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Remembering Sandy Abah Banner

Remembering Sandy Abah

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From Alison Taylor and Claudia Ruitenberg

Sandy was the Graduate Program Assistant in Educational Studies between 2013 and 2019. When Alison was Graduate Advisor from 2017 to 2019, she worked closely with her. In the same role, Claudia worked closely with her from 2014 to 2017.

She worked at UBC for almost 25 years and was working as the iSchool Program Assistant when she passed away last year. When we learned of her passing, we decided to write this tribute.

Alison Taylor:

I remember Sandy as a warm person who was a fierce advocate for students. She knew most of the graduate students in the department and always put their interests and needs first. She always wanted to take time with them and make time for them, which often put her at odds with bureaucratic university policies. For example, I remember having discussions with her about how long past the admissions deadline to wait for missing pieces of student applications. She always wanted to wait longer. 🙂 I appreciated and greatly respected her care.

It was never just a job for Sandy, and she made my work as Graduate Advisor more meaningful because of that. Like many of the staff who keep universities running, she did her work diligently and without any fanfare. But we noticed. When she was leaving the department she said, “I love working with you and the faculty and students.” She also said, “I am a teacher and student advocate,” which is exactly how I think of her.

I developed a strong working relationship with her and want to share a few of her messages because I think they speak to the kind of person she was.

On April 5, 2018, at the opening of the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, her email to me was simple: “Shall we all go?”

On April 6, 2018, she sent me a link to an article called, “Hunger and homelessness are widespread among college students, study finds.” In addition to its relevance to my work as Grad Advisor, she knew I was researching working students.

After she left EDST, I heard from her periodically on email. Initially, she was in touch because she’d received a few emails from graduate students in EDST and wanted to make sure I responded to them. In April, 2019 she said about her new workplace, “Would you believe we don’t have a coffee maker here??? How would you survive? LOL.”

When I had my first doctoral oral as supervisor at UBC, she wrote to ask how it went. For a month or two, she continued to answer my questions as Graduate Advisor, because admittedly, I was lost without her. Later, she wrote whenever she had something to share, like a healthy juice recipe, a news article, a holiday greeting, or cartoons. She sent me many cartoons, and particularly liked “Peanuts”! I became teary-eyed as I read over our email exchanges.

Claudia Ruitenberg:

I very much enjoyed working with Sandy. As Alison describes, she cared deeply about students and would go above and beyond to try and help them if they came to her in a panic about having missed a deadline. Sandy saw her workday as being done when the important stuff on her to-do list was done, not when the clock said so. Several EDST graduates mention Sandy by name in the acknowledgements of their thesis or dissertation.

Sandy completed a UBC Bachelor of Arts with a major in Religious Studies in 2014, while working in our department. She would tell me about courses she was taking or a final paper that was a struggle. I believe that her own studies at UBC made her even more empathetic with the students in our department. When I suggested we celebrate her graduation during the EDST graduation reception, she did not want to advertise her own achievement. She definitely believed others’ achievements were worth celebrating, however, and there was never a shortage of food if Sandy had ordered the catering for the graduation reception!

Sandy liked her office cozy and personalized. I remember her in her oversized sweater with an extra scarf wrapped around her neck, a blanket on her chair, and multiple coffee mugs on her desk. I think this made students feel more comfortable going to see her to ask a question. She was not a functionary, but a mensch.

We both feel that Sandy contributed to humanizing EDST and wanted to share these reflections.

 You are welcome to add your memories of Sandy by clicking on the + sign in the bottom righthand corner below.

 

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Exploring Histories Confronting White Supremacy: Aneet Kahlon, Erin Villaronga Mulligan, and Mark McLean

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This is the first post in a new series from the course “Topics in the History of Education: Histories Confronting White Supremacy,” led by Professor Mona Gleason.

This course delves into colonialization, racism, and systemic oppression, exploring how historical understanding shapes our world today. In this series, students collaborated to craft blog posts where they explore themes related to course topics and share their insights with the larger EDST audience.

Keep an eye out for more posts in this series!

Co-authored by Aneet Kahlon, Erin Villaronga Mulligan, and Mark McLean, this blog post discusses the complexities of historical narratives surrounding education and white supremacy. Drawing insights from the work of Michael Marker and other course readings, the authors reflect on topics like colonial borders, Indigenous experiences, and educational structures.

