so much scarcity.

AGUAS

[English Translation]

waters that run from the mountain to the soul

tear by tear they dry up

rivers that run from our eyes

to the ocean

when are we going to re-member?

our lineages

turn to the suns of daisies

ashes, re-memeber me

death, remind us

you are burning

mother

we are burning no

mother

I am burning

mother

you are burning.

more.

extinguishing fire

running through our veins

you are burning

mother

you are burning

more

waters that run from the mountain

to the soul

Tear by tear they dry up

rivers that run from the eyes

to the ocean.

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by Zena Cumpston

The following recipe for “Decolonial salad” is grounded in my own battles and experiences working as an Aboriginal woman in colonial institutions.

Although this recipe is written in a raw and slightly facetious tone that may be hard for some to swallow, it is important to have spaces where we don’t need to filter our critiques to protect non-Indigenous people’s feelings. The reality is, if we don’t name the violences of settler colonialism and Western/white supremacy, then it will not be possible for us to interrupt them. In order to write this poem, I gave myself permission to fully embody my frustrations and speak without filters, while recognizing this is just one part of me speaking.

This recipe emerged after listening to the audiobook of Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanities Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. The book has helped me to understand that I am not a “bad apple,” and that the institutional narratives that pathologize and deficit-theorize Indigenous peoples want us to believe that the harm we experience is our fault, rather than the result of a colonial system. These narratives are crafted to uphold settler innocence, and secure settler futurities. But these narratives are not easy to interrupt and unlearn. As Hospicing Modernity reminds us, there are no shortcuts. We will need to go through all the shi*t that has been accumulated over the past several hundred years of colonial violence in order to metabolise it, compost it, and use that compost to prepare the ground for something different to grow.

I am fire-hardened, just as our women’s powerful, regenerative digging sticks are put through fire to stop them from breaking. I have what I need to grow all that is necessary to be healthy and to continue to thrive. The fire was difficult to go through, but without the fire, I would not have this extra strength that will carry me through the rest of my life.

Having been through the fire myself, I offer this poem as a reminder to other Indigenous people that colonial institutions do not define us. In fact, these institutions were created to discipline and disappear us. But the poem also contains a reminder that we are not immune from getting sucked into the colonial mindset, and even weaponizing it against each other. This is exactly what the colonial system wants – it incentivizes us to serve its destructive agenda, including by destroying each other, while settlers can claim their hands are clean. I include some questions at the end that can support Indigenous people to digest the poem.

I also offer this poem as an invitation for white settlers to stop trying to transcend colonialism without giving anything up, and without composting their own shit. As the GTDF Collective says, “No shit, no starter.” Although Indigenous peoples are diverse and we have multiple different perspectives on reconciliation, this poem can give you a glimpse into some of the deep frustrations that can arise when we perpetually encounter the window-dressing commitments that sustain colonial business as usual. The poem offers you a chance to assess your own capacity to take in critical feedback – and thus, to see what your compost pile really looks like. As you read the poem, I invite you to consider that, until you are ready to do your own composting work, your lofty promises about commitments to reconciliation and decolonization will likely ring hollow, perpetually recreating the same “decolonial salad” that is making us all sick – including you. I offer some debriefing questions at the end that can support settlers to digest the poem as well.

Decolonial saladIngredients

claims to innocence (fresh)

superior knowledge (stale)

reams of data (bulk buy)

extractivism (pure)

capitalism (unadulterated)

expert knowledge (single source – blind bake until nothing can penetrate)

white fragility (bulk buy, always combine with expert knowledge)

compliant browns and blacks (steeped in mediocrity)

reparations (frozen, do not thaw)

Method

• Stick to the western canon – ignore any questioning of outdated modes of knowledge production. Deride and negate non-European/non-western ways of seeing, doing, knowing, being, and relating. For example, insist that (western) science is not, in any way, influenced by the baggage (i.e., white supremacy) of the culture within which it was rigidly designed and developed. Insist (western) science is innocent, a magically curated collection of pristine, unadulterated hard facts. Most especially, discard knowledge that has been handed down over thousands of generations, emanating from peoples who have continuously interacted with their Country (Mother) in a non-extractive relationship generating reciprocal abundance.
• Do not record, respect or acknowledge the careful observation and scientific practice of the other, at every opportunity assert it is not science. If you do record it, re-name it and claim it as your own, suck your informant(s) dry, erase them and kick them to the curb.
• 200-years-plus after your people invade lands, continue to myopically view Indigenous peoples and communities as a mining opportunity. Take their resources, take everything you can, it’s much better in your hands than theirs. Remember – you’re saving their knowledge and putting it to good use, you’re helping them, they’re useless. If they don’t want to be a part of your incredible collaborative project (that you thought of all on your own using your brilliant superior knowledge) it’s because they’re dysfunctional and disorganised, and you tried. Never consider that your idea offers zero benefits to their collective aspirations. Never truly consider reciprocity. Above all else, be the great white explorer, go boldly into the wilderness, that mythical and intoxicating landscape untouched by humans. Declare yourself the discoverer.
• Lament the dysfunction of the indigenes, explain to potential research partners and especially to potentially respectful (woke) types how hopeless, and how difficult they are to deal with. Add a pinch of sour assertions questioning their authenticity as indigenes. Avoid the inconvenient mess of doing anything respectfully and culturally grounded with communities. Find one Indigenous person to sign off on everything, an oracle of sorts, perhaps with their own consulting company on the side, a triple dipper. They’ll deal with anyone in the cheap seats who speaks up, who isn’t happy with the scraps being thrown. No one knows better how to eradicate their own than a native policeman (especially one with a penchant for Mercedes Benz).
• Sprinkle tiny novelty bits of easily digestible Indigenous knowledge onto your superior knowledge as a lovely little garnish that adds a pop of colour, a fun hint of spice, but will never distract from the main course.
• Find something buried deep from within the ‘archive’, the glorious product of maniacal collective hoarding – the treasure trove of disastrously poorly provenanced shit, stripped of its cultural knowledge and belonging, classified into obscurity, sterilised through solitary confinement, blocked from the communities who can breathe life and meaning back into it. Take a lovely pic of you handing the useless archive something to brown and black people. Encourage them to look interested and grateful, even though you’ve handed them the equivalent of a shit sandwich, and most often directed them to eat it too.

