Abstracts of papers:
The Chimalpahin Conference 2008:
Colonial and Post-Colonial Remembering and Forgetfulness
October 15 - 18, 2008
Educator Language Bias and Discursive Constructions of Race in Settler Postcolonial Canada
Andrea
Sterzuk
Faculty
of Education
University
of Regina
Regina
SK, Canada
This three-part paper begins with a postcolonial interpretation of the settler past/present of the Canadian province where I live and teach. Land settlement by settler invaders in Saskatchewan occurred at an enormous expense to Indigenous peoples. The arrival of the railway, and the agricultural expansion it allowed, is intertwined with the subjugation of Indigenous peoples. In the Canadian prairies, Indigenous Peoples (First Nations and Métis) were stripped of land as imperial institutions of domination such as the Royal Northwest Mounted Police were established. First Nations were confined to reserves and White settlers acquired their seized land. Subsequently, First Nations children were processed through a brutal machine of assimilation, the residential school system. All of these acts shared the common goal of maintaining control and power of land and resources.
By drawing on some of my recent school-based research, this second part of my paper is an exploration of language bias of White settler educators and the ways in which this bias serves to construct and maintain racial categories and racial inequity among settler and Indigenous students. Control and power of land and resources continue to be maintained through current school practices. My research focuses on the negotiation of power in schools, White settler educator language bias and the social and academic experiences of First Nations and Métis children who speak a variety of English called Indigenous English. My research also looks at how an imagined colonial history of “pioneer grit” shapes teacher beliefs and institutional practices. Biased educator belief systems and practices help to perpetuate inequity between settlers and Indigenous peoples in Saskatchewan schools.
In my own work, postcolonial theory provides me with ways to think my way through (and subsequently critique) educational inequity. The student teachers in my classes are almost all White settlers and need considerable help learning to reinterpret the colonial history of Saskatchewan, understanding how they are discursively constructed as racialised subjects with privilege, as well as how school discourses serve to construct the Other. The third and final part of my paper is a discussion of some of the ways in which I attempt to interrupt the White settler gaze of my students by extending my research and thinking to the education courses I teach at the University of Regina.
Andrea Sterzuk is White settler and grew up in a farming community in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Before pursuing graduate studies, she taught elementary school for several years in Saskatchewan and the Canadian North. She holds a PhD in second language education from McGill University and is an assistant professor of language and literacy education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. She currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in language diversity and literacy development, second language literacy, and the self and other in education. Her research interests include literacy and academic achievement of minority language students, educator language bias, and education in postcolonial contexts.