ABSTRACT
Through personal reflections on my experiences as a displaced Indigenous learner and as a teacher education instructor, this work explores the manifestations of colonialism in everyday environments and the production and reproduction of white supremacy culture in the classroom and academic institutions. Underlying these reflections, this work explicates colonial constructs of missingness and erasure to demonstrate the ways in which Indigenous women, girls, and 2S+ people are not only absent but also actively absented from colonial spaces, discourses, and power structures, including the academy – even as these institutions claim an active role in Indigenization, reconciliation, and decolonization. Despite the importance of efforts to subvert the centrality of settler colonialism and white supremacy culture through the adoption of “progressive” policies, in my experience, any attempt to decenter colonialism and make space for other practices is felt as an immediate and deep threat to the moral-political code of the institution, and in particular educational institutions. Through examination of the deliberate invisibilization of the centrality of settler colonialism and white supremacy culture, this chapter demonstrates how structures enable everyday individuals to engage in the use of language, policy, and institutional practices as tools of violence that necessitate assimilation and adherence to the cultural norms of white supremacy to survive.