In this post, we centered our discussion on the work of Michael Marker, an Arapaho scholar, whose invaluable contributions have not only left an enduring impact on the EDST community but have also significantly influenced scholarship in higher education (Gill et al., 2023).

Within our conversations we weave together our understandings of his work with other readings that we have been offered throughout our course to answer the question:

“What have you learned about the past in relation to education and white supremacy that you didn’t know before?”

ANEET: In other classes, we’ve talked about how borders are arbitrary concepts, but Michael Marker’s (2015) article, “Borders and Borderless Coast Salish: Decolonizing Historiographies of Indigenous Schooling,” made me think about this idea within the context of B.C.

India Pakistan border

It’s new for me to think about how Canadian residential schools and American boarding schools affected a single community differently depending on what side of the border they were on. It reminded me about the partition of India and Pakistan, where connected communities were forced to migrate to a specific side of a border randomly drawn up by a white man. I also think about my research because focusing on B.C. educational policies is a constraint that’s inherently colonizing. Indigenous communities don’t end at the border just because my analysis does.

MARK: I’m thinking about how many times Marker walks up to an idea and then shows that it’s too complex to follow in a short article, and instead notes another author in that space. These threads are worth pulling, and need to be pulled, and that makes the idea more complex.

ANEET: It’s been helpful to complicate ideas in this class!

MARK: When I read Marker’s work, I connected it back to a chapter of Thomas King’s (2012) book The Inconvenient Indian that we read; they both serve as a call to complicate things and acknowledge their complexity. As opposed to a flattened perspective, just on one side of the border. There is a quote in King’s work that says, “North America hates the Legal Indian. Savagely. The Legal Indian was one of those errors in judgment that North America made and has been trying to correct for the past 150 years” (King, 2012, p. 69). Each country wants to have a story to tell about what is going on with Indigenous peoples, Indigenous existence, and epistemologies, but all ignore complexity. In the U.S. it was public schools where Indigenous students experienced more racism, whereas Marker suggests that boarding schools were places where Indigenous students could also connect and define their own identity. This made me think about identity and what King (2012) called the “Dead Indian,” because as a nation, we’re not seeking out these complexities.

ERIN: Having done my undergraduate work at a U.S. institution, I guess I’ve never tried to fully articulate the experience of studying structural racism of public schools and educational inequality in an American context to learning about movements of indigenizing or decolonizing public schools in British Columbia. Because of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, I think many people are so focused on the historical aspect of residential schools, and not as much on the broader racist and colonial structures of modern public schooling systems. This is a complete flip in perspective for me; something that I’m processing as I talk through it now.

MARK: Yeah! Both articles speak to the idea of treating residential schools like they only existed in the past. And Canadians love a chance to forgive ourselves. We’re less concerned with the transition out of residential school systems, and how much racism and damage happened in that situation. Everything didn’t just end when the last residential school closed. Again, it’s just flattening a narrative.

CBC Article: Vehicle torched, lobster pounds storing Mi'kmaw catches trashed during night of unrest in N.S.

When we talked about the Boldt Decision and how the judge decided on fishing rights for Indigenous peoples in America, it reminded me of the CBC article talking about the Mi’kmaq lobster disputes in Nova Scotia. Canadian media didn’t know how to approach what was basically terrorism by white fisherman. So much of this results from an educational system where we’ve been taught this flat story, flat story, flat story. How different would it be if there was an understanding of the complexity of all this, for the Mi’kmaq and for our case, the Coast Salish?

Exploring histories of white supremacy

ERIN: I want to shout out a different article from one of Mona’s classes. It’s “‘The children show unmistakable signs of Indian blood’: Indigenous children attending public schools in British Columbia, 1872-1925” by Sean Carleton (2021). He writes about the history of Indigenous children that attended public schools in British Columbia. It was an interesting read for me not having known a lot about how public schools were established here. The stories of those children and the adults (Indigenous and settler) that facilitated their enrollment in those public schools added another dimension to that normally flat story you’re talking about, Mark. The histories of white supremacy and those fighting against it in the world of education don’t all follow the singular residential school narrative that gets told.

