Living and writing indigenous spiritual resistance

Abstract

For Indigenous peoples working inside institutions it is important to work in ways that support decolonizing the mind and spirit. It is important to find ways of creating, interrogating, validating, and disseminating knowledges. Telling stories is a practice in Indigenous cultures which has sustained communities and which validates the experiences of Indigenous peoples and epistemologies. This paper explores the importance of inclusion of Indigenous knowledges in academic settings through three stories about: (1) academic insistence that knowledge is outside the self, (2) backlash to Indigenous practices in academe, and (3) intergenerational impacts of experiences of suppression in education. The stories help us critique theoretical conceptions of what constitutes ‘valid’ knowledge and understand struggles for survival and resistance to domination in educational institutions. The paper explores responses to dominant societies' suppression of Indigenous knowledges in academic settings and broader society through acts of resistance, storytelling, living spiritual resistance, writing as survival strategies, and resistance within education. This paper explores ways that Indigenous knowledges are honored, affirmed, and shared.