Queering Indigenous Land-Based Education

Abstract

Over the past decade, land-based education has become increasingly popular across First Nations and other school systems in Canada. The shift from classroom-based teaching to land-based approaches has supported Indigenous cultural revitalization. It has also provided an opportunity for educators to “queer” both pedagogy and essentialist understandings of nature and cosmology. This chapter focuses on the philosophical and pedagogical praxis of queering land-based education, learning from our experiences designing and teaching the graduate level course Queering Indigenous Land-Based Education. We focus on aspects of the course that demonstrate the importance of our relationships with water, land, and place in relation to the process of disrupting and reorienting our education and knowledge systems. These themes are presented alongside students’ (K-12 teachers or administrators) reflections on the course’s impacts on their own practice as land-based educators.

Full text

219© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
J. Russell (ed.), Queer Ecopedagogies, International Explorations in Outdoor
and Environmental Education 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65368-2_11
Chapter 11
Queering Indigenous Land-Based
Education
AlexWilson, JayleneMurray, SaraLoutitt, andRichelleNorthStarScott
Introduction
Our rst cohort of students in the Indigenous Land- based Master’s concentration was
invited to the Waipi’o Valley in the Kingdom of Hawaii. On our arrival, the host led our
group (which included 16 self- identied women and 3 self- identied men) on a tour of the
camp at which we’d be staying. Pointing out the two washrooms, the host declared that, in
keeping with the sacred law kapu, one was reserved for women and the other for men.
Several students turned to look at me. I felt that, in my role as instructor, they wanted me to
say something but I was unsure. Should or could I say anything? Would it be rude or cultur-
ally inappropriate if I did? What about the comfort and safety of the students? The overbur-
dened women’s porta potty was sure to ll up quickly- how could that be managed? In
silence, I mentally worked through these questions for what seemed like a long time.
Eventually, I looked at the host and said, “Sixteen women. Three men.”
Her response was immediate: “Kapu is lifted!”1
- Alex Wilson
This chapter focuses on the philosophical and pedagogical praxis of queering
Indigenous education. It draws on our experiences designing and teaching the
1 Story shared with permission.
A. Wilson (*)
Department of Educational Foundations, College of Education, University of Saskatchewan,
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
e-mail: alex.wilson@usask.ca
J. Murray
School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan,
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
S. Loutitt
Keyano College, Fort McMurray, AB, Canada
R. N. S. Scott
St. James-Assiniboia School Division, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

220
graduate level course Queering Indigenous Land- Based Education, and uses exam-
ples of course activities and interactions that demonstrate the critical importance of
our relationships with land and place to the process of reorienting educational prac-
tices. We discuss ways that our work examines and disrupts settler colonialism and
challenges normative, essentialist, hierarchic, Eurocentric or Judeo- Christian narra-
tives, constructs and practices relating to cosmology, gender, sexuality and other
aspects of individual and collective identity that are embedded in mainstream edu-
cation systems. We also explore some of the challenges and possibilities associated
with the integration of inclusive and non- binary Indigenous land- based education
into educational practice.
We begin with an overview of the impacts on Indigenous peoples of settler colo-
nialism and dominant narratives that are associated with or follow from it. We then
describe how, in this graduate level course, Indigenous knowledge and ways of
teaching and learning displace these narratives, constructs and practices, and pre-
pare students (nearly all of whom are practicing teachers or administrators in the
K- 12 system) to queer their own professional practices.
Settler Education asEpistemicide
As Eve Tuck and Marcia McKenzie (2015) have written, “Land is, therefore we are”
(p.56). This statement reminds us that, as Indigenous peoples, our identities cannot
be separated from our relationships with the land.2 Our cosmologies and creation
stories (many of which feature beings who defy Western and Judeo- Christian binary
constructs of gender, sexuality and body and spirit) are the starting place of our
worldviews, values, ethics, and ways of being. Shared and passed across genera-
tions in the form of stories, songs, ceremonies, and oral histories, and shifting and
expanding as we gather new knowledge, our creation stories tell us where we came
from and who we are, situating us in a relational context with everyone and every-
thing that surrounds us, from the stars to the land. Our cosmologies, ontologies, and
epistemologies have shaped the ways in which we gather, share, and use knowledge,
generating pedagogy that centres on the land and our relations as our texts and
teacher.
Throughout most of Indigenous peoples’ long histories, the land and our rela-
tions have been our primary and most valuable sites and sources of learning (Cajete
2015; Simpson 2014). The colonization and settlement of our traditional territories
and the creation of the nation state of Canada have impacted every aspect of our
lives, including the ways in which we learn. Settlers’ claims on our territories,
resource extraction, and industrial activities have steadily eroded our access to the
land. The introduction of formal education in the mid- 1800’s and Indigenous
2 In this discussion, the concept of land encompasses the land itself, the waters, the air, the plants,
animals, forces and other beings that, in their reciprocal relationships, form and sustain all life.
A. Wilson et al.