ANEET: Mark, you’ve made a good point! What we learn about through Canadian education systems must fit within the constraints of what Eurocentric values want us to learn. For example, social studies curriculum teaches “Canadian” or “B.C.’s” history. A bordered history. These constraints act as a mechanism of validating those imaginary borders.

MARK: Yeah! I keep thinking, Aneet, about your comment about the border in Punjab, and how people had to swap back and forth across the border. I just googled the Salish Sea because I never think about it as a unit in the same way that we think about the Mediterranean as a unit. It’s so hard to untangle
 yeah, it’s just really hard to not see borders.

ERIN: And all our other units of geographical organization. Water borders have always been especially bizarre to me. Because water is water! You just can’t draw a border in water! And that really emphasizes another idea that I think Marker brings us face to face with within this article: about  how settlers conceptualize not only land, but place.

Place-based education is big, especially in early childhood right now, with things like forest schools, but we need to be careful about what type of teaching is still reinscribing very particular understandings of place that don’t align with the original stewards of this land. I don’t know if it’s possible to reach the same understanding. But if we’re taking children out for nature walks and talking about street names and showing them “borders” of parks and such, it’s almost like, what’s the point?

MARK: Totally! This connects well to “Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang:

“These fantasies can mean the adoption of Indigenous practices and knowledge, but more, refer to those narratives in the settler colonial imagination in which the Native (understanding that he is becoming extinct) hands over his land, his claim to the land, his very Indian-ness to the settler for safe-keeping. This is a fantasy that is invested in a settler futurity and dependent on the foreclosure of an Indigenous futurity.”

Essentially, when settlers adopt watered-down practices of place-based learning, its main purpose is to reinforce a safe settler future.

We went for a walk in Musqueam territory for Pro-D day and they pointed out Iona Beach Regional Park across the river and showed us that it didn’t count as their territory. Musqueam has fishing rights, but they’re hampered by the actions of the logging industry across the river. I imagined these lines across the water and it’s an absurd, imposing, and abstract idea. It’s just a river.

musqueam teaching kit map

I wanted to share this map with you. Musqueam collaborates with the Museum of Anthropology, and they have a map that shows how the delta formed over 10,000 years ago. It made me think
 MAN! Richmond didn’t exist 10,000 years ago. Indigenous peoples were here before Richmond existed as a physical land. Not only are these lines arbitrary, they’re also shifting!

References:

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“All Flourishing is Mutual”: Reciprocity, Education, and Braiding Sweetgrass

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This presentation was originally given at the 2021 EDST Research Day.

EDST students and faculty are invited to share their own reflections, presentations, or memories from Research Day 2023.

EDST Research Day 2023

(See below for further details)

Amidst the pandemic in 2021, EDST students, faculty, and staff gathered on Zoom one Saturday in April.

The conference opened with introductory remarks from Dr. Margaret Kovach who powerfully discussed the university’s relationship with Indigenous ways of knowing and research methodologies.

The day began with an acknowledgement that UBC resides on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. I extend this land acknowledgement and acknowledge that I live and work upon the unceded lands of the Chinook people, who (for over 120 years) have been seeking formal federal recognition. The process has involved decades of litigation, petitions, congressional legislation and appeals to presidents — yet the tribe is still unrecognized. I share this history to mark my place as a settler on this land, and to bring attention to the ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples, recognizing that land acknowledgements do not exist in the past tense, but are part of an ongoing process of decolonization.

Following Dr.Kovach’s opening session, I presented the below presentation in a session entitled “Place based education and engaging with our environment.” The presentation draws heavily upon Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book “Braiding Sweetgrass.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. I came to read Robin’s book on the recommendation of a friend, and immediately fell in love with the way she speaks and views the world.

As a settler scholar engaging with Indigenous knowledges, I recognize (as the great, late Michael Marker has stated) that the academy has acted as a space of colonial erasure of Indigenous worldviews. In my engagement with these ideas, I aim to enact the sense of reciprocity and respect that Kimmerer describes, while supporting the many movements towards decolonizing university spaces.

The photos

The slides in this presentation are black and white film photographs that I took in 2020 amidst the pandemic. The photos began as a series of shots of spider webs on my front porch, but grew into a collection of snapshots capturing a number of “more than human” others.

