(In)visible encounters with indigeneity: a way towards decolonizing pedagogies in early childhood education

Abstract

ABSTRACT Children’s encounters with Indigeneity in public space might mislead educators into believing that young children are learning decolonizing pedagogies in educational spaces. Drawing on a critical place inquiry of young children’s relationships with place, I examine how a regime of (in)visibility continues to prevent educators and children from engaging with decolonizing pedagogies. To account for regimes of (in)visibility in early childhood, I focus on tools of erasure (i.e. street naming and organization, maps, story time) and tools of illusory visibility (i.e. children’s encounters with a local mural). While a settler colonial regime of (in)visibility does not erase Indigeneity completely, it obscures the damage that colonialism impinges on Indigenous communities to this day. An ongoing examination of practices in early childhood education can only move on to decolonizing pedagogies when education opens up space for imagining an Indigenous future paired with a sense of wonder and thinking otherwise among children and educators.