Toward Decolonizing the Black and White A’nger cloth: Culture, Praxis and Hyphenated Spaces

Abstract

This paper uses the a’nger cloth, a traditional cloth belonging to the Tiv tribe of Benue, Nigeria as a metaphor for framing autoethnographical narratives and undertakings. Through storying and poetizing about lived experiences, culture, migration tales, identity, gender, marginalization, race and silence, stories emerge as praxis for decolonizing the curriculum. As a non-Western feminist, diasporic academic living in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Algonquin territory, how might I navigate the changing and uncertain spaces of belonging? Through the a'nger cloth, I find ways of sharing generational family stories through poetry. These stories invite alternative and inclusive spaces into the classroom that welcome “other” ways of being and knowing. Key-words: decolonising the curriculum; narratives; spaces.