I share these images to highlight that interaction with the physical world is a social relationship, and that these interactions bind us into the reciprocal relationships that Kimmerer describes. The photos are by no means perfect or professional, but they help me share how I view the world in an added layer that I can’t seem to capture in words alone. The process of taking the photos amidst the scariest parts of the pandemic also allowed me to retreat to the “safety” of my local ecology, building new relations with the land and its history.

With some of the slides you will hear some audio recordings of birds in my yard. In her book Kimmerer writes, “Listening in wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own.” I often find myself wondering what birds are saying to one another, between the caaws and screeches and songs sent out, wondering if they can all understand one another and I’m the only one out of the loop. Within the back and forth I hear patterns and rhythms, as if the birds are composing a collective song. I take inspiration from this song into my presentation, which somewhat takes a form of call and response between Kimmerer’s words and my own.

“All Flourishing is Mutual”: Reciprocity, Education, and Braiding Sweetgrass

To watch video in full screen, click here

The above presentation was created using “Canva” (a free design tool).

Attending Research Day 2023?

Write something for the blog!


EDST students, faculty, and staff are warmly invited to share reflections, photos, and other memories from the conference. Reflections may take on the form of short narratives (such as this one on CSSE 2021 from EDST’s Yotam Ronen), summations of panel sessions, or other takeaways from the conference day.

Presenting a paper, poster, performance, roundtable, or other type of presentation?

Consider making your presentation into a blog post like this one! Posts typically are 500-1,000 words long and may include links, images, links, audio, video, and other forms of multimedia.

Have a question about submissions? Interested in creating presentations with Canva? Photos to share from Research Day?

Send an email to me (Jessica Lussier) at edstblog.editor@ubc.ca. 

You can check out the blog’s full call for papers here.

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Reflections on UBC’s Masters of Education, Adult Learning & Education

