Decolonizing & Uncolonizing Leadership

Podcast Transcript

Decolonizing and Uncolonizing Leadership

How do we undo and disrupt coloniality and engage in decolonizing and uncolonizing leadership?

As we reimagine leadership practices and processes, we hold up the necessary tensions and complications inherent in the terms decolonizing and decolonization. Tuck and Yang (2012) assert that decolonization necessarily includes land repatriation given the historical and continued dispossession and displacement of Indigenous peoples and land, and the refusal to acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty. Activist and author, Tanya Rodriguez (2020), builds on this notion and asserts that decolonization is for Indigenous people only, not for settlers on stolen land who benefit from the ongoing oppression of Indigenous peoples. Rodriguez (2020) urges settlers to consider using the term “uncolonizing” when referring to processes of detaching and disconnecting from colonial vestiges. This of course is further complicated given the complicated, forced, and violent ways in which some of us have come to these lands, whether forcibly brought to these lands through the violence of the transatlantic slave trade and indentured servitude, fleeing dangerous experiences elsewhere, or other complicated histories and presents of entangled colonialisms. For example, Tope Adefarakan (2018), an Indigenous African woman of Yoruba descent, grapples with what it means to be “an Indigenous African on land to which one is not Indigenous,” arguing for more flexible imaginings of Indigeneity (p. 230). While colonization is necessarily about land and space, Asante (2006) reminds us that colonizers “did not only seize land, but also minds” (p. ix).

With these complications in mind, this podcast applies notions of decoloniality to our understanding of leadership. Decoloniality challenges Eurocentric logics and ways of knowing and promotes the re-emergence of multiple Indigenous ways of knowing (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). While global Indigenous knowledge systems are diverse and informed by context, time, and space, many of these teachings promote similar logics of interconnectedness, relationality, spirituality, reciprocity, community, and humility. We draw on Dei’s (2019) anti-colonial theory and praxis, which explores many of the ideas above and considers the deeply interconnected relations of the living-nonliving-human-more than human, the past-present-future, and the body-mind-spirit. We interrogate intersecting systems of power (Dei & Asgharzadeh, 2001) and explore connections between colonialism, white supremacy, capitalism, cis-heteropatriarchy, Christian hegemony, modernity, and more. Given that white supremacy and epistemicide are central to coloniality, this work calls us to identify, name, and resist these constructs (Wright, 2022).

In decolonizing spaces, we resist the colonial status quo, and value and honour local experiences, knowledge systems, and voices, being accountable and responsible to students, families, and communities that have been marginalized in schooling processes (Dei, 2019). Lopez (2020) states, “decolonized education is about renewal, restoration, and hope. It’s about finding new leadership approaches for engaging students, communities and educators to bring about transformative change” (p. 69). Lopez (2020) asserts that decolonizing requires, “resisting the ways in which colonial education separates the body from the mind of educators, and positions knowledge as emanating from the external'' (p. 70). Decolonizing and uncolonizing approaches to leadership encourage the expression and embodiment of knowledge that has been passed on through the land, living creatures, spiritualities, cultures, histories, and ancestors. This knowledge must be accompanied by intentional actions that recognize and respond to the loss of Indigenous land and life, both past and present (Howard, 2006; Shah, 2021). As Dei & Adhami (2022) share, “Educational leadership is working to create spaces in different learning sites for multiple ontologies and epistemologies to thrive and coexist” (p. 786). In their literature review on decolonizing approaches to leadership, Khalifa et al. (2019), identify five themes found in decolonized leadership praxis:

 (1) the prioritization of self-knowledge and self-reflection,
 (2) the empowerment of community through self-determination,
 (3) the centering of community voices and values,
 (4) service based in altruism and spirituality, and
 (5) approaching collectivism through inclusive communication practices.

Connecting to these themes and realizing that our bodies are sites of knowing and sites of practice (Dei & Adhami, 2022), we acknowledge that there are a multitude of ways of knowing and being and multiple truths that need to be negotiated, contested, and reconciled (Dei & Adhami, 2022).