Recipe notes

Control the narrative. Make a Reconciliation Action Plan, elevate it, and wave it about threateningly if the natives become restless. Flip it on a 45 record (or a streaming audio site for the younger folks) so you can dance to it and forget how you benefit from genocide.

Ensure that self-determination stays well out of reach. Maintain the status quo to honour the legacy of your recent ancestors, those people you came from who did all these bad things that have nothing to do with you or the daily violence and disenfranchisement happening right now. Do not acknowledge or dissect your own systemic advantages or ask who has paid the price so that you can enjoy them, carefree. Never consider you are part of the problem. Never consider you are part of the solution.

Above all else never, ever hand over any real power, or land.

Bio: Zena Cumpston is a Barkandji woman with family and ancestral connection to Wilcannia, Broken Hill and Menindee in western New South Wales. She currently lives in Melbourne on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people with her partner and two young boys. Zena is passionate about truth-telling and undertaking projects that directly benefit Aboriginal community. Zena is a writer and also works as a curator, consultant, researcher and artist. In 2020 Zena produced a popular free e-booklet exploring Indigenous plant use that has been used widely by schools and community groups. In 2021 she curated the exhibition Emu Sky for the Ian Potter Museum of Art, exploring Aboriginal knowledge and bringing together over 30 Aboriginal community members, sharing their stories, research, knowledge and art works. She also spent 2021 writing for the Australian State of the Environment Report across several chapters. In 2022 her co-authored book Plants; past, present future was published by Thames and Hudson as part of the First Knowledges series. Zena recently began exploring translating her research work into visual art and her linocut/collage prints and weaving are featured in the exhibition ngaratya (together), beginning in Melbourne in May 2023 and touring nationally. Her artwork and writing will also feature as part of the Soils exhibition at the TarraWarra Museum of Art in 2023.

Debriefing questionsQuestions for Indigenous people

1. To what extent do the issues named in the poem resonate with your own experiences?
2. What responses emerged for you when reading the poem? (e.g., did you feel relief that these things were being named, did you relive your own frustration at experiencing these things, did you feel angry that these things are still happening, etc)
3. To what extent and in what ways can you speak about the issues named in the poem (and related issues) in your own context without fear of reprisal?
4. What would you say to your colleagues if you were not worried about the repercussions? Is there a difference between what you need to say and what they need to hear, or are they the same thing?
5. How would the settlers in your context likely respond to this poem? How do you know? How do you think that reading this poem would affect their commitment to (non-tokenistic) decolonizing work over the long haul?

Questions for settlers

1. A common response to this poem amongst settlers is defensiveness. Did you witness defensiveness emerge within yourself as you were reading the letter?
2. If you felt defensive, were you able to hold space for it or did you sense an immediate desire to appease it (e.g., position yourself outside of the problem, or prove you are “one of the good ones”)? What are the potential harms of this desire? How might you interrupt this desire, while still taking seriously what you are learning from your own defensiveness, and from the concerns that are named in the poem?
3. What other responses emerged for you (shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, impatience, etc)? Consider the same questions as above in relation to each of these responses.
4. How prepared are you to receive critical feedback, especially from Indigenous friends, colleagues, or collaborators, without feeling overwhelmed? Did it help that the introduction to the poem foregrounded that it might be difficult to read?
5. To what extent and in what ways can Indigenous people in your own context voice their concerns without fear of reprisal? How do you know? If not, what might be the first steps toward creating the institutional and relational conditions where this is possible?
6. What affective capacities or practical strategies do you currently have that can enable you to compost what emerged for you in response to the poem? What capacities or strategies might you still need to develop? How can you begin to develop these?
7. What do you feel the poem is asking of you? How do you know? Do you feel obliged to respond to these requests (or demands)? If so, in what way?

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This set of depth education diagnostic exercises was created as a thought experiment for settlers to engage with some of the tensions and complexities that often emerge in discussions about returning land to Indigenous peoples in what is currently known as Canada. The set of exercises is grounded on the current context of Indigenous land dispossession in Canada and based on a fictional campaign to support Indigenous Nations to share governance of lands and have stolen lands returned to them.

Diagnostic exercises, like the ones presented below, are different from prescriptive exercises. Diagnostic exercises are meant to provoke different responses and to invite you to sit with the diversity and complexity of these responses within and around you. In this sense, they serve as a stimulus for inquiry, where your responses (how you are receiving and processing information and the emotions associated with them) become the real content of the exercise. The exercises were also designed to support you to familiarize yourself with some of the common dynamics that emerge when difficult issues are presented, like settler complicity in colonial violence or Indigenous aspirations for land back.