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Samantha Robinson
As I approach graduation from the Masters of Education, Adult Learning & Education program at the University of British Columbia (UBC), I find myself in a moment of pause as I intentionally take time for reflection. What have I learned over the last two years in this program? What made sense and was anything surprising or unexpected? Are there things that I still want to learn or areas of adult education that I want to explore in a more fulsome way outside of my degree? Was there something missing from my experience that I think would have been beneficial to learn more about? All of these questions are worth exploring in the months leading up to graduation, especially as I think about how I would like to continue on my own personal journey of lifelong learning. More practically, however, I believe it is imperative that I take this time for reflection as a professional staff member at UBC, where I am responsible for supporting current undergraduate students with their own experiential and lifelong learning outside of the formal classroom setting. Through this period of reflection, I have determined several key lessons that I am taking away from this program and one critique that I hope to name and continue expanding upon as my journey of adult education continues post-graduation.
The most prominent lesson that I am taking away from this program occurred during my first class ever in September 2019, which was in EDST 503. This lesson pertains to the fact that learning is a lifelong process and occurs in much of our day-to-day lives as adults. One of the first readings that I completed in this program was Rubenson’s “Adult Education Overview” (2010) where they provide various definitions of adult education and learning, including the definition of lifelong learning provided by UNESCO (United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization). In addition to defining lifelong learning, Rubenson (2010) shares the three fundamental attributes of the term, which include:
  • “It is lifelong and therefore concerns everything from cradle to grave;
  • It is lifewide recognizing that learning occurs in many different settings; and
  • It focuses on learning rather than limit itself to education” (Rubenson, 2010, p. 5).
Prior to considering the concept of lifelong learning, I believe I had a fairly limited mindset on what could be considered ‘education’. In reading Rubenson (2010), my eyes were opened to the fact that almost anything one does as an adult can contribute to their learning and overall development. This lesson was even more solidified when completing additional readings throughout the MEd program which highlighted learning opportunities in many different contexts, including participating in community organizations, organized sports, and engaging in movements toward social justice. While I hope to remember this lesson as I continue on my own journey of lifelong learning, I also recognize that it should be at the forefront of my mind when supporting student leaders at UBC in my staff role. When connecting with student leaders supporting UBC’s orientations programming, I hope to highlight the many ways that their daily activities, including volunteering, holding club executive positions, and even the conversations that they have with their peers, are all contributing to their own learning and development. These moments of learning can sometimes go unnoticed and holding space with student leaders to reflect on those experiences and the growth they have experienced is something that I am looking forward to continuing in the future.
This brings me to the second lesson that I am taking away from this program, which is in regards to how our experiences with social justice and global movements can contribute to the process of lifelong learning and the role that university institutions can play in educating students on the problems being faced by society today. Similar to the above lesson, which highlights the fact that learning is a lifelong and lifewide process, I had not previously considered all of the ways that individuals can learn and develop through participating in social movements or in moments of activism, or the responsibility that post-secondary institutions have when it comes to tackling society’s greatest challenges.
In terms of the forms of learning that can occur through participation in social movements, including attending rallies or protests, participating in community-based programs directed toward helping those in need, and even coordinating local cleanup crews within one’s neighbourhood, it is clear to me now that the opportunities for learning are endless. Scandrett (2012) discusses the different forms of learning that can evolve out of participation in a social movement. From “the structured educational processes which are sometimes employed within social movements
 [and] the informal and incidental learning and knowledge generation within social movements through political practice, repertoires of contestation, and collective reflection” (Scandrett, 2012, p. 42). Hall (2006) also highlights the fact that social movement learning can include “learning by persons who are part of any social movement and
 by persons outside of a social movement as a result of the actions taken or simply by the existence of social movements” (p. 6). In reading both Scandrett (2012) and Hall (2006), my eyes were opened to so many forms of learning that can take place through social movements, whether one is a key organizer or simply viewing the movement online as it develops and progresses. I see this lesson coming to life in my own work at UBC through the professional development opportunities that we create for student leaders which include conversations about anti-racism, supporting students in distress, responding to disclosures of sexual violence, active by standing, and so on. While these topics may not all be directly related to social movements specifically, they do create opportunities for current undergraduate students to delve into the material and to learn more about how they want to show up as leaders in the world. My hope is that by engaging student leaders in these conversations, they are able to gain additional insights into some of the wicked problems being faced by the world and the role that they can play in finding solutions, potentially leading them to become more involved with initiatives within the local or global community.
With this hope in mind, the third lesson that I am leaving this program with is the belief that universities themselves have a significant responsibility when it comes to educating students about the challenges being faced by society today and on how they can contribute toward finding potential solutions. Cordero et al. (2008) argue that “higher education
