Epistemology: My world view. The concepts below are presented through my ontology. 

My definition of, Sustainability: It is working towards achieving the three pillars of sustainability: environmental, social, and economic sustainability.

Environmental sustainability is aiming to decrease your footprint on the plant. It means using less resources and having a lighter impact on the plant

Social Sustainability is working towards equity- that all people have the same access to resources

Economic sustainability is about understand the value of items and incorporating externalities into the actual cost. It is about paying people fairly.

Environmentalism: is putting sustainability into action.

Systems thinking:  “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” – John Muir

Hybrid: is a term that has emerged out of postcolonial thinking and basically means that there can be two or more ways of knowing and this can be a harmonious process

Epistemological Hybridism: literal translation: being able to think or see the truth in more than one way. Epistemological hybridism takes the actual life-world of the person or group as the core. Truth that needs to be seen as valid just because it is.

In my undergraduate education, I was taught to hold strongly to one point of view, understand that point of view, research it and be able to argue it. For example, climate change is real and problematic and here are the facts. The idea of epistemological dualism transcends that my beliefs, values or empathy do not necessarily need to exist in a siloed arena of right & wrong. That perhaps more than one belief can exist at the same time. That I can feel two different ways about something, and it isn’t particularly a contradiction but rather those beliefs stem from an imperfect human, a human in flux. It does not mean that I am not political, critical or intelligent.

Postcolonial theory: involves a strategy of critical analysis that focus on the legacies of colonization for Indigenous Population within a society’s historical, social, political, economic, cultural and scientific realms

Knowledge Mobilization: Moving the theoretical into action and practise. It is a form of dissemination where knowledge is constructed in a accessibly way and shared. Ben Levin, from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) describes Knowledge Mobilization as “getting the right information to the right people in the right format at the right time, so as to influence decision-making. Knowledge Mobilization includes dissemination, knowledge transfer and translation.” He defines Knowledge Translation (KT) as “transferring good ideas, research results and skills between universities, other research organizations, business and the wider community to enable innovative new products and serves to be developed.” Lastly, he describes Knowledge Utilization as “the study to how individuals and teams acquire, construct, synthesize, share and apply knowledge”

Critical Race Theory & Experiential knowledge:  Critical race theorists view this knowledge as a strength and draw explicitly on the lived experiences of people of colour by including such methods as storytelling, family histories, biographies, scenarios, parables, cuentos, testimonios, chronicles, and narratives (Daniel G Solozano & Tara Y. Yosso)

Majoritarian scripts: Are narratives so normalized that they are not question. These are stories that benefit the social location of the middle/upper class, white & hetrosexual. Majoritarian scripts are of interest because people of colour and other disenfranchised groups might also tell them.  For example, when something bad happens in a “good” neighbourhood, we are surprised, if bad things only happen in “bad” neighbourhoods. Bad being a place where poor folks and people of colour occupy.  Scholars Daniel G Solozano & Tara Y. Yosso describe this: “Whether told by people of colour or Whites, majoritarian stories are not often questioned because people do not see them as stories but as “natural” parts of everyday life. Whether we refer to them as monovocals, master narratives, standard stories, or majoritarian stories, it is important to recognize the power of White privilege in constructing stories about race.” Majoritarian scripts rely on stereotypes and stem from eugenics. So how do we untell these scripts? by creating Counter Stories. 

Counter stories, serve four functions:

a) They can build community among those at the margins of society by putting a human and familiar face to educational theory and practice,

(b) they can challenge the perceived wisdom of those at society’s center by providing a context to understand and transform established belief systems,

(c) they can open new windows into the reality of those at the margins of society by showing possibilities beyond the ones they live and demonstrating that they are not alone in their position, and

(d) they can teach others that by combining elements from both the story and the current reality, one can construct another world that is richer than either the story or the reality alone. Counterstory telling is different from fictional storytelling.

System Hacking: Vanessa

Land Based vs. Place Based Education: Place based education is not enough to “promote decolonizing goals”… and “consider Indigenous agency and resistance tied to Indigenous cosmologies.”  Scholar Dolroes Calderon says, “here we can see that a land education approach requires that students understand themselves fully within the context of place. This means not only understanding themselves fully within the context of place. This means not only understanding themselves in the present and future of place, but also the past and how all three shapes who they are today and where they dwell.” Place-based learning, is a modality of education I often try to incorporate. For example, taking children on silent walks through the forest or walking around the city with the intention for curiosity- creating hypothesis of what is around them. That said, I do not pose questions like, what was here before you were born? Or, what do you think will be here in ten years? Who land is this? What happened here before?

Decolonization in higher education: Vanessa Andreotti (Indigenous scholar at UBC) suggests that with more education that we can move further to the “right” and move from soft reform to beyond-reform. With more knowledge than we can become ‘woke’. I struggle with this sentiment only because folks who live in the “everything is awesome” paradigm struggle to see their place in the mosaic of colonization’s harm. The benefits of privilege are too great. I have to admit, they are for me.  We receive praise in this culture for being: educated, fit/ thin, white, able bodied, heteronormative, cis-gendered and participate in objectives like being efficient, keeping up with styles, performing beauty (i.e., wearing make-up), using appropriate mannerism, being ‘cultured’ or being updated on culture and media. I also can’t hence the making enough money to support all the inputs, needed to survive or perhaps thrive in this neoliberal paradox. I am without a doubt guilty, working towards a graduate degree, arguably perpetuates this narrative. How can higher education authentically be decolonized when one of the key premises of higher education is research–publishing, which is often the act of disseminating packaged knowledge, with the goal to increase one’s rank and prestige

Modernity: 

1. “Modernity’s ‘shine’ is articulated in ways that hide its shadow, or the fact that the very existence of the shiny side requires the imposition of systematic violence on the others.” (Vanessa Andreotti)
2. “The link between deep investments in modernity and the role that these investments play in the systemic production of violence must therefore be denied (foreclose) for those who want to continue believing themselves to be good, altruistic people progressing towards a homogeneous future of rational, consensual harmony.” (Vanessa Andreotti)

Place based learning/ Placemaking:

Stewardship:

Social Innovation:

Changemaking:

Ceremony: Ceremony is a theme I’ve thought a lot about since witnessing the Sundance in July 2017. Settler society for the most part, participates in ceremonies that stem from forms of consumption and capitalism- Christmas, Valentine’s day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, probably one of the most removed from capitalism is problematic for its ties to colonization and celebrating white supremacy. Then there is Remembrance Day- the idea of protecting a white Canada.

Also, what is the difference between ritual and ceremony? Is it authentic ceremony if it advances capital profits instead of rejuvenating spirit?

Fragility: Vanessa Andreotti (Indigenous scholar at UBC) suggests that cultural shifts can only occur when we are willing to really discuss the hard pieces of its complex problems. We need to be okay with fragility. In other words, we need to be okay with our vulnerability, even in an institutional setting. When discussing social issues in the classroom, there has never been a space to insert how their complex and messy parts, personally connect with my life. Perhaps there is space to discuss positionality, but never really move beyond the quantitative premise that the information is being disseminated from.

Adaptive Education:

U Theory:

Carbon Footprint:

Renewable Energy:

Collaboration:

Leadership:

Civic Engagement: