Local Cultural Resource Knowledge, Identity, Representation, Schooling, and Education in Euro-Canadian Contexts

Abstract

The author examines research on schooling and how the prism of Indigeneity and anticolonial thought help re-envision schooling and education for youth. The chapter focuses on narratives of Canadian youth, parents, and educators from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds as they speak about the school system. The relevance and implications of their voices are highlighted as legitimate sources of cultural resource knowledge that inform teaching, learning, and the administration of education. In the discussion the local ways of knowing among young learners, minority parents, and educators stand at the center of theorizing and seeking ways to improve schools in response to the needs and concerns of a diverse body politic. The author affirms there is much to learn from the ways in which oppressed bodies relegated to the status of racial minorities eventually claim a sense of intellectual and discursive agency as well as ownership and responsibility for their knowledge about everyday schooling.