As you engage with the exercises, we invite you to try and observe the different and often conflicting thoughts and feelings that emerge within you in response. Rather than search for certainty, consensus or coherence, try to hold space for conflict, complexity, uncertainty and ambivalence as you observe your responses. Ask yourself what you are learning from these observations about the individual and collective dynamics that emerge within and amongst settler Canadians when the issue of Indigenous land rights and land return is engaged.

For Indigenous readers: This set of exercises is based on a systemic trauma-informed approach. If you identify as First Nations, Metis, or Inuit (FNMI), please note that this set of exercises was designed to make patterns of systemic discrimination visible to settlers and reading about these harmful patterns can be experienced by FNMI people in different ways. Many FNMI people have reported experiencing reading about these patterns as unburdening, a few FNMI people have experienced reading about these patterns as triggering a post-traumatic stress response. If you decide to proceed, please make sure you have support at hand.

Click here for a PDF version of this exercise.

Understanding the context of land occupation and sovereignty claims in what is currently known as Canada It surprises many settlers to know that orders made by the Pope in the 15th century underlie Canada’s claims to sovereignty. A series of these orders, known as “papal bulls,” cohere under the Doctrine of Discovery, in which it was asserted that European powers gained sovereignty over non-European lands when they “discovered” them. Through the Doctrine, the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples living on those lands was denied, and the dispossession and settlement of those lands by Europeans was justified. The Doctrine has been the basis for Canadian sovereignty since its beginnings and is now enshrined in Canadian law; similar dynamics operate in the US. With the passing of Bill C-15 in 2021, the Canadian government pledged to harmonize its laws with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including an official rejection of the Doctrine of Discovery. However, the actual impacts of the Bill are still unfolding.

Today, reserves comprise 0.2-0.3% of all land in Canada. Yet even reserve land is not owned by Indigenous Nations; it is owned by the Crown, and Indigenous Nations are permitted to live there according to laws of the Indian Act. About 40% of the land in Canada is covered by treaties between the Crown and Indigenous peoples. Because people frequently make a distinction between “treaty land” and “unceded land”, it is often mistakenly understood that “treaty” lands were “ceded” to the Crown by Indigenous Nations. However, many Indigenous Nations maintain that the treaties are more appropriately understood as nation-to-nation agreements that established the terms for shared existence on the land. By signing the treaties, Indigenous Nations did not commit to give up their sovereignty and they did not “sell” their land to the Crown. Today, many Indigenous Nations are still fighting to have their Treaty rights upheld and respected, alongside struggles to have their inherent rights upheld, often at great financial cost.

Settlers often expect Indigenous peoples to speak with a coherent voice, as with all communities, there is significant heterogeneity both within and between Indigenous Nations. There are growing movements calling for decolonization, #LandBack, and #CashBack calling for the rematriation of Indigenous lands and the restitution of wealth that has been stolen from Indigenous peoples. These movements are often led by young people, but even amongst those calling for #LandBack, it means different things to different Indigenous people (and to different generations). One Indigenous youth leader suggested that regardless of these internal discussions amongst Indigenous peoples, “What is needed next is for non-Indigenous peoples to work on their relationship and reaction to giving land back.”

Text of poster of fictional campaign in support of shared governance and land backReconciliation through justice

There cannot be collective healing or reconciliation without justice. Justice means repairing past wrongs in the present. We need to do the right thing.

We are an anonymous concerned group of Canadian citizens and permanent residents who are raising awareness about our responsibilities as settlers on stolen Indigenous lands.

We recognize the injustices that Indigenous peoples were subject to in the past and that they are still subject to today. We acknowledge our debt to Indigenous peoples: our comforts in this place we know as Canada are made possible at their expense.

We cannot move forward without some form of justice. As a gesture of reparations and redress, we are campaigning for three things:

• 1) That more settlers, especially those without heirs, choose to leave their property in their will to local Indigenous Nations;
• 2) That more settlers offer financial and other forms of support for Indigenous Nations to have their lands returned to them and their self-governance systems upheld;
• 3) That land-based organizations engage in shared land governance. For example, in 2019 Parks Canada pledged to revise relevant legislation, policies, and guidance in ways that “respect Indigenous rights and worldviews, and enable implementation of shared stewardship at heritage places.” We think they need to go further to actually co-govern all Parks Canada lands with local Indigenous Nations. As part of this co-governance, we propose that for 50% of the time that parks are open, local Indigenous peoples have exclusive control of access to the lands for seasonal ceremonies, hunting and gathering, and intergenerational knowledge transfer.

Please support our efforts. More information can be found at responsiblesettlers.org

Diagnostic Exercise 1: Identify your own internal responses to the posterYou are invited to pause and identify different intellectual and emotional internal responses to this fictional campaign. You can use the “bus within us methodology” for this exercise, where you imagine yourself as a bus with a driver and different passengers with conflicting views. The invitation is not for you to impose consensus or coherence, but for you to observe and learn from the dynamics between the “passengers” in order to learn to hold space for the complexity within you. Identify three different responses (or “passengers”) and observe the cognitive, affective and relational dimensions of each response, for example: What are the passengers thinking, saying and feeling? How old are they? What are their fears and desires? Where are they coming from? Can you connect them to people who you know (e.g. relatives, friends, former mentors, etc.)? Do they crave absolute certainties or can they tolerate or embrace complexity, uncertainty, and ambivalence? What kind of imagery would each passenger associate with the poster? How does their attitude (e.g. frustration, anger, guilt, self-righteousness, excitement, etc.) affect the driver of the bus? Who/what is each passenger accountable to?Diagnostic Exercise 2: Mapping clusters of short responses to the postera) Read the responses to the flyer below, which were organized in clusters. Try to identify the criteria used to map the clusters. With these criteria in mind, place the responses that emerged on your bus into the clusters that you feel they belong to.Cluster 1* Over my dead body. * I can’t believe they are asking for more, after all we have done for them! If anything, they owe us for all the improvements we have brought them. * I’d better not say what I really think about this… * I would do what they are asking, but what if Indigenous people just build casinos on the land? * Can’t you go bother someone else?