221
children’s subsequent forced attendance at residential schools attempted to establish
classrooms as the primary environment in which our learning took place. Residential
schools and other classrooms and educational spaces founded within colonial struc-
tures have been (and, arguably, continue to be) sites of violence against Indigenous
epistemologies, peoples, and lands (Ahenakew 2016; Hall and Tandon 2017;
Simpson 2014; Wildcat etal. 2014; Wilson 2015). Outside of the classroom, our
bodies, genders and sexualities have been regulated, controlled, policed and recon-
structed by once foreign but now steadily enforced colonial norms, regulations, and
practices.
The Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne Simpson (2017) recognizes the education sys-
tems described above, designed to assimilate and enfranchise Indigenous people, as
part of “the machinery” (p.15) of colonization. As noted elsewhere, in addition to
the genocidal impacts that colonization has had in the Americas, “displacing or
removing Indigenous peoples from our traditional lands and waters [and cutting]
our ties to critical sources of our traditional knowledges [is] epistemicide” (Wilson
and Laing 2019, p.113). As other scholars have suggested, “if colonization is fun-
damentally about dispossessing Indigenous people from land, decolonization must
involve forms of education that reconnect Indigenous peoples to land and the social
relations, knowledges and languages that arise from the land” (Wildcat et al.
2014, p.1).
Land asText andTeacher
[A] recent {event} in a small community … included a sweat lodge ceremony, and when
two- spirit and other participants arrived to take part in the ceremony, the Elder leading the
ceremony demanded that some in the group change their clothing to conform to what he
perceived their gender to be. He added the warning that if he suspected that they had dressed
in a way that did not conform to his assumptions about their gender identity, they would be
required to prove that they were female or male. In the face of this direct assault on their
body sovereignty and gender self- determination, some people left the ceremony. Others
stayed for fear that they would be disrespecting the organizers and the Elder and others, or
for fear that they would be punished. (Wilson, 2018, p.269)
Over the last few decades, a growing number of First Nations and other school sys-
tems in Canada have (to varying extents) moved away from classroom- based teach-
ing, and resumed or returned to land- based approaches to teaching and learning.
Indigenous land- based education can be understood as a process of educating that
values and upholds Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and their right to “grow up
intimately and strongly connected to our homelands, immersed in our languages
and spiritualities, and embodying our traditions of agency, leadership, decision- -
making and diplomacy” (Simpson 2014, p.1).
Land- based education is one way in which Indigenous people continue to resist
the violence of colonial educational structures. We use the term “land” to recognize
the literal, physical and spiritual connection to ancestral homelands. Whereas
“place” can often refer to a newly created space or simply a location. Teachers and
11 Queering Indigenous Land-Based Education

