Settler-colonial geographical ignorance in Canadian education

Abstract

Despite increasing attention to Indigenous demands for justice, self-governance and the decolonization of Canadian society, many Canadians remain deeply unaware of the complex ways Indigenous and non-Indigenous lives entwine in Canada and of the past and present settler-colonial structures which continue to control and harm Indigenous Peoples and lands. Drawing on our decade-long project examining education at multiple levels in multiple jurisdictions and bringing together scholarship on settler-colonial ignorance, decolonizing education and geographical imaginaries, we highlight how pervasive settler-colonial geographical ignorance, (re)produced through formal education, inhibits many Canadians’ capacities to understand themselves as inextricably linked and responsible to Indigenous Peoples. Through our examination of the results of surveys of college and university students and of public kindergarten to Grade 12 curricula in three Canadian provinces, we provide analyses of settler-colonial forms of geographical unknowing (re)produced in Canadian public education and echoed in the discourses of students. Our analysis draws out commonly held (mis)perceptions and prejudicial attitudes that pervade settler-colonial imaginations, allowing us to identify the entangled temporal, spatial and (non)relational dimensions of settler-colonial geographical ignorance in Canada. Considering the ways that many non-Indigenous people misunderstand and ignore the geographies of settler-colonialism and of Indigenous Peoples, we hope to contribute to ongoing, urgent investigations into the ways that settler-colonial and geographical ignorance serve to oppress Indigenous Peoples and exploit the lands to which they belong for others’ benefit. Furthermore, by focusing on and demonstrating the spatial nature of such ignorance, we argue that (re)conciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples in Canada must also be spatial.