Cluster 2* Good luck with that! * They have a point, but it’s not my problem; future generations can deal with it. * Why are they asking me to do it? I am just an ordinary person, trying to get by. The government should return lands, not individual property owners. * Sure, I’ll do it – but only once everyone else agrees to it, too. * I am not having kids and I can’t afford to buy my own property; they can’t take the parks – parks are all we have left.

Cluster 3* I get it, but I’m disadvantaged, too, and I didn’t create this problem. * This is it, the rent is due, and it’s about time. But collect it from the 1%, not me. * I can’t do much, but I can definitely re-tweet it. * I am totally for it – if they support queer rights. * This won’t work now, but it is important for Indigenous young people to keep land back as a horizon of hope for the future. This hope was beaten out of older generations through the residential school system.

Cluster 4* Indigenous people have been waiting for this for 600 years. * Indigenous people can take care of the land better than us. * In 30 years everything will be on fire and there will be no clean water. You might as well return all the lands, it won’t make any difference. * I feel the pain of everything. It is freaking exhausting. I don’t want to be here, stuck with this inherited mess. If they want the stolen land back, then give it back. * It is the right thing to do. For all of us. Period.

b) Re-read the responses in each cluster and assign each response with the emotion associated with the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), including your own responses.Diagnostic Exercise 3: Scanning for patterns in conversationsa) Read the four conversations about the poster below and identify the types of demeaning and supportive patterns that emerged: Demeaning patterns: paternalism, deficit theorization, tokenism, white supremacy, racism, bargaining, belittlement, arrogance, delegitimization, denial of responsibility * Supportive patterns:* acknowledgement of complicity, recognition of accountability, call for reparations, uplifting Indigenous knowledges, supporting the critique

Conversation A

Speaker 1: We have brought them progress and earned our right to be here. They should be grateful we civilized the savages – and it cost us a fortune to do that.

Speaker 2: Yea, nothing is ever enough for these people. What guarantees that Indigenous people will be happy with what they propose and not demand more?

Speaker 3: Who are these “concerned citizens” anyway? Are they working with local Indigenous groups? Why are they anonymous? What is their real agenda?

Speaker 4: I don’t have kids and would actually be happy to leave my property to the local Indigenous peoples. But I worry they would just sell the land and misuse the money.

Conversation B

Speaker 1: These “responsible settlers” are out of their minds! They need to be shut down immediately before they spoil the minds of our children! This is worse than Critical Race Theory!

Speaker 2: But we don’t have control over what our kids are exposed to – they can find everything on the internet and if they see we are against it, they will want to do it just to contradict us.

Speaker 3: I wouldn’t worry, this is so extreme that no one will pay attention.

Speaker 4: I think you’re stuck in the past, and in an outdated racist mindset – a lot has changed in the past few years, and younger generations are not going to put up with this colonial system. They will fight for what is right, whether you like it or not!

Conversation C

Speaker 1: Many of our parks are at risk of wildfires because of climate change and western-style fire management. Partly returning the land to the care of Indigenous peoples could reduce this risk, since they have more knowledge of their lands and how to adapt it to a changing climate.

Speaker 2: Maybe at one time, but Indigenous peoples have lost this knowledge, and most of them just want to enjoy the spoils of capitalism and consumerism, like everyone else.

Speaker 1: Ok, but even if that were true, this disconnect happened because the lands were stolen in the first place. The knowledge is still there, with the Elders. Intergenerational knowledge transmission needs to happen on their land.

Speaker 3: Returning Indigenous lands to Indigenous people who really care about it and who have the knowledge to look after it better than we do is good for the land and ultimately for everyone. But who can guarantee that these lands won’t end up in the wrong hands?

Speaker 1: If someone stole your car, you would want it back. It doesn’t matter what you do with it once it’s returned. Maybe you end up crashing it, or selling it. But the point is that it’s your car, and you can do what you want with it. It’s not for the thief to decide.

Speaker 3: But land isn’t a car. It doesn’t “belong” to anyone, including Indigenous peoples. That’s what an Indigenous Elder told me once.

Conversation D

Speaker 1: Young people and families who love to enjoy the parks and lakes with their boomboxes and jet skis won’t take lightly to losing access to the parks. They feel entitled to enjoy their carefree summer. The campaign would have more support if they advocated for Indigenous people to have exclusive access only in the low season.

Speaker 2: Indigenous youth should also be able to enjoy the summer, on their own land, following their own protocols and free from boom boxes, jet skis and the discomfort of the gaze of settlers. They have been waiting for this for a long time.

Speaker 3: They are waiting because their ancestors lost the battle. They need to get over it already and move on. This is everybody’s land now.

Speaker 2: No, it’s not. It’s still Indigenous land. And they have been waiting because settlers have refused to give up what we stole. It’s time for us to give it back. Now.

