Exploring Curation as a Path Towards Decolonizing Education

Abstract

As part of my Doctor of Education program, I was asked to study Dr. Marie Battiste’s (2017) book Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit. In response to that assignment, I built a WordPress site as a way to experiment with crossing boundaries of physical and digital places, between different Indigenous knowledges and notions of teaching and learning. While building the site, I looked for localized examples of Battiste’s concepts and ideas among the Inuvialuit, the Indigenous group with which I am the most familiar, in what became an exploration of the wonderful work being done in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region to preserve the culture and decolonize ways of thinking. I knew some of these resources existed, but was surprised by the depth and variety of materials available. In this paper, I present that website as an experimental example of digital curation that stitches together the book, a series of digital artefacts found via Internet searches and my own reflections on those artefacts. While building it, I did not seek out answers but instead explored the possibilities of curation as a path to decolonization education. The resulting site design is both personal and incomplete. Through this process, I hope to open generative cracks that provoke new ways of thinking about digital curation as a means of supporting active engagement in the complicated and necessary conversations regarding decolonization.