Propositions for anticolonial belonging in Canadian early childhood environmental education

Abstract

This article puts forward modes of belonging that hold potential for enacting environmental education for socio-ecological justice. The focus is on orientations that can shift the experiences of young, racialized immigrant children living and learning in settler colonial Canada, where neoliberal multiculturalism has a strong hold on early childhood education. As an antidote, three interconnected pedagogical orientations towards belonging are offered: anticolonial place relations, multispecies flourishing, and affective micropolitics. The article concludes on both the challenges and liberatory possibilities of shifting environmental education for young, racialized immigrant children away from neoliberal multicultural inclusion and its reinforcement of settler colonial logics.