We invite you to think about the impact of the demeaning patterns you have identified in this exercise on Indigenous individuals and communities who often have to endure them on a daily basis. These patterns are not rooted in the bad choices of individuals, but responses that are systemically sanctioned by the normalization, naturalization and legalization of the dispossession and destitution of Indigenous Peoples. These patterns are socially “wired” and mostly unconscious. To what extent do you think they are active and/or latent on your “bus”?Debriefing exercise: dipping in and diving deeper questionsDipping in questions

1. What other responses do you think are likely to emerge amongst setters in response to the flyer, but are missing from the list above?
2. What do you think is the most likely distribution of responses in your professional context, in your family, amongst your friends, in your province, in the court and in your generational cohort (e.g. which are more or less likely to emerge and have wide support)?
3. Did some of the responses listed bother or resonate with you more than the others? If so, which ones and why? Were there some you felt ambivalent about?
4. Have you encountered other efforts to secure the return of Indigenous land? If so, in what context? How did you respond at the time? Would you respond the same today?
5. How would you respond if someone approached you with the poster and asked you to sign a petition in support? Would it depend on who the person was, and how they asked?

Diving deeper questions

1. What have you learned from observing your internal responses (i.e. your “bus”)? Were there any internal responses (passengers on your bus) that surprised you, and what (if anything) did you learn from this experience of surprise?
2. Did you find yourself immediately poking holes in the requests of the poster? If so, how did this manifest and where did this/these response/s come from?
3. How did this exercise differ from usual exercises where you are asked to either agree or disagree with an argument or proposition (rather than process different internal and external responses to it)?

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Trying to bring people together to address local and global challenges, such as climate destabilization or systemic inequalities in times of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity is an enormous challenge in itself. Part of this challenge is that what has worked before in bringing people together is no longer working for many different reasons: reality is much more complex and more materially precarious for most; change is happening fast and differently from before, increasing dissonance between generations; there are more people involved and more diversity at the table, where many different ideas of “forward” compete for a platform (even between and within groups that have historically and systemically been marginalized) and stable authorities and enduring consensus are no longer possible. Another part of the challenge is that what is optimal for the process of learning and unlearning for one group of people can often be triggering and harmful to another and vice versa (with unevenly distributed harms and burdens).

This working list of invitations for “steps back” and “steps forward” was created to assist individuals and groups in the global north to address some of the contemporary challenges of bringing people together to respond to local and global challenges. The invitations were particularly informed by what we have learned navigating and negotiating the complexities, tensions and paradoxes of racial and colonial dynamics in group processes, as well as the complexities, tensions and paradoxes of negotiating conflicting diagnoses of problems and theories of change.

The invitations also attempt to interrupt a common dichotomy found in mainstream approaches to social change and problem-solving that pits a focus on solutions, action and hopefulness against a focus on complaints, inaction and hopelessness. We believe this dichotomous framing itself is part of the problem and reflects a severe limitation in mainstream problem-posing, problem-solving, accountability and coordination approaches.

The invitations also signal to the fact that we have been conditioned to create idealizations that make things more manageable, more positive, more hopeful, more comfortable and more actionable. These idealizations may address aspects of the challenge at hand, but since they are created to meet problematic conditioned emotional desires (for certainty, control, consensus, innocence, hope in secured futurity and validation), they disavow their own limitations, the harm they inflict and/or the human and nonhuman costs they generate.

Unless we can expand our capacity to hold space (cognitively, affectively and relationally) for all relevant aspects of reality, we have very little chance of approaching complex challenges or coordinating efforts in wiser (more mature), more sober, and more socially and ecologically accountable ways. This includes holding space for the good, the bad, the broken and the ugly within and around us, and the known, the unknown and the unknowable. We need to build stamina and “stomach” to navigate paradoxes, tensions, conflicts and contradictions, and to be comfortable with the discomfort of staying with the trouble and not turning away from what makes us uncomfortable, irritated, fearful and/or frustrated.

The 7 steps back and 7 steps forward exercise invites us to increase our capacity to hold the weight of multiple moving layers of complexity, complicity and uncertainty as we approach a contextual challenge. It also intends to support us to achieve deeper levels of insight, hindsight, foresight, analysis and discernment, to learn to build relationships differently and to develop stamina in order not to be immobilized and/or overwhelmed by discomfort, uncertainty, complexity, and/or complicity in systemic harm.