222
learners experience education that situates “land as pedagogy” (Simpson 2014, p.1)
and as “a system of reciprocal social relations and ethical practices” (Wildcat etal.
2014, p.2). This shift has contributed to the revitalization of Indigenous traditional
teachings, languages and cultures. However, many of these programs present or
draw on Indigenous ‘traditional teachings’ that rely on rigid essentializing con-
structs or understandings of nature, cosmology, gender, sexuality or other aspects of
our cultures, identities and ways of being (Denetdale 2006; Wilson 2015; Wilson
2018; Wilson and Laing 2019). Such teachings are, to a considerable extent, a by- -
product of colonial practices such as the residential school system and government
enforced suppression and, in some cases, criminalization of Indigenous spirituality,
which made many parents and Elders reluctant to pass on traditional teachings and
practices to younger generations. In our own work as educators, we are grateful for
the recuperation of traditional teachings but challenge those that reify the inuence,
internalization, and transposition of settler colonial, Judeo- Christian, and
Eurocentric constructs, and instead amplify the diverse voices and identities in our
communities.
For educators and elders Stan and Peggy Wilson (1998), an Indigenous world-
view and values provide the starting place for land- based education. In a discussion
of the concept of ‘relational accountability’, they remind us that the Cree phrase
“mena ka ki haw ni wah koo wagomakanak [which] means ‘and also to all to whom
I am related’” (p.157), along with its popularized and universalized expression in
English as ‘all my relations’ or ‘all our relations’, refers to the degree to which all
life systems are related and have responsibilities within those relationships:
[We are] responsible for [our] own actions, but not in isolation. Individual responsibility for
actions must be in relation to all living organisms. It is this web of relationship with each
individual in the center that stretches out in all directions. This is our understanding of how
the universe is held together. We believe that the interconnection among all living organ-
isms is essential for all life forms. The connections must be respected and honored. This
relational worldview, carried consciously by some, subconsciously by other Indigenous
peoples, affects how we conduct ourselves … in everyday life. (p.157)
This ontology generates an identity and concept of self that is strikingly different
from that of many settler Canadians. Settler Canadians’ “concept of self is fre-
quently encapsulated in independence of the individual” (Wilson 2001, p.91). An
Indigenous concept of self is best described as “self- as- relationship”, one that is
“rooted in the context of community and place” (p.91), encompasses their indi-
vidual self, ancestors, and future generations, and elicits a sense of respect, care,
responsibility and accountability for everything that they are connected to, extend-
ing beyond human, animal or material matter to ideas, theories and philosophies. In
mainstream education systems, the self- in- relation model has served as the basis for
curriculum and school counselling practice and as a policy framework.
Wilson and Wilson (1999) also call on Indigenous educators to look critically at
the accepted norms and practices of mainstream education systems, to step “away
from the system that once bound them, the system that originally created the chaos”
and to “start creating change” (p.138). Change, they note, “should not simply mean
a change of location. It must mean a change of philosophy, a change of curriculum,
a change of teaching methodologies, a change of content” (p.138).
A. Wilson et al.