Finally, as we seek to decolonize and uncolonize, in troubling the idea that not everything is knowable, we consider these reflections by Andreotti et al. (2015) in relation to leadership:

“Yet, in education, the righting of wrongs is often understood as dependent on more knowledge and better analyses. The assumption may be that, with more and better information, we will be able to engineer something to right the wrongs we have identified. But what if these wrongs are not a result of ignorance but of something more collective and much deeper that we are all implicated in? What if the ‘righting of wrongs’ requires some wronging of perceived rights, like: displacing ourselves from the center of the world; interrupting our desires to look, feel and 'do' good; exposing the source and connections between our fears, desires, and denials; letting go of our fantasies of certainty, comfort, security, and control; recognizing and affirming (rather than disavowing) that we are already “entangled, vulnerable, open, non-full, more than and less than” ourselves (Moten, 2014); and reaching the edge of our knowing and being - and jumping with our eyes closed. What would decolonization look like, then?” (p. 36-37).

We wonder how this might manifest in educational leadership spaces. Wright (2022) states that “educational leaders need to be less hierarchical and prioritize developing programs that bring in ethnic studies and epistemologically diverse educators and curriculums” (p. 717). To actualize this, “we must not shy away from discourses of the struggle, resistance, and search for new futures as we refine our practices and fulfill our responsibilities of leadership” (Dei & Adhami, 2022, p. 809).

Reflection Questions:

1. How might understandings of interconnectedness and relationality influence leadership practices?
2. How might we unpack, unsettle, and sift through current educational leadership competencies to decolonize and uncolonize?
3. How do we lead with love and humility, honouring all our humanity through relational accountability?
4. Who do we need to be as leaders to lead in ways that disrupt coloniality?
5. How might we apply this understanding to the work we do in communities, schools, and academies?

References

Adefarakan, T. (2018). Integrating body, mind, and spirit through the Yoruba concept of Ori: Critical contributions to a decolonizing pedagogy. In S. Batacharya & Y.R. Wong (Eds.) Sharing breath: Embodied learning and decolonization. Edmonton, AB: AU Press.

Andreotti, V., Stein, S., Ahenakew, C., & Hunt, D. (2015). Mapping interpretations of decolonization in the context of higher education. Decolonization: Indigeneity, education & society, 4(1), 21-40.

Asante, M. (2006). Forward. In G.J.S. Dei and A. Kempf (Eds.), Anti-colonialism and education: The politics of resistance (pp. ix-x). Sense Publishers.

Cranston, J. & Jean-Paul, M. (2021). Braiding Indigenous and racialized knowledges into an educational leadership for justice. In: F. W. English (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of educational leadership and management discourse (pp. 1-27). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39666-4_120-1

Dei, G. J. S. (2019). Foreword. In A. Zainub, Decolonization and Anti-colonial Praxis (pp. vii-x).  Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

Dei, G. J. S. & Adhami, A. (2022). Coming to know and knowing differently: Implications of educational leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 58(5), 780-809. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X211036079

Dei, G. J. S. & Asgharzadeh, A. (2001). The power of social theory: The anti-colonial discursive framework. The Journal of Educational Thought, 359(3), 297-323.

Fernández, A.E. (2019) Decolonizing professional development: A re-humanizing approach. Equity & Excellence in Education, 52(2-3), 185-196.

Hailey, J. (2008). Ubuntu: A literature review. Document. London: Tutu Foundation.

Howard, P.S.S. (2006). On silence and dominant accountability: A critical, anti-colonial investigation of the anti-racist classroom. In G.J.S. Dei and A. Kempf (Eds.), Anti-colonialism and education: The politics of resistance (pp. 43-62). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Khalifa, M., Khalil, D., Marsh, T., & Halloran, C. (2019). Toward an Indigenous, Decolonizing School Leadership: A Literature Review. Educational Administration Quarterly, 55(4), 571–614.

King, T. (1992). All my relations: An anthology of contemporary Canadian native fiction. University of Oklahoma Press.

Lopez A.E. (2020) Introduction: Toward a theory of decolonizing educational leadership. In: Decolonizing educational leadership, (pp. 1-9). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1007/978-3-030-62380-7_1

Lopez, A.E. (2021). Examining alternative school leadership practices and approaches: A decolonising school leadership approach. Intercultural Education, 32(4), 359-367. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14675986.2021.1889471

Mignolo, W., & Walsh, C. E. (2018). On decoloniality: Concepts, analytics, praxis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ngunjiri, F. W. (2010). Lessons in spiritual leadership from Kenyan women. Journal of Educational Administration, 48(6), 755–768.

Wright, J. (2022). The deep roots of inequity: Coloniality, racial capitalism, educational leadership, and reform. Educational Administration Quarterly, 58(5), 693-717. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X211029483Ngunjiri, F. W. (2010). Lessons in spiritual leadership from Kenyan women. Journal of Educational Administration, 48(6), 755–768.

Panelists

---