Carolyn Roberts discusses her new book on decolonizing the school system. A Tyee Q&A.
The Tyee: B.C.’s kindergarten to Grade 12 education system is fully compliant with the relevant Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission — at least, according to the provincial government.
But Carolyn Roberts, who is St’át’imc, Stó:lō and a member of the Squamish First Nation, knows changes like the mandatory Indigenous-focused graduation requirement, under which all students must complete at least four credits of Indigenous-focused coursework in order to graduate, are the floor and not the ceiling for decolonizing education.
With professional experience as an educator, administrator and student in public, First Nations and post-secondary schools, Roberts has been helping educators integrate Indigenous education into their classrooms since 2016.
The lessons she’s drawn, including connecting to the land as part of learning and creating her own decolonized educator practices, are just some of the teachings Roberts shares in Re-Storying Education: Decolonizing Your Practice Using a Critical Lens, published in September by Page Two Books Inc.
“Another one of the chapters talks about the hidden curriculum in our education system that we might not know or understand is happening,” Roberts said, referring to sometimes covert white settler bias in B.C. education.
“And that’s why I wanted to put ‘using a critical lens’ in the title, because I really wanted people to step in to take a look at their own practice critically, to see how they could do things differently.”
Re-Storying Education also builds on Walking in Relation, Roberts’s six-episode 2023 podcast series examining the work Indigenous educators and school administrators are doing to decolonize and Indigenize kindergarten to post-secondary education.
The book’s content can be heavy, but Roberts makes it compelling with stories from her experiences. She also crafted playlists of Indigenous and settler artists to accompany each chapter of the book.
Roberts, who is a teacher education lecturer at the University of British Columbia and is completing a PhD in educational theory and practice at Simon Fraser University, spoke to The Tyee last month about her new book, the additional burdens placed on Indigenous educators and why decolonizing education benefits all students.
The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
The Tyee: Re-storying is a term I had not heard before. What does it mean to you?
Carolyn Roberts: We’ve been taught in the education system this one-sided colonial narrative of how this place today known as Canada came to be. And there have been many voices and many stories that have been left out of that education. It’s really important that we start to bring those voices and stories into the education system so that people can understand and realize the impact of colonization on not only the people of this land, but the land itself.
But all of us, together, have been impacted by settler colonialism. We’ve just been impacted differently. There are Black stories, Asian stories, Indigenous stories and many other non-white stories that need to be included in education.
We need to start to bring all narratives into the system. When we talk about our lives, we talk in story, so I thought it was fitting that when we want to rebuild or remember, it’s time for us to re-story the system that we’re in.
As you write in Re-Storying Education, the education system is very colonial. How can we decolonize a system that has colonial bones?
In the chapters talking about colonialism and how the school system is set up, I have a visual that shows you the two different perspectives of a “wholistic” decolonized viewpoint of education and then a colonized view of education.
The reason that I use them isn’t to say that one’s better than the other, but we need to understand colonization and colonized education in order to be able to see the places and spaces where we can start to unpack and decolonize. We have never been taught to look at it from that perspective.
We’re not going to be able to tear it all down and start again. So we need to be able to really see how the system operates.
The “Survivance” episode of Walking in Relation covers how the work of decolonizing education often falls to Indigenous educators and school district staff. What impact does that have on Indigenous people doing that work?
Oh, so much. I think about the heavy lifting aspect of the work that people might not see and understand, the toll that it takes upon us. It takes time to prepare to go in and do the work of Indigenous education, then afterwards it takes time to decompress, to talk through it, to make sure that you’re not carrying it with you into the next space you’re going into.
When we are constantly having conversations about harms that are happening in schools — and to students and to us, it takes a mental and physical toll on our bodies. Trying to make people realize the harm that’s been done, which they don’t necessarily see, takes a lot of work and energy to be able to talk about it in a way that people will listen.
If we come in angry, upset and overreact to things, people aren’t going to listen to us. It takes a great deal of skill, a great deal of patience, to be able to talk to people about the harms that happen. That impacts students and ourselves every day in education.
How can we decolonize without asking so much of Indigenous people?
People who would like to step into the work need to know that it takes a lot of education, a lot of learning on their own part to make up for a system that has failed to teach them what they need to know. It takes a lot of reading, a lot of listening. And then, when we, Indigenous educators, tell you to do something, change something or not use something, then we need you to really listen to us.
If we tell you that a lesson is harmful, believe us. If we tell you that this isn’t something you should be teaching about, believe us and say, “Thank you for that teaching. I’m going to do some more learning, and then I’ll come back and we’ll have some more conversations.”
How does decolonizing education benefit everybody?
We gain more knowledge and more understanding of the world, the more perspectives that we know. Being open and learning about other people’s perspectives, ideas, all of these pieces help us become better humans.
Decolonizing places will allow all students to be seen and heard, not just Indigenous students. Every student in a classroom would feel seen and heard if they’re able to see who they are in the work that they do, rather than only one specific western colonial narrative.
What would you say to a non-Indigenous teacher required to teach Indigenous ways of knowing, who is afraid of making mistakes or causing harm to their Indigenous students?
Fear of doing it wrong is the biggest reason that I hear from educators about not being able to teach Indigenous education. This is because our education system has set us up this way: it did not teach us what we need to know.
But what we need to understand is that fear and unease can be a signal for us to learn more, or it can become a barrier to learning. By being too scared of doing the work, it is letting the system continue to not educate about Indigenous people, history and culture.
So I encourage people to feel the fear, acknowledge it, honour it, let it teach you, educate yourself and do it anyway.
Last month you published a blog post about some harms happening this school year to Indigenous students. What should educators do when they are told — by a parent, student or colleague — they have caused harm?