223
Queering Indigenous Land-Based Education
Stan and Peggy Wilson’s challenge to the accepted philosophies, practices and
curriculum in mainstream education systems aligns with many thinkers’ under-
standing of queerness. To some extent, this might be explained by Oyate scholar
Kim Tallbear’s observation, in her discussion of Mel Chen’s (2012) concept of
queer animacies, that:
We have seen some humans de- animated or made to seem less alive in order to justify hier-
archies. And we see it in our classications of nonhumans. That human/animal split engen-
ders a lot of violence. And therein lies a key intersection between queer theory and
[Indigenous] metaphysics- an aversion to the human/nonhuman split because of an explicit
understanding that it engenders violence. (Tallbear 2011)
In their discussion of Living a Decolonizing Queer Politics, Kwagu’ł scholar
Sarah Hunt and co- author Cindy Holmes (2015), dene queering as:
… a deconstructive practice focused on challenging normative knowledges, identities,
behaviors, and spaces thereby unsettling power relations and taken- for- granted assump-
tions. Queerness is then less about a way of “being,” and more about “doing,” and offers the
potential for radical social critique (p.156).
Joshua Russell (2013) describes his concept of “queer ecopedagogy”3 as “a thought-
ful approach to knowledge and action that is committed to muddying the waters of
educational discourses, pedagogical projects, and cultural narratives that work to
promote or silence what lies beyond the boundaries of ‘natural’ or ‘normal’” (p.22),
and an invitation for “all of us to experience and imagine ways of being and acting
that challenge our notion of what constitutes a ‘better’ life, including those that seek
a more radical change in the world” (p.13). The pairing of queer/queerness/queer-
ing with radical critique and action by both Hunt and Holmes and Russell echo
Quechua scholar Sandy Grande’s (2004) call (in a text that does not refer to queer-
ing!) for radical pedagogies that both sustain Indigenous epistemologies and life-
ways and challenge the complex power relations that shape the material conditions
of Indigenous people’s lives. Grande notes that “transgression is the root of eman-
cipatory knowledge, and emancipatory knowledge is the basis of revolutionary
pedagogy” (p.5).
Hunt and Holmes (2015) identify queering as a deconstructive practice. In the
context of Indigenous land- based education, this deconstructive practice applies to
both what we teach (including, for example, challenging prevailing settler colonial,
Judeo- Christian or Eurocentric binary, essentialist and hegemonic constructs or
understandings related to gender or sexuality) and how we teach (including, for
example, our expectations with respect to where teaching and learning take place,
who our teachers might be or what appropriate power dynamics might be within a
3 Ecopedagogy, inuenced by Freire, is a revolutionary teaching and learning movement that
“opposes the globalization of neoliberalism and imperialism … and attempts to foment collective
ecoliteracy and realize culturally relevant forms of knowledge grounded in normative concepts
such as sustainability, planetarity, and biophilia” (Kahn 2010, p.18, cited in Pollocks 2010).
11 Queering Indigenous Land-Based Education

224
group of students and teachers). Of equal importance, queering land- based educa-
tion also demands our focus on what might best be described as “reconstructive
practices,” that is, the radical reclamation and reassertion of Indigenous peoples’
queer cosmologies, of our relationships with the land and the beings and forces who
share that land with us, and of the knowledge and practices that have nourished and
animated these relationships and enabled and supported our survival, sustainability
and wellbeing. As the Hawaiian scholar Kalaniopua Young has observed, queering
is about “transforming poison into medicine” (personal communication, January
18, 2019).
Queering intheBush
In the La Pocha workshop, we developed a new art manifesto and performance intervention
as our collective response to the urgent challenges and contexts that animate autonomous
Indigenous movements such as Idle No More and the Zapatistas. The week- long workshop
itself was incredibly intense. On the last day, we had some time available before our perfor-
mance intervention, and several of us spent it at a round dance organized by Idle No More
at Viger Square in Old Montreal. Coming together with others in the round dance gave us
spiritual energy and when the dance ended, it felt like those connections had been pulled
apart. It was time to rejoin the temporary community of the workshop for our performance
intervention, held at the same site.
The performance began. Four women (including myself) from the northern hemisphere,
all Idle No More organizers, stood on one side of the square. Directly across from us stood
four Indigenous women from Idle No More South and Central America. While the rest of
the performance took place, with performers moving through the space between and around
us and hundreds of people gathered to see the performance, we stood still and silent, feet
rmly on the ground, the North and the South gazing steadily at each other. In that place and
long moment, we were connected. I was overwhelmed emotionally, as were the other
women. As women and, in particular, as Indigenous women, we share the common experi-
ence of violence, both historically and in the present. Yet still, here we stand, more powerful
than ever. It was clear to me that we cannot stop doing this work. When we later viewed
photos of the performance intervention, we could see non- human shapes in some of them-
a generous reminder that our ancestors support us in our actions.
- Alex Wilson
In 2010, in response to community- identied needs of surrounding First Nations
and other Indigenous communities inside and outside Canada, the University of
Saskatchewan’s Department of Educational Foundations established a Master of
Education program with an Indigenous land- based concentration (College of
Education n.d.). More than two- thirds of the program’s required credit units can be
completed in land- based eld institutes. Students live on- site during the approxi-
mately two- week period over which each intensive land- based course takes place,
providing ample time to develop and deepen their relationships with fellow stu-
dents, instructors, the Indigenous people hosting them, and the land. The institutes’
hosting nations have included Opaskwayak Cree Nation, the Yellowknife Dene,
Xwisten and the Kanaka Maoli in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Students complete the
balance of their required credit units in online courses, moving through the program
A. Wilson et al.

