ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the use of social justice in educational research because it has become a vehicle for settler logics and heteropatriarchal racist capitalism. Mission statements for schools that address social justice include language of democracy, inclusion, equity, and diversity. When so much of societal structures are facilitated by widely held narratives, such as meritocracy, the narrative itself should be routinely and lovingly scrutinized for what it might be facilitating, intended or not. Social justice, as a ubiquitous frame of education and educational research, is often connected to human rights but far less frequently addresses relationships across peoples, land, and cultures. One of the most compelling aspects of settler colonialism as a theoretical framework is that it articulates the specific and unique positions of peoples and land that are differentially needed to maintain the structure. Educational research that links to social justice focuses on populations that have been historically dispossessed.