 has an important role to play in educating students about climate change, and connecting it to the variety of social dimensions, including access to food, drinkable water, and sustainable energy” (Cordero et al., 2008, p. 870). They go on to state that “action-oriented learning designed around the ecological footprint can improve university students’ understanding of the connection between personal energy use and climate change” (Cordero, Todd, Abellera, 2008, p. 865). While this example focuses exclusively on the current environmental crisis, I believe the key takeaway can be applied to any form of education on social movements and/or challenges being faced by the global community.
This brings me to my primary critique of the MEd ALE program, which is with regards to the required courses. As an uninvited guest learning and working on the land of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples in both a student and staff capacity, it is my responsibility each day to consider the role that I have played, and continue to play, in a colonial system and how I can work toward reconciliation. While this is my individual duty and one that I take to heart, we are operating within a colonial system and all institutions and organizations have a responsibility to do the same. The Canadian education system is no exception, as it has been built as part of the colonial system with historical intentions of erasing Indigenous ways of knowing. For instance, Atleo (2009) states that “Canadian education begins where Aboriginal people are not: from a Euro-institutional perspective of pedagogy in the context of formal Western schooling” (Atleo, 2009, p. 454), which highlights the fact that much of the education being taught in this country is with a very specific, colonial perspective.
UBC is a world-renowned institution with a newly introduced Indigenous Strategic Plan (2020) and encourages common practices directed toward reconciliation, such as providing land acknowledgements at events and gatherings. While these are certainly steps in the right direction, I think the university as an institution should be doing more and individual departments and programs can also take action in how they design and offer their programs. One way that the MEd in Adult Learning Education (ALE) graduate program could take further steps toward reconciliation is in reconsidering what courses are required in order to graduate. Currently, the three required courses of this program are EDST 503 (Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Adult Learning and Education), EDST 514 (Adult Education Program Planning Theory), and EDST 518 (Theory and Research on Adult Learning), in addition to one research methods course (ex. EDUC 500). These required courses focus quite a bit on colonial ways of knowing and learning, with readings centered on Indigenous theories being included by the choice of each individual instructor. Notwithstanding, I argue that this is not enough. If the institution wants to continue taking strides toward real and ongoing reconciliation with local communities that are impacted daily by our histories of colonial violence, I believe it should be required for students to learn more about Indigenous ways of knowing and how they can inform, enrich and expand our approach to a lifelong and lifewide education. One course that I completed during my time in the ALE program, EDST 546 (Indigenous Epistemology and Methodology), focused on Indigenous ways of knowing, and was taught by Professor Maggie Kovach. I learned the most in this course as it was entirely new material that I had not ever been exposed to in all of my years of education, including the importance of building strong relationships with communities as a starting place for conducting research, and various forms of Indigenous methodologies and frameworks, such as Indigenous Storywork (ISW). This methodology, originally developed by Archibald (2019), emphasizes the importance of intergenerational storytelling as a form of resistance and asks researchers to “pay serious attention to how stories can be used in research and education” (Archibald & Parent, p. 4, 2019). I believe that there are many ways that Indigenous ways of knowing could be included as a core requirement for the MEd ALE program, and including Indigenous methodologies like ISW as one of the research methods taught in required courses could be one way of doing so.
It is such a privilege to be able to further my experiences with formal education through the MEd ALE program at UBC and one that I am truly grateful for. Not only because I have learned so much along the way and connected with so many fantastic folks from around the world, but also because I am wrapping up my time with a keen awareness that the learning will not stop once I cross the stage at graduation. My journey of lifelong learning will continue through informal conversations with peers and colleagues, engaging in important discussions pertaining to some of our society’s greatest challenges, and in all of the moments in between. I am looking forward to continuing my own journey with adult education, expanding my learning edges and embracing other ways of knowing and teaching and hope to do so by taking part in forms of education that I haven’t yet done, including becoming engaged with a community organization and bringing some of my lessons learned into conversations with friends and loved ones. I may be preparing to complete my Masters at UBC, but I believe that I have only just begun this new personal chapter of adult learning and education and am looking forward to seeing what comes next.
References
Archibald, J., Parent, A. (2019). Hands back, hands forward for indigenous storywork as methodology. In S. Windchief, & T. San Pedro (Eds.), Routledge, 3-20.
Atleo, M. (2009). Understanding aboriginal learning ideology: through storywork with elders.
Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 55(5), 453-467.
Cordero, E. C., Todd, A. M., & Abellera, D. (2008). Climate change education and the ecological
footprint. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 89(6), 865-872.
Hall, B. (2006). Review of the state of the field in adult learning: Social movement learning Canadian Council on Learning.
Rubenson, Kjell. 2010. “Adult Education Overview” in Penelope Peterson, Eva Baker, Barry
McGaw, eds., International Encyclopedia of Education. Volume 1, pp. 1-11. Oxford: Elsevier.
Scandrett, E. 2012. “Social Learning in Environmental Justice Struggles – Political Ecology of
Knowledge.” In Learning and Education for a Better World: The Role of Social Movements. Vol. 10, International Issues In Adult Education). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
University of British Columbia (2020). Indigenous Strategic Plan. 22 March 2022. Retrieved from
https://indigenous.ubc.ca/indigenous-engagement/indigenous-strategic-plan/.
Villacañas de Castro, L. S. (2015). Critical pedagogy and marx, vygotsky, and freire : Phenomenal
forms and educational action research Palgrave Macmillan.
Author Bio:
Sam Robinson (she/her) is currently preparing to graduate from UBC’s Masters of Education, Adult Learning & Education in May 2022. In addition to attending UBC Vancouver as a student, she is grateful to be a UBC staff member working alongside all of the wonderful folks responsible for planning first-year orientations!
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Remembrance, Solidarity, and Community: Commemorating Professor Michael Marker (1951-2021)