225
in cohorts that include approximately 20 First Nation, Metis, Native American,
Native Hawaiian and/or non- Indigenous people. The program’s design enables par-
ticipation for students who are full- time teachers, educational administrators, or
those who have other commitments that prevent them from committing to the
lengthy semester- based periods of study associated with most graduate programs.
In the summer of 2017, the courses were hosted by the Opaskwayak Cree Nation
and situated at Stoney Point on Lake Atikameg, a traditional shing camp and now
also the site of Opaskwayak Cree Nation’s land- based programming in the K- 12
schools. For two weeks, students camped in the bush by the lake. Guided by local
elders, they formed a small learning and living community. Two of the authors of
this chapter developed and taught the course, while two were enrolled as students.
The courses offered in this session of the eld institute included a one- week inten-
sive course, Queering Indigenous Land- Based Education, an exploration of philo-
sophical and pedagogical praxis. This course models ways to examine, challenge
and disrupt the normative knowledges, power relations, and taken- for- granted
assumptions mentioned by Hunt and Holmes above (2015). This includes disrupting
essentializing constructs or understandings of nature, cosmology, gender, sexuality
or other aspects of our cultures, identities and ways of being, as well as challenging
manifestations of colonial, Judeo- Christian and Eurocentric dogma, hierarchies,
roles, protocols, and practices in Indigenous traditional knowledge and teachings.
The overarching goal of the Queering Indigenous Land- Based Education course
is to prepare students, nearly all of whom are teachers or administrators in the K- 12
system, to queer their own pedagogic and professional practices. As Mary Lou
Rasmussen and Louisa Allen (2014) have convincingly argued, “queer concepts in
education should not stop at places where education takes queer bodies as its object”
(p.433). Towards this, course readings focus on Indigenous constructs of gender
and sexual diversity, queering as a concept and an action, settler colonialism in
Canada, interspecies thinking, relationality with the land and earth, and pedagogy in
the context of land- based education. Students also engage with the land as text and
teacher. Their rst assignment is to observe the moon consecutively for several
nights and then record their observations in a journal, reecting on the moon’s rela-
tionship to the sun, sky, humans and other beings, their own cosmologies, and
course readings. In another assignment, students review one of several books
included in the reading list, giving consideration to how the text might contribute to
a queering of pedagogy, praxis, and land- based education. Their nal assignment is
a paper that synthesizes their learning experience and provides an analysis and dis-
cussion of how they can queer their own land- based pedagogies as teachers.
An additional assignment in the course was inuenced by co- author Wilson’s
exposure to the pedagogy and praxis of Mexican/Chicano performance artist, activ-
ist, writer and educator Guillermo Gómez- Peña. Gómez- Peña is the director of La
Pocha Nostra, a “trans- disciplinary arts organization [that focuses] on collaboration
across national borders, race, gender and generations as an act of radical citizen
diplomacy” (La Pocha Nostra 2014). Their workshops create temporary communi-
ties that “explore techniques of radical pedagogy, embodied theory and meaningful
interactivity” where participants create work that “eras[es] the borders between art
11 Queering Indigenous Land-Based Education