That’s a big one. When that happens, the educators get defensive and are upset, because they don’t want people to think that they’re racist.
So when the parent walked into that meeting with the educators, they let them know that this conversation was about the content that was shared in the classroom. It had nothing to do with the teachers as teachers or humans; it’s about the content that was delivered in class and how that content impacted the students.
Allowing the time and space for whoever’s been harmed to speak and be heard in that situation is critical. You might not understand it, you might not know or still have things to learn. Just stop the harm. Pull the piece, pull the learning. Shift into something else until you know better and understand.
We are human. We’re gonna make mistakes. How we show up when we’ve caused harm makes all of the difference.
We struggle to respond to racism in general in our society, but in schools in particular. How should schools respond when racism happens against Indigenous students?
It needs to be talked about, addressed by everybody who heard it, everybody who is in the space where it happened.
Even if you don’t know how to deal with it at that moment, you still need to take a pause and say, “There’s something that happened in this moment that has caused harm, and we need to stop, to pause. I need to learn more, and we’re going to have to come back to this.”
We really need to talk about race and racism. We need to give that vocabulary and language to students. They know what happens. They understand. We have to give them more credit for that.
Then it’s not going to be this taboo topic that we can never talk about.
In the book you talk about your own experience in elementary school of being pulled out of class for remedial reading, and how that impacted your self-esteem and confidence. How should we be supporting kids who need extra help in school?
We have to lean into their strengths. We have to lean into building relationships, not only with the students, but with the families, understanding what supports they need so they can flourish. We have to take the time to build those strong core relationships, to know who our students are in order to be able to support them best.
I think that there’s a lot of things that go on within our education system that don’t necessarily allow our students to be who they are. My own children, the way that they got out of some of the struggles that they were in had everything to do with a teacher that believed in them.
We need to believe that every student is going to be a fabulous human being, and how do we support them to not necessarily be the best mathematician or the best musician, but the best human they can be.
One of the things the Conservative Party of British Columbia promised in the recent provincial election was removing education content from schools that made kids feel bad about themselves.
This is how some people categorize decolonizing education or teaching students about the past and present reality of Indigenous people. How should schools communicate the need to decolonize education to people who don’t want their kids to learn about the negative impacts of colonization?
Indigenous education and decolonization is not about making people feel bad. It’s actually giving people the information and the tools to understand the place and the space they live in.
Everybody should have an opportunity to know and understand where they live, whose territories they are on. And the impacts of humans on the territory is essential in what we do. So if they’re talking about it being harmful, then my question back is, what part of it is harmful? Let’s have a conversation about those things that you’re saying are making them feel bad.
How can we make schools safe for Indigenous educators and students when there is that pushback from students or parents?
This is where principals play a key role. An Indigenous person — a teacher, support worker or whoever — needs to know that whoever is in that position of power has their back and will stand up for them.
We need a safe place, somewhere to be, knowing that people will stand with us in the work.
In your podcast and book, you talk about the work happening at the district, school and classroom level. Are there still roles left for the province to fulfil?
Oh, for sure [laughs]. The mandatory graduation requirement courses, that’s a step. But the end goal is to not need a mandatory course; it should be happening through all grades at all times.
But also when we mandate things like that, how are we supporting the teachers to be able to teach in a culturally sensitive way? And what are we doing for the Indigenous students that have to take these mandatory courses taught by people who are most likely not Indigenous?
Only four per cent of public school educators in British Columbia are Indigenous. My children have gone through K to 12 — all three of them. They’ve had two teachers of colour. Everybody else has been white. I live in Surrey.
Wow.
We have to make sure not only that the province is putting up support and mechanisms to help teach educators to teach these courses, to make sure they’re done well. But then also thinking about, how do we take care of the Indigenous students that have to take these courses? What are we doing for them?
Why is it so difficult for the province to attract and to keep Indigenous teachers?
Well, we have to survive the system first. If we don’t survive the system, we get pushed out before we even make it into any kind of post-secondary, we’re not going to have Indigenous educators that way.
The system fundamentally has to change to support us, to see us and to encourage us to do this work.
Can you speak to that a little further?
When I talk about it, I talk about it through this lens that when most school districts talk about Indigenous education, they look at the graduation rates, because that’s how the system’s set up. And they see through the graduation rates that Indigenous students aren’t as successful at completing secondary school that is then put up against every other student.
There’s only three categories in graduation rates: Indigenous students, everybody else and special needs students. Let’s talk about this viewpoint: it is a racist viewpoint of the system; you’re not taking many other things into context.
What it tells the school districts is how well they’re doing if their Indigenous graduation rates go up. What it tells me, as an Indigenous human, is that the system is not meeting the needs of Indigenous students to allow them to be successful.
So if we flip the script and we say, “What are we not doing in the system to allow for these students to be successful? What do we need to do better, so that they can do better within the education system?” It’s the education system, it’s not the kids.
Was there anything else you wanted to add?
Where Indigenous Education Is at in BC
At my book readings, I usually share this from page 195 because it’s the hope page:
“I thought you might want to hear why I do this work in re-storying education. I’m a huge fan of Monique Gray Smith and her book I Hope. It’s always one that I hold dear to me when I do this work, because I have hope. I believe that change makers in these next generations will be able to move mountains and make more change than I could ever dream of.
“This is because of educators like you, the ones who wholeheartedly step into this work with an open heart and mind. Because of you, the next generations will be able to be the change needed in education, and because of you, I have hope.
“So thank you for taking this journey with me through the different ways that you can step into this work of re-storying education. I know the challenges that come with trying to shift educational practice, and my hands are raised for those of you who are brave enough to be the change makers in the system today.”
Katie Hyslop, The Tyee
Katie Hyslop reports for The Tyee.
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