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André Elias Mazawi[*]
“My work in the history of education has been like a Coast Salish canoe journey through time and space.”
Michael Marker
On December 23, 2020, around three weeks before Professor Michael Marker’s untimely passing on January 15, 2021, I emailed him to convey my good sentiments for the winter break and my best wishes for the year 2021. I noted that 2020 was quite difficult and unusual for so many. The pandemic and its predicaments disrupted our work considerably. For Michael, these were not “ordinary” events. In private conversations and department meetings Michael shared his views that we are living through an “epochal closure”, a term apparently inspired by a Kantian metaphysics of presence that considers an epoch as a system of language and structure – a hegemonic political culture, if you will. As I (partially) understand it, as an “epoch” draws to a “close,” it loses its “logic” as a viable explanatory framework of the human world. In the words of Saitya Brata Das, its “hegemony expires when its principle of ground becomes impoverished”. Under such conditions, it is difficult to discern what would eventually emerge, what is yet to be born. As a nod to Michael’s view on the times we were living through, in my email I sought to reassure him that with every closure there is also a beginning, a birth, new potentialities, new futures which may not have been otherwise possible. I wrote so because, in my view, every new creation is imperilled by risks, dangers, vicissitudes, contradictions, and setbacks. Yet, as both Edward Said and Hannah Arendt captured it so differently, every beginning ultimately entails collective struggles that connect “scattered occasions” (Said) into a punctum that takes diverse shapes, forms and, ultimately, meaningful directions. Preserving hope in the face of adversity is crucial for the conduct of one’s struggles. To convey my sense of optimism, I included a verse by German lyric poet and philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) that says, among other, “where the danger is, also grows the saving power.” I interpreted that verse to mean that while difficult and challenging life events expose our vulnerabilities and endanger us, they can also push us to think creatively about new ways of being and living.
My choice of Hölderlin’s verse was not arbitrary. Michael’s work resonates with the risks he took in his scholarly work and life. Consistently, he endeavoured to disrupt hegemonic discourses on history and Indigeneity. I knew and appreciated his scholarship well before we met in person at a conference in April of 2003 in Chicago. I then realized that I had included one of his papers in one of my syllabi as a mandatory reading as early as 2001. In his studies on the colonization of Indigenous communities Michael built a scholarly body of work that uncompromisingly sought to disrupt the hegemonic power of a Eurocentric version of modernity and history, particularly those discourses that are adamantly entrenched in schools and higher education institutions. Referring to the “alluvial zones of paradigm change”, Michael proposed a new language, one of life, dignity, justice, self-determination, and healing.
Michael’s response to my email, on the evening of December 23, 2020, was intriguing. Michael thanked me for my “blessings with gratitude and some joy.” Yet, he emphatically and flatly noted, “I do not share your optimism”:
“Yes, I do appreciate the words of German poets and thank you for sending them. Notwithstanding, I am more compelled by a German martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer; a great intellectual cut down in his prime while [Martin] Heidegger found cleverness to defend himself and pretended to not know of good Dietrich’s torture and execution. Bonhoeffer’s words ring true for me: “If you have boarded the wrong train, it does no good to run in the corridor in the opposite direction.” [Hyperlinks added to original text, AEM]
In his stance against Nazism in Germany, Bonhoeffer, a pastor and theologian, “was sharply critical of ethical theory and of academic concerns with ethical systems precisely because of their failure to confront evil directly,” as Douglas Huff points out. The foundation of ethical behaviour, Bonhoeffer believed, lay in reconciling the reality of the world and the metaphysical reality of God, making the latter manifest in and through the former. Ethical behaviour entailed a worldly and fully engaged activism towards the redemption of the human world, in words and actions. For Michael, too, scholarship cannot be reduced to academic concerns. It entails purposeful activism if one is to confront and expose “the varieties of hegemonies that neutralize a legitimate Indigenous voice and which are continuing to dismiss the Indigenous polemical Other as an exoticized outside case scenario.” He asserted that “healing and relationship building can only come of a rigorous decolonizing related to exposing the persistence and pestilence of technocracy and historical amnesia within schools and communities.” For him, decolonizing the ways in which history is studied is akin to “a canoe journey through time and space,” in view of creating a generative discourse and the re-articulation of institutional policies, practices, and cultures.