226
and politics, art practice and theory, artist and spectator” (Gómez- Peña and Wolford
2002). For La Pocha, radical pedagogy has become a central part of their praxis,
arguably more important than the performances developed through that pedagogy:
Taking students and artists (both young and established) on this exciting and at times dan-
gerous creative journey constantly raises new issues and dilemmas. These include personal
challenges, troubling artistic discoveries, political migrations, and cultural mis- encounters
alongside border- blurring and a constant shifting of lines that can and cannot be crossed. As
an artist, how could you ask for more stimulation or satisfaction when you constantly see
others making even the smallest of discoveries– or, as often happens, you yourself are chal-
lenged and need to readdress your own set of beliefs and ideals? (Gómez- Peña and Sifuentes
2011, p.6)
Alex became familiar with La Pocha’s pedagogy when, as part of the 2014 Encuentro
of the Hemispheric Institute in Montreal, she participated in their workshop, Pan- -
Indigenous (Anti) Manifesto 3.4: Co- Creating a New Performance Declaration for
the Americas (La Pocha Nostra 2014).
In one Queering Land- Based Education assignment, students were divided into
small groups. Each group was asked to select and read one or more articles from the
course syllabus and then compose and present a short performance responding to
the reading. The following paragraphs describe a student group’s performances, and
integrates their comments on the process itself and on the inuence the readings and
exercise might have had on their own pedagogical approach and their sense of self- -
as- relationships, connected to the land and beyond.
One pair of students, Sara Loutitt4 and Richelle Scott,5 selected two texts: David
Halperin’s (2003) discussion of the invention of queer theory, its emergence as a
widely circulated, cross- disciplinary and highly valued commodity in academic and
progressive circles, displacing the previously established disciplines of gay, lesbian
and queer studies and putting queer theory at risk of losing its very queerness; and
Rachael Nicholls’ (2013) review of a recent publication detailing ways in which
teachers can queer their praxis, make space for 2SLGBTQI students, and challenge
and disassemble binary constructions, rigid categories, dominant narratives and
normative practices in educational spaces.
Sara and Richelle chose to start their performance on a mound of earth, which
represented the beginning of creation and the origins of all life forms (including
worms, observed while they were preparing their performance) in the land. Shaking
a gourd rattle, they began a recitation describing the arrival and impacts of coloniza-
tion on these lands and the later arrival of queer theory:
Binary begins at the moment of colonization
A tension of opposites and the new understanding of either, or
Instead of acceptance of…
4 Sara Loutitt, Cree/Metis, is an instructor at Keyano College. She completed her MEd with a con-
centration in Indigenous land- based education in 2018.
5 Giiwedinong Aanang Richelle Scott, Anishnaabe, is a teacher in Winnipeg, MB.She graduated
with an MEd with a concentration Indigenous land- based education in 2018.
A. Wilson et al.

227
Holy- Scurrilous ● Colonial- Indigenous ● Male- Female ● Right- Wrong ● Good-
Bad ● Beautiful- Ugly ● Light- Dark ● Normal- Abnormal ● Even- Odd ● Night-
Day ● Hetero- Homo ● Straight- Gay ● Theory- Queer
...the ENDless possibilities
The “ENDless possibilities”
as queer and theory unite to become one
as they enter a circle of earth...
a place to challenge and push back against dichotomies
a place to create space for the natural way of things found on the land
neither male nor female
but everything in between and around the circle
a song for those who walk against the norm…
that show there is always a different viewpoint to valorize.
The pair closed this section of their performance with an Anishinaabe song for the
Windigokaan, the backwards- walking gure and teacher whose behaviour always
dees accepted norms and expectations.
In the rst half of the students’ performance, queer and theory had hooked up,
established a relationship, and were standing by ready to help with our ontological
reclamation and recuperation. In the second half of their performance, communica-
tion between queer and theory has clearly broken down.
Reection by Sara andRichelle
… THEORY is standing while QUEER is sitting
… THEORY begins to take over and completely disregards QUEER
… QUEER is tired of being wrong and is angry that THEORY is always right. Do they need
each other? They aren’t happy together.
… QUEER and THEORY break up.
Eventually Queer and Theory realize they need each other and come back together.
In their reections on this assignment, the students commented on the impacts of
both the articles they had read and thought through, and the creativity that emerged
in their discussions of the readings. When preparing for the second half of their
performance, they had irresolvable differences about what its content or composi-
tion should be. When the performance started, one student quietly asked the other to
follow them, and the other did. Their spontaneous, improvised performance became,
“at that instant,” a presentation on the seductive and potentially alienating power of
“theory” in relationship to “queer” being. The assignment also made them aware of
how deeply entrenched dichotomies are in everyday thinking, and the extent to
which those dichotomies have been “pushed onto” land- based practices and spiritu-
ality. Decolonization, they observed, requires disruption of heteronormative ideolo-
gies and the habitually dichotomous thinking underlying those ideologies, but
before we can challenge others on this, we need to reect on how we see the world,
11 Queering Indigenous Land-Based Education

