This podcast explores how colonization and anti-Indigenous racism operates in schooling. The speakers explore concepts such as decolonizing and Indigenizing educational spaces and the importance of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination in how we conceptualize the future of education. Listeners are invited to consider their responsibilities as treaty people on this land in interrupting the historical legacy of cultural genocide and its contemporary impacts on Indigenous students, families and communities.

*Editor’s Note: For more information, please see bio available below.

About The Speaker

Tanya Senk is a Métis/Cree/Saulteaux educator, researcher, artist and speaker. She has been working in the Toronto District School Board for over two decades. During this time she has been a classroom teacher, seconded as a course director at York University, in the Faculty of Education, in both the Urban Diversity and Regent Park Teacher Education program sites, an Instructional Leader, AQ Instructor, Program Coordinator and Central Coordinating Vice-Principal in Indigenous Education. She is currently the Indigenous Education Board Lead, Centrally Assigned Principal for Indigenous Education with the Urban Indigenous Education Centre and Principal at Kapapamahchakwew – Wandering Spirit School. She has also written and reviewed with publishers such as Pearson, Goodminds, Indigenous Education Press, Nelson, Emond Montgomery, ETFO, and Pembroke – on Indigenous Education. As a PhD candidate, her research interests include Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education, Professional Learning and Teacher Education.

Resources: Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies; Gerald Vizenor; Willie J. Ermine on “Aboriginal Epistemology” and “Seeking Mamatowisowin”