Michael’s intellectual courage stood out in our (last) exchange, as it did in his engagement with the world’s deep wounds of injustice, and its colonial legacies of oppression, violence, and dispossession. If he disagreed with colleagues, he argued forcefully, yet with courtesy and deference. His burning passion for inquiry, argumentation, and the exploration of ideas was visible to all those for whom the incisiveness of thought is a necessary condition in the fecund pursuit of those ethical values on which we could build our world. Michael was an intense interlocutor. For him, ideas must be pursued with a clear and sharp mind. Ideas command a constant search, a continuous exchange, and unending exploration, if experienced realities are to be captured in meaningful ways. Michael’s contrapuntal reference to Bonhoeffer’s life pushed back on my reference to  Hölderlin’s lyric verse. By doing so, he made me realize that my optimism was underpinned by residues of an a-political Romanticism. His contrasting of Bonhoeffer’s and Heidegger’s radically antithetical destinies compelled me to decolonize myself from entrenched assumptions that have come to inhabit me through my literary education and the conditions under which I was schooled. I never had the chance to thank Michael for this exchange. The conversation was cut short with and by his departure.
One full year has elapsed since Michael’s passing. Remembering Michael – as colleague, scholar, activist, and faculty member – is painful. This text carries a portion of that pain. One colleague commented, “it hurts to remember Michael, but this pain of remembering is also what gives us life, courage and hope” (Pierre Walter). On January 20, 2022, the Department of Educational Studies at UBC commemorated Professor Michael Marker’s passing at the very beginning of its monthly meeting. For me, a department’s capacity to re-member, to re-call, to in-voke the memory of its members – whether those who passed or those who are (still) present, or still, those who moved on in life – is foundational for the maintenance and growth of our common home. A home – basically, a space within which activities take place – is not just physical or material. It is a dwelling that carries a full range of meanings, affects, moods, and memories. These meanings are part and parcel of what a home represents, as both space and experience. Invoking these meanings collectively – as part of an act of co-memoration – represents the most powerful political statement that a human group can utter: we do not forget any member who lived in this dwelling, nor do we leave anyone behind or outside its precinct. Re-membering represents the penultimate act of constructing a solidarity across time, space, and relations; one of several pillars in the process of community-building. Without remembrance I feel we would probably vegetate in a continuously desolate present composed of bricks, mortar, and empty glass corridors. Such a “home” would be daunted by the grinding effects of an alienating bureaucracy, the “iron cage” of surveillance and control, to which (the translated writings of) Max Weber referred. By in-voking the memory of our colleague we ensure and uphold our humanity, trapped – as it is – between its desires for knowledge, truth, and fulfillment and the effective challenges facing the translation of these desires into ethical, equitable, just, and inclusive worlds.
The commemoration of Professor Michael Marker was incidentally followed by a departmental discussion regarding how we could, should, or would be capable of coming together to share the fruits of our work and still feel comfortable with ourselves, in the privacy of our thoughts and concerns. In many ways, for me, co-memorating and sharing represent the two facets of weaving disparate ideas into meaningful horizons of possibility, the creation of a measure of “intellectual intimacy.” Yet, for this “intellectual intimacy” to be effective it must be grounded in a spirit of trust; trust between individuals and trust in that all participants feel engaged and respected in the conversation, while respecting those around them. Building trust represents an arduous and challenging project, no doubt. Without trust, all our endeavours, teachings, and claims to transforming the world would remain vacuous and resoundingly empty. Building relational trust represents an elementary condition in the generation of knowledges that lay legitimate claims to transformative powers within the communities they touch.
May Michael’s memory live among us in the ways we learn to relate to each other, as we strive to build a vibrant, life seeking, and confident Department of Educational Studies. Let the passionate argumentation Michael captured in his way of being in the world increase a thousand fold and let it blossom, among us, like a thousand cherry trees.
Let us commit to remember that.
© André Elias Mazawi, Feb 10, 2022.
[*] An abridged version of this text was released to the Department’s membership (staff, students and faculty) on January 15, 2021, as part of Professor Michael Marker’s commemoration. The present expanded version includes subsequent reflections shared with the Department. I am grateful to Deirdre Kelly, Pierre Walter, Michelle Stack, Hartej Gill, Bathseba Opini, and Amy Parent for sharing their feedback and comments on previous drafts. I am equally grateful to EDST’s GAA Team for their consideration of this text as part of the EDST Blog and for their support in bringing it to publication.
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