228
and examine (and likely change some aspects of) our own thinking. Once this onto-
logical housecleaning is completed, conversations challenging established ideolo-
gies and norms, and as Richelle commented, “undoing what creates an ‘other’
inside the classroom and beyond” can be opened. Both Sara and Richelle described
ways in which their own teaching practice, which includes land- based learning, is
continually altering. They listen to their students and to the adults they work with,
ever aware of their own language and the language of others in their circles. They
question their own students’ use of gendered terms when describing spirits, medi-
cines, or plants and animals, and their own use of such terms, correcting themselves
in front of students as a way “to openly tear away the layers of colonization that
have been transmitted to [them] without [their] knowledge.” (S.Loutitt, personal
communication, July 2019) (Figs.11.1 and 11.2).
Although this example was just one assignment for the course, it provides a
glimpse of how queering becomes part of ongoing pedagogy and provided both
students and faculty a way to question and undo colonial gender and sexuality con-
structs, while simultaneously strengthening the bond to land. After each group per-
formed their article, everyone had an opportunity to provide feedback. The dialogue
provided an opportunity to connect to other readings and course materials, give their
own examples as educators, and provide analysis and discussion about how to
incorporate the content in ways that queer assignments and assessment. Since teach-
ing the course the rst time, the authors have continued to use performance as an
effective pedagogical practice.
Fig. 11.1 Theory begins to takeover and disregard Queer. Sara Loutitt and Richelle Scott at
Stoney Point, Atikameg, Opaskwayak Cree Nation. Classmates Arlene Hansen, Andrea Custer and
Krista Wunsch observe in background
A. Wilson et al.

229
Conclusion
Taking queer theory out of the classroom and into the bush removes it from the
abstract context of a text and situates it and us, as teachers and students, in our social
relations with the land itself, the waters, the air, the plants, animals, forces and other
beings that, in their reciprocal relationships, form and sustain all life. We are placing
ourselves in what José Muñoz (2009) might call “a sort of ontologically humble
state” (p.22, cited in Russell 2013), recognizing that what we think we know about
queerness, about the land, and about ourselves as teachers and learners will be con-
tinually reshaped by a practice of relational accountability, reciprocity, radical lis-
tening, and a readiness to unlearn and learn anew from and with the land and
each other.
References
Ahenakew, C. (2016, Fall). Grafting indigenous ways of knowing onto non-indigenous ways of
being: The (understimated) challenges of a decolonial imagination. International Review of
Qualitative Research, 9(3), 323–340.
Cajete, G.A. (2015). Indigenous community: Rekindling the teachings of the seventh re. St. Paul:
Living Justice Press.
Chen, M.Y. (2012). Animacies: Biopolitics, racial mattering, and queer affect. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Fig. 11.2 Queer leaves Theory. Sara sits with classmates Arlene, Andrea, Krista and Steven
Greyeyes as Richelle walks away
11 Queering Indigenous Land-Based Education

