*3.2. Autoethnography*

Seven of us (five participating as students, one teaching assistant and one course instructor) discussed as a team the idea of sharing our decolonial journey through our experiences of the course. A summary of our team, including our roles and key lessons from the course, is given in Table 2. We framed our accounts with personal reflections of ourselves. As such, we applied an autoethnography approach, which is a type of selfnarrative that enables researchers to draw from their own life histories and experiences to understand cultural experiences [70,71]. Essentially, autoethnography is about writing the personal and its relationship to culture [72].


**Table 2.** Author Major, Role in Class and Key Lessons.


**Table 2.** *Cont*.

To give further context regarding the course, we share Jean's reflection:

I was the course instructor who is not Indigenous in the community where I currently live and work though I am Indigenous in my home community. My passion for and interest in Indigenous Knowledge Systems started when I was young watching my great grandmother make traditional medicines for people who'd come to seek help for various illnesses. I learned a plethora of IK including farming since we were subsistence farmers. However, when I went to school, I was quickly told not to bring the knowledge and practices we were using at home, rather to focus on the real and valid knowledge which was the western knowledge. The more western education I got, the more I discounted the knowledge I grew up with. It wasn't long after I got my masters degree in environmental science and policy that I started questioning my education up to that point particularly why the IK we were practicing at home was not accepted in school, what could have been the problem if we learned both knowledge systems i.e., practice "Two-eyed Seeing"? I therefore decided to go back to school to explore IKS and environmental education. I follow scholars who promote IKS as valid and valuable in their own right (e.g., [11,13,14,17–19]). I have found the sub-Saharan notions of Umunthu/Ubuntu—"I am because we are, and because we are, therefore I am" ([22], p. 108) and Sankofa—"Return to the source and fetch", put it differently, 'it is not wrong to go back and fetch what you forgot'. [73] (p. 1)

Umunthu and Sankofa guide my work both as an educator and researcher. Consequently, as the instructor, I approached the class as a co-learner with all participants. While I designed the syllabus with course content that privileged IKS, I sought feedback from Sara, the TA who gave valuable input on assignments and resources including identifying relevant guest speakers. We debriefed each class and used the feedback to inform the next class. Sara and I took turns facilitating class activities. I tried to foster an atmosphere for all course participants to feel they could participate fully. Creating group norms and reminding ourselves every class helped. In addition to Umunthu, I have found Maxine Green's quote "always becoming" very helpful and promoting a sense of humility. This framing reduces the pressure of 'perfectionism' or to 'get it right.' Furthermore, I am dawn to Battiste et al.'s call for educational institutions to "think, unthink, and rethink" [4]. The fact that this is a spiral process rather than linear demonstrates that we are not working towards a destination, instead we always have to keep 'learning, unlearning and re-learning.' Decolonization is a process not a destination. This understanding framed the course from the beginning and we all kept reminding each other every class—especially when guilt, fear and hopelessness emerged.

As co-learners in the course, instructors and participants alike, we learned from Indigenous and non-Indigenous sources and attended relevant webinars (Table 1). We also learned from each other—we held engaged discussions and shared our fears and hopes.

#### **4. Key Lessons on the Decolonial Journey**

We each prepared our reflections on the course and analyzed the reflections for decolonial factors in education. Four factors were evident: centering programs in Indigenous philosophies of education, privileging Indigenous voices and engaging Elders as experts, promoting Etuaptmumk/two-eyed seeing, and employing Indigenous ways of teaching and learning. Furthermore, our reflections revealed feelings of discomfort, grief and guilt following the realization of the historical and present-day truths of colonialization. We also highlight classroom practices that enabled our learning together.

#### *4.1. Deconial Factors in Environmental Education*

### 4.1.1. Centering Programs in Indigenous Philosophies of Education

Indigenous philosophy of relationality was fundamental in the design of the course. Within this philosophy, knowledge is conceptualized as holistic and dependent upon relationships and connections to living and non-living beings [11,13,19–23]. We came to understand that IKS and WKS are distinct ways of knowing, the importance of paying attention to unexamined assumptions that tend to influence the way we view the world (e.g., why IKS are regarded as inferior and not valid ways of knowing and being), and the resistance against settler colonialism and assimilation demonstrated by Indigenous communities. These points are evident in the excerpts from the reflections of Sara and Sal:

I learned first and foremost that Indigenous knowledge and Eurocentric/Western knowledge systems are two distinct ways of knowing. Though specifics may differ between communities, I came to understand that Indigenous knowledge is experiential [17], incorporates Oral Tradition [21], and is based on deep knowledge of a place gained through thousands of years of living in close connection with the landscape [74]. Knowledge is passed through generations via Elders, knowledge holders, language, culture, sacred histories, and ceremonies [21,52,64]. Leilani Holmes [45] explains IKS as knowledge for the sake of "inciting humans to act in ways to ensure protection and reproduction of all creatures in the universe" [45] (p. 37). In contrast, Western/Eurocentric Knowledge prioritizes writing [17], book learning, separates and categorizes [14], is often decontextualized from place [75] and forged around hierarchies, linearity, individual gain, and the rule of time [19]. (Sara)

Just as the Indigenous knowledge systems we learned about tended towards a holistic, relational perspective rather than isolated components, I came to understand that how people engage with others in their professional lives emerges from a broader way of understanding and interacting with the world. Brown [76] suggests that the European colonial paradigm has its origin in the dismantling of the holistic self: "When the European male ... separated their mind from their heart ... this emotional detachment from their lands allowed them to leave their homeland and export their philosophy of oppression throughout the globe [76] (p. 28). (Sal)

## 4.1.2. Privileging Indigenous Voices and Engaging Elders as Experts

The materials we chose to read, watch and listen to, including the webinars we attended, were mostly created and facilitated by Indigenous scholars and practitioners (Table 1). We learned from the Elders who visited our class as guest speakers, which is a key decolonization factor supported by Indigenous scholars (e.g., [2–4,11]). Emily and Sal share their take on this:

Through the oral stories of Jean and guest speakers, including the Abenaki Elder, and the written narratives of Indigenous scholars, we began to learn about Indigenous ways of knowing. While it is impossible to generalize what this knowing entails across every Indigenous group, there are some shared aspects, among them: Land-based learning—culture, language, and community developed in conjunction with the Land; relational learning—knowledge that comes from and is developed through relationships; and stories—knowledge shared through narratives and oral tradition [6,13,14,17,38,41,45,75]. (Emily)

When the semester began, my understanding of what defined an Indigenous knowledge system was blurry at best. Each week, as we listened to Indigenous voices through scholarly articles, podcasts, guest speakers and videos, portraits of many knowledge systems came into focus. They held in common an emergence from the land itself and a way of being in interdependent relationship. Rasmussen and Akulukjuk [14] illustrated this emergence from the land in their conversation about language. "In Nunavut, the land speaks Inuktitut. What I mean is that the land (and sea) evolved a language to communicate with (and through) human beings, namely an Indigenous language that naturally "grew" in that area over thousands of years of interaction between the elements and the human and plant and animal beings" [14] (p. 279). (Sal)

Additionally, the course privileged Indigenous writing and orality.