7 steps back1. Step back from your self-image: What are your real investments, fears, hopes and intentions and where do they come from? What emotions, insecurities, unexamined desires or unprocessed traumas could be driving your decision-making? What emotional states are you actively avoiding and at what cost? What does your ego feel entitled and justified to do? To what extent do these entitlements and justifications limit your capacity to face and address the challenges at hand? 2. Step back from your generational cohort: How are the associated challenges perceived and experienced by other generations? How are different generations interpreting reality differently, experiencing it differently and expecting different things from it and how come? How fast are these changes happening? What is your generation being called out on? To what extent are the interests of incoming generations represented in your usual problem-posing, problem-solving, coordination and accountability approaches? 3. Step back from the universalization of your social/cultural/economic parameters of normality: What does the privilege you carry prevent you from seeing and experiencing? How is your privilege also a loss? What are you projecting as true, real, normal and desirable for everyone and how does that reflect your own background? How can these projections become harmful to others and/or limit possibilities for relationship building and/or coordination? Who could refuse to work with you on legitimate grounds? 4. Step back from your immediate context and time: How do the challenges in your immediate context reflect wider patterns of change in society across different timescales? What historical, systemic and/or structural forces are at work? What is your perspective of the larger picture? What are the boundaries of this perspective (how is it limited)? 5. Step back from familiar patterns of relationship-building and problem-solving that you have been socialized into: To what extent has your approach to the problem been conditioned and limited by the culture it emerged from? What alternative ways of seeing, doing, relating and being are already viable, but are currently unimaginable to you and those around you? What are you missing out on? Who/what are you accountable to and how come? What accountabilities are you denying, rejecting and/or neglecting? What are you indifferent to and how come? 6. Step back from the normalized pattern of elevating humanity above the rest of nature: To what extent and how is what is unfolding a consequence ofthe perceived separation between “man and nature” and/or the rendering of “nature” as property?How would you approach the problem differently if other species and entities (e.g. rivers, coral reefs, mountains) had legal personhood (if you could be liable for damages, negligence, injury and ecocide) and if they were accorded independent and inalienable rights to exist and to flourish (i.e. rights of nature)? To what extent are the interests of other species represented in your problem-posing, problem-solving, accountability and coordination approaches? 7. Step back from the impulse to find quick fixes and expand your capacity not to be immobilized by uncertainty, complicity and complexity: In what ways is your approach to the problem part of the problem? To what extent are you being driven by desires for innocence, benevolence and hopefulness (e.g. a saviour complex) and how can these desires be harmful and/or detrimental to the task at hand? How can you leverage the recognition of complicity in systemic harm towards deeper and more enduring forms of responsibility and accountability? To what extent are you equipped to repair and weave relationships grounded on trust, respect, consent, reciprocity and accountability?

7 steps forward (and/or aside)1. Step forward with honesty and courage to see what you don’t want to see: commit to expanding your capacity to sit with what is real, difficult and painful: the good, the bad, the ugly and the brokenness of humanity within and around you. In what ways are your projections, idealizations, expectations, hopes, fears and fragilities preventing you from approaching the aspects of the problem that are unpleasant for you and/or that challenge your sense of reality and/or self-image? What aspects of the challenge at hand are you not willing or ready to see and how does this impair your ability to address the challenge itself? 2. Step forward with humility to find strength in openness and vulnerability: commit to shedding your conditioned arrogance and sense of merit, status and self-importance in order to decenter yourself and centre the challenge you are trying to address. In what ways are you reproducing patterns that centre your desire for recognition, validation, prestige or protagonism (e.g. the saviour complex)? How can these desires limit your capacity to build relationships and to mobilize the coordination that is necessary for the challenge at hand? 3. Step forward with self-reflexivity so that you can read yourself and learn to read the room: commit to tracing where your cognitive, affective and relational patterns of engaging with reality are coming from, where they are at, where they are going, their limitations and the ways they impact others and are part of the problem; learn to step back from yourself in order to read (the room) and to read how you (and what you are doing consciously and unconsciously) are being read in the room: learn to see yourself from other people’s perspectives, especially the unflattering parts, and learn to be ok with that (you won’t be able to control it anyway). 4. Step forward with self-discipline to do the work on yourself so that you don’t become work for other people: commit to identifying and interrupting compulsions and impulses grounded on socially sanctioned and conditioned harmful patterns such as greed, vanity, arrogance, indifference, indulgence, extraction and consumption (of time, labour or energy of others). To what extent are you aware of your own compulsions and unhealthy reality-coping mechanisms? How do you justify the continuity of these patterns to yourself? 5. Step forward with maturity to do what is needed rather than what you want to do: commit to the long-term project of becoming a good elder and ancestor for all relations. Taking into account that mainstream culture encourages and rewards self-infantilization and the denial of responsibility, how can you reorient yourself toward eldership and generational accountability? To what extent are you aware of the complexity of your own thoughts, emotions, investments and patterns of relationship building (the internal conversations that are happening within you)? What stories that you are telling yourself need to be further examined? What learning/unlearning have you been avoiding? Why and at what cost (for yourself and/or others)? 6. Step forward with expanding discernment and attention: commit to expanding your capacity for discernment in proportion to the increase in complexity, this includes your capacity to read across time and across different layers of reality, and to hold paradoxes, tensions and uncertainties in view. What do you need to learn or unlearn cognitively, effectively and relationally in order not to be immobilized and/or overwhelmed by complexity, ambiguity, plurality and unknowability? 7. Step forward with adaptability, flexibility, stamina and resilience for the long haul: move for the sake of learning to coordinate and be transformed by the process rather than arrive somewhere: be prepared to fall, to fail, to have your plans shattered, to be stretched, to have your heart broken (open, not apart), to change course and to find joy in the struggle itself rather than in the imagined prize at the end. To what extent are your desires and calculations to arrive at a predetermined destination preventing you from engaging in the experiments and experimentations whose failures will provide the “data” for new directions to take and better places we may aspire to go, that we cannot imagine from the outset?

Each of these steps (both steps back and steps forward) requires unlearning what we have been cognitively, affectively and relationally conditioned to think, feel, relate, hope and imagine in modern/colonial systems (including systems of formal education). This is very different from self-actualization because it is not about “mastery” of concepts or skills (filling a cup), but about “depth” (emptying that cup, shattering it and allowing the pieces to rebuild themselves into something you cannot imagine from the outset). The unlearning required for each step will likely be life-long and life-wide.

In our arts/research collective, we call this inquiry process of unlearning “depth education” or education otherwise. We have been mapping the capacities and dispositions that have been exiled from modern education and that will need to be reactivated as we face the global challenges that put the future of humanity’s survival on the planet at risk. This educational inquiry is grounded on a systemic trauma-informed approach.