230
College of Education. (n.d.). Educational foundations: Land-based indigenous focus. Retrieved
from University of Saskatchewan https://education.usask.ca/students/graduate/efdt- cohorts/
land- based- indigenous- cohort.php#CourseOfferingsandSchedule
Denetdale, J.N. (2006, Spring). Chairmen, presidents, and princesses: The Navajo Nation, gender,
and the politics of tradition. Wicazo Sa Review, 21(1), 9–28.
Gómez-Peña, G., & Sifuentes, R. (2011). Exercises for rebel artists: Radical performance peda-
gogy. NewYork: Routledge.
Gómez-Peña, G., & Wolford, L. (2002). Navigating the mineelds of utopia: A conversation. TDR,
46(2), 66–96.
Grande, S. (2004). Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought (Aboriginal
Education Collection). Lanham: Rowman & Littleeld.
Hall, B. L., & Tandon, R. (2017). Decolonization of knowledge, epistemicide, participatory
research and higher education. Research for All, 1(1), 6–19.
Halperin, D.M. (2003). The normalization of queer theory. Journal of Homosexuality, 45(2–4),
339–343.
Hunt, S., & Holmes, C. (2015). Everyday decolonization: Living a decolonizing queer politics.
Journal of Lesbian Studies, 19(2), 154–172.
Kahn, R. (2010). Critical pedagogy, ecoliteracy, & planetary crises: The ecopedagogy movement.
NewYork: Peter Lang.
La Pocha Nostra. (2014). Pan-indigenous (anti) manifesto 3.4: Co-creating a new performance
declaration for the Americas. Retrieved from Hemispheric Institute. https://hemisphericinsti-
tute.org/en/enc14- workshops/item/2484- enc14- workshops- pan- indigenous- manifesto.html
Muñoz, J.E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. NewYork: NewYork
University Press.
Nicholls, R. (2013). Que(e)rying my teacher identity. Journal of LGBT Youth, 10(4), 388–393.
Pollock, B. (2010, May 9). Review of critical pedagogy, ecoliteracy, & planetary crises: The
ecopedagogy mobement by Richard Kahn. The Journal of Sustainability Education.
Rasmussen, M., & Allen, L. (2014). What can a concept do? Rethinking education’s queer assem-
blages. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(3), 433–443.
Russell, J. (2013). Whose better? [re]Orientating a queer ecopedagogy. Canadian Journal of
Environmental Education, 18, 11–26.
Simpson, L.B. (2014). Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation.
Decolonization, Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3), 1–25.
Simpson, L.B. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Tallbear, K. (2011, November 18). Why interspecies thinking needs indigenous stand-
points. Retrieved from Society for Cultural Anthropology: https://culanth.org/eldsights/
why- interspecies- thinking- needs- indigenous- standpoints
Tuck, E., & McKenzie, M. (2015). Place in research: Theory, methodology, and methods.
NewYork: Routledge.
Wildcat, M., McDonald, M., Irlbacher-Fox, S., & Coulthard, G. (2014). Learning from the land:
Indigenous land based pedagogy and decolonization. Decolonization, Indigeneity, Education
& Society, 3(3), i–xv.
Wilson, S. (2001). Self-as-relationship in indigenous research. Canadian Journal of Native
Education, 25(2), 91–92.
Wilson, A. (2015). Our coming in stories: Cree identity, body sovereignty and gender self-
determination. Retrieved from Journal of Global Indigeneity. https://ro.uow.edu.au/jgi/
vol1/iss1/4/
Wilson, A. (2018). Skirting the issues: Indigenous myths, misses, and misogyny. In K.Anderson,
M.Campbell, & C.Belcourt (Eds.), Keetaahnak/our missing and murdered Indigenous sisters.
Edmonton: University of Alberta.
A. Wilson et al.

231
Wilson, A., & Laing, M. (2019). Queering indigenous education. In L. T. smith, E. Tuck, &
K. W. Yang, indigenous and decolonizing studies in education: Mapping the long view.
NewYork: Routledge.
Wilson, S., & Wilson, P. (1998). Relational accountability to all our relations. Canadian Journal
of Native Education, 22(1), 155–158.
Wilson, S., & Wilson, P. (1999). Taking responsibility: What follows relational accountability?
Canadian Journal of Native Education, 23(2), 137–138.
11 Queering Indigenous Land-Based Education