Questions:

• What kinds of challenges have you experienced in bringing people together to engage with global challenges?
• What difference could the steps back/forward/aside make to the work of your group or organization?
• Who/What do you feel personally accountable to? (e.g. family, future, present, past generations, humans, non-humans, land, earth, etc.) Who/What do you feel professionally accountable to? What accountabilities show in the profile of your organization and/or context of work? What accountabilities are not recognized in that context?
• To what extent has your formal educational experience so far prepared you to take the steps back/forward/aside outlined in this post? How much exposure have you had (formally or informally) to depth/diagnostic education?
• In your context of work, to what extent can Indigenous, Black and people of colour speak openly and critically without having to worry about negative responses and/or retaliation?
• How do you assess your personal capacity to hold space for discomfort, uncertainty, complexity, and/or complicity in systemic harm, in generative ways? How do you assess the collective capacity of the people in your social or professional circles to do the same?
• How do you usually respond when your worldviews and/or self-image(s) are challenged? How do you respond when you are asked to face your complicity in systemic social and ecological harm? What do these responses signal about your own internal complexity, attachments and emotional maturity?
• Many Indigenous scholars argue that climate change is not a technical problem that can be fixed with more of the same knowledge and/or technology, but a relational one, based on an imposed sense of separation between humans and nature, other species and their own selves that normalizes neglect and irresponsibility. How is approaching a relational challenge different from approaching a technical challenge?

If you want to read more about this educational approach, the book “Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism” is a good place to start. If you are interested in climate education, the article “From “education for sustainable development” to “education for the end of the world as we know it” offers an overview of our inquiry in this area. Over the past 5 years, we have also developed a number of related resources that can support the calibration of group processes, including “Depth Conversations”, “Radars for Reading and Being Read”, “The Gifts of Failure”, “Wanna Be an Ally?”, Why I Cannot Hold Space For You Anymore”, “101 Ways to Avoid Dealing With Shit”, “Towards Eldering” and “Co-Sensing With Radical Tenderness”.

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by Vanessa Andreotti

This masterclass was recorded on December 31, 2022, my last day as David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education. It presents a social cartography of stacked toxic challenges faced by Indigenous, Black and People of Color (IBPOC) navigating what Sarah Ahmed has called “the will to diversity in academia” (Ahmed, 2012; 2022). Drawing on Sarah Ahmed’s work, as well as other scholars who have taken the “affective turn” in social critique, in this presentation I argue that the institutional will to diversity is not a will or commitment to interrupting the naturalization and normalization of colonialism and/or white supremacy.

This presentation was created for colleagues who identify as IBPOC as a way to visibilize the complexities, paradoxes, risks, costs, burdens and price we pay as we navigate academic spaces where the naturalization and normalization of colonialism and cultural supremacy are uninterrupted. Since this masterclass was created specifically for an IBPOC audience, it will use language and analyses that may be triggering, or cause cognitive and emotional dissonance, to people who do not identify as IBPOC. If you want to watch this presentation and you are not IBPOC, I ask you to take a step back to observe any resistance, anxiety or discomfort that may emerge for you. If you would like to explore what this discomfort, anxiety and/or resistance can teach you, there is a list of resources that can support you under “resources” below..

David Lam Chair Report 2022 (PDF)
UBC report from the Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Task Force (PDF)

Resources###### Resources for both IBPOC and non-IBPOC people

• Complaint! by Sarah Ahmed (book 2022)
• On Being Included: Racism and diversity in institutional life by Sarah Ahmed (book 2012)
• The Enduring, Invisible, and Ubiquitous Centrality of Whiteness by Kenneth V. Hardy (Eds.) (book 2022)
• Unpayable Debt by Denise Ferreira da Silva (book 2022)
• The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian Universities by Frances Henry, et. al. (Eds) (book 2017)
• The End of Diversity by Rinaldo Walcott (article 2019)
• Neoliberal Multiculturalism and Western Exceptionalism: The cultural politics of the West by Sunera Thobani (article 2018)
• Conceptualizing Race Critical Research by Sharon Stein and Vanessa Andreotti (article 2018)
• Towards Braiding by Elwood Jimmy, Vanessa Andreotti and Sharon Stein (book 2019)
• Generational Differences in Racial Equity Work by Dax-Devlon Ross (OpEd 2021)
• When Black Women Go From Pet to Threat by Zora (OpEd 2020)
• Building Resilient Organizations: Toward joy and durable Power in a time of crisis by Maurice Mitchell (OpEd 2022)

Resources for IBPOC people

• Elite Capture: How the powerful took over identity politics by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (book 2022)
• Refusing the University by Sandy Grande (book chapter 2019)
• Identifying white mediocrity and know-your-place aggression: A form of self-care by Koritha Mitchell (article 2021)
• Racial Trauma: Theory, Research, and Healing: Introduction to the Special Issue (Special Journal Issue 2019)
• (Critical Ethnic Studies) Intellectual by Nick Mitchell (article 2015)
• White Whispers 2: An Asian experience by Karen V. Lee (article 2021)
• What Happened When I Tried to Carry the World on My Back by Mary Annaïse Heglar (OpEd 2022)
• Black women and the glass cliff: ‘I was supposed to bring some kind of Black Girl Magic’ by L’oreal Thomson Payton (OpEd 2022)
• Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference by Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò (OpEd 2022)
• A New Immigrant Experience of Navigating Multiculturalism and Indigenous Content in Teacher Education by Lilach Marom (article 2017)
• Notes And Resources On Anti-Blackness And Racism in US Higher Education (Educational Resource 2022)

Resources for non-IBPOC people

• White supremacy culture by Tema Okun (educational resource)
• White Allies, Let’s Be Honest About Decolonization: I want to experience the solidarity of allied actions that refuse fantastical narratives of commonality and hope by Kyle Powys Whyte (OpEd 2018)
• Teaching while Black: Racial dynamics, evaluations, and the role of White females in the Canadian academy in carrying the racism torch by Beverly-Jean Daniel (article 2018)
• White Resentment in Settler Society by Carol Schick (article 2014)
• The Spectacle of Reconciliation: On (the) unsettling responsibilities to Indigenous peoples in the academy by Michelle Daigle (article 2019)
• Whiteness-at-work in white serving institutions by Orkideh Mohajeri, and Naomi Nishi (article 2022)
• White Psychodrama by Liam Kofi Bright (forthcoming article)
• How well-intentioned white male physicists maintain ignorance of inequity and justify inaction by Mellissa Dancy and Apriel Hodai (article 2022)
• White Benevolence: Racism and colonial violence in the helping professions by Melina Kristensen (Eds.) (book 2022)
• Just the Servant: An Intersectional Critique of Servant Leadership by Helena Liu (article 2019)
• Conspicuous consumption: economies of virtue and the commodification of Indigeneity by Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti (article 2021)
• Whiteness, Power and the Politics of Demographics in the Governance of the Canadian Academy by Genevieve Fuji Johnson and Robert Howsam (article 2020)
• 50 Reasons Why There Are No Māori in Your Science Department by Tara McAllister (article 2022).
• Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education by Sharon Stein (book 2022)
• Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome by Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey (OpEd 2021)
• The Dangers of Courage Culture and Why Brene Brown Isn’t For Black Folk (OpEd 2021)
• Robert’s Rules: Why we can’t make change until we change the system by Marty Wilder (OpEd 2020)
• How To Outsmart your Unconscious Bias by Valerie Alexander (TedTalk 2018)

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This is a trilingual podcast series rooted in critical conversations around justice, healing, and sustainability that extend between what is known as Vancouver and Latin America. All episodes take the form of a braided conversation where intergenerational and intercultural voices share sonic space. The focus is not reaching consensus or totalizing solutions about the current … Continue reading "In Earth’s Care Podcast Series"

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This podcast aims to weave the multiplicity of existence of low-intensity struggle youth and how they relate to climate collapse. Through creating an artistic palimpsest of stories, this podcast aims to lead listeners into visceral witnessing. This plurivocal storytelling hopes to incite connection, create support, and deepen inquiries for fellow youth. It is not about … Continue reading "Coming of Age in the Climate Change Era"

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The book “Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism” was published in September 2021 (you can download a couple of sample chapters here). This book is an educational experiment full of dancing stories, metaphors, allegories, creative maps, and exercises that ask you to sit at the limits of our modern desires … Continue reading "Hospicing Modernity (book) Zoom Sessions"

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The Canadian government has declared September 30 a federal statutory holiday (National Day of Truth and Reconciliation) to recognize the violent legacy of residential schools. Different Indigenous peoples respond differently to this initiative. Some of these differences are generational: while it could be important for residential school survivors to hear the acknowledgement of the harm … Continue reading "(The difficulties of) Truth and Reconciliation"

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OUR INDIGENOUS RELATIONS AND COLLABORATORS IN BRAZIL ARE FACING A HUGE THREAT, AS THE COUNTRY IS VOTING TO TAKE AWAY INDIGENOUS LANDS, TO CANCEL INDIGENOUS RIGHTS AND TO REMOVE THE PROTECTIONS OF THE AMAZON FOREST. PLEASE SUPPORT US IF YOU CAN BY SIGNING THE OPEN LETTER BELOW. Open letter to the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court and … Continue reading "Avaaz Petition: Protect the Amazon and Indigenous rights or face international boycott"

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Written by Vanessa Andreotti, Elwood Jimmy, and Bill Calhoun, February 24, 2021 Decolonial analysis The usual story of change is that there is a problem with the system that needs to be solved. The degree of the problem can vary from the system “not working optimally” to “totally screwed up”. The logical solution proposed is … Continue reading "Gift Contract"

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In this podcast Vanessa Andreotti offers some thoughts on the analyses and directions that motivate the work of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective. Click here for a related video in Portuguese. Transcribed text (audio): In the Decolonial Futures Collective, our main analysis is that colonialism doesn’t start with subjugation of people or occupation of … Continue reading "Some thoughts on the work of the GTDF collective"

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Haruko Okano is an artist based in Vancouver who is one of the 2019 Thread Residency Fellows. The Thread Residency is part of the “Towards Braiding” project.

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Elwood and Vanessa talk about their notes for a review (that may or may not be written one day) comparing three recent plays written by Indigenous artists: Children of God (a musical about residential school violence by Corey Payette) Material Witness (SpiderWoman Theatre) Looking for Tiger Lily (Anthony Hudson/drag clown Carla Rossi)  

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Dougald Hine (Dark Mountain Project/Home), Vanessa Andreotti (Decolonial Futures/In Earth’sCARE), Bayo Akomolafe (Emergence Network)

Recorded on 2 December 2018 in Paris.

https://decolonialfuturesnet.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/dvb.mp3

The conversation with Dougald Hine was followed up with an interview that was published in 2019 [download PDF].

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on la Fundación San Alonso Rodríguez

https://decolonialfuturesnet.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/juana-interview-11.mp3

on community anchored decolonial education

https://decolonialfuturesnet.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/juana-interview-2.mp3