Flagging Dominance: Social Geographies of Colonial
Violence in a Canadian Classroom
Pamela Rogers
University of Ottawa
Abstract
The teaching of history requires an educator to make decisions about what information will be included in the course, which chapters in the textbook will be covered and how the classroom space will be used to reflect and support the information being taught (Osborne, 2003; Montgomery, 2005a). This article uses a classroom teaching narrative to illustrate the ways colonialism and essentialized understandings of ‘race’ and nation are recreated in classrooms through the exclusionary uses of space. Using Stanley’s (2011) framework for understanding racisms and antiracisms, this article analyzes the social geography (Frankenberg, 1993) of a classroom to explore how spaces are constructed through symbolically violent racialized exclusions representative of broader colonial relations. The teaching narrative is used as an example of how educational spaces can be contested, through the opposition of ‘official,’ colonial historical mythologies of nation building (Donald, 2009). This article concludes with ways that classroom social geographies can provide a starting point for antiracist discussions in practice, by analyzing the extent to which educational spaces can be inclusive of multiple historical narratives.
Constructing the Fort
A few years ago, I taught two history courses in an urban high school in the traditional territory of Mi’kmaq Nation, Mi’kma’ki, now commonly known as Nova Scotia, Canada. I was moved from my original classroom to share a different space established by a teacher who had organized the room using an accumulated collection of posters, colonial artifacts, maps and flags. In this class where I taught Mi’kmaq studies (MST) and ancient history, the teacher gave me access to the small, side chalkboard to display student work and the lowest drawers of two filing cabinets for my teaching supplies and belongings. Along with the materials displayed in the class, beginning with the first encounter in the classroom, the space I took up was a reminder that I was a visitor, and I was in the other teacher’s territory. The establishment of this relationship is an important aspect of my later analysis, as the tense beginning foreshadows the contested space of this classroom for the rest of the semester.
have a flag “larger than the Canadian flag” in the same room. I did not engage the comment and left the Mi’kmaq flag where it was. When I arrived in the classroom the next morning, a Canadian flag, slightly larger than the Mi’kmaq flag, was lazily hung over a smaller Canadian flag, covering student work on the back bulletin board. As students filed into class that morning, they immediately asked why the larger flag was there, and several students commented, “Ms. Rogers, that’s racist” but did not know how to argue why they believed it to be a racist act. Instead of brushing their feelings or the situation aside, taking either of the flags down or silencing their questions, I allowed the class to openly discuss what had happened, without intervening in their conversation. The students, as a class, felt attacked and that it was not fair. Several students felt that the space in the classroom dedicated to Mi’kmaq history and artifacts was minute, and the Canadian flag was a symbolic attempt to diminish the small gap for the class. There was a sense of injustice in the students that framed the classroom differently; the space was now contested, and they started to become aware of the connections between the course content and physical manifestations of colonialism.
I believe it is necessary to locate myself as a teacher before proceeding with an analysis of the above narrative. Barker (2009) defines the term “settler Canadian” as a person who occupies land or territory that has been stolen, or is in the process of being taken, from Indigenous peoples in Canada, and those who are members of “settler society,” who benefit from the colonial occupation of these lands (p. 328). I am a white settler Canadian from a working-class background, and my family has deep Irish/Acadian historical roots in Nova Scotia. My teaching identity as a white settler, who practices antiracism education, is made more complex as I was the only openly gay member of the teaching staff at the time. Due to ethical concerns, the identity of the teacher and school in the narrative will remain confidential, however, to situate the context of this narrative, the school in which it takes place has a predominantly racialized white, middle to upper class student population. In the three sections of MST that semester, only one student self identified as being Mi’kmaw, further complicating the dynamic relationship between the curricular content, its politicized nature in the space where I taught and the students. My intention in this article is to delve into the students’ questions and concerns by analyzing how this is a symbolically violent racist act, through reassertion of white supremacy in the classroom geography. Secondly, I do not intend to vilify one particular person, but rather to expose patterns of white supremacy and colonialism in banal settings generally considered neutral. Similar results have been found in other Canadian schools, where teacher relationships with each other are often problematic and need to be addressed. Kanu’s (2005) work with white settler teachers in the field of Indigenous studies determined that the most difficult aspect was not the course content or the students, but dealing with racist colleagues and their anger and resentment towards the existence of Indigenous curriculum. In the process of deconstructing an experience and creating an analysis, I am reminded of Tompkins’ (2002) work on decolonizing educational perspectives in Nova Scotia: as a teacher I am implicated by the power and privilege I bring to this analysis due to my social positioning. Regardless of my intentions, the disruptions I hope to engage in are situated in a larger educational system that continues to reproduce racialized inequalities and colonial violence (Schick, 2009).
Analyzing Racialized Geographies of Colonial Dominance
exclusion and negative consequences for those affected by racist acts are analyzed. Using this framework, I will further develop my analysis through conceptual lenses that seek to disentangle processes of inclusions and exclusions in a secondary classroom.
The first conceptual lens seeks to connect broader consequences and implications of the use of school spaces to colonial and symbolical violence (Bourdieu, 2010). The attempt to secure both figurative curricular space and literal physical space in the classroom (Carlson, 1995; Frankenberg, 1993) is forcibly interrupted by the hegemonic reassertion of white, male, colonialist desires to keep the room ‘Canadian’ (Ahmed, 2007; Razack, 2002; 2012). It is also symbolically violent (Bourdieu, 2010) in such a way that colonial relations of power and dominance are recreated. Using an analysis of a Canadian historical site in Alberta, Donald (2009) operationalizes a metaphor of the colonial fort as a literal marker of distance, exclusion and dominance to Indigenous peoples living outside of the constructed space. I argue that the actions and words in the classroom are an attempt to reassert the racialized white (male) dominance of a colonial past, by protecting the “fort” (Donald, 2009), connected to an analysis of the class as a colonial artifact, where racial dominance is enacted through a reproduction of a dominant/dominated relationship (Verancini, 2011).
Secondly, this act reproduces a process of racialized ‘ (Lewis, 2003). “Othering,” according to Holt (as cited in Lewis, 2003, p. 284), reproduces racial categories by creating distance between peoples based on essentializing, binary notions of what it is to be racialized as “white,” or “other.” Essentialized categories, based on skin colour and other physical markers, cultural characteristics and national identity, reproduce what it means to be racialized as white or ‘other’ than white (Lewis, 2003). Since high school Canadian history course content in Nova Scotia is based on notions of progress, globalization and economic development (Rogers, 2011), the epistemological distance between the two courses being taught in the same space posits Mi’kmaq knowledge as an ‘add on’ (Battiste, 1984) or separate from the official history discourse (Paul, 2006), or ‘master script’ (Ladson-Billings, 1998). As Tupper and Cappello (2008) have noted, knowledge is implicit in the construction of dominance through commonsense notions of Canadian history in school curriculum; in this way, curriculum informs the spatialized performance of colonialism.
Third, I argue that the act creates exclusions. This space, marked with symbols of the ultimate masculine colonial representations, the British Monarch, support an official (nationalist) history of Anglo-European Canada, and leave no space for other representations of Canada’s history. In a purposefully constructed space where Canadian history is distanced from, and dominant to, Mi’kmaq history, this social geography reflects the exclusionary and highly political control of physical spaces, where “place becomes race” (Razack, 2002, p. 1). A racialized social geography (Frankenberg, 1993) is constructed to reproduce and uphold a structurally, and narrowly defined, white, colonialist, (fixed) Canadian nationalist identity (Billig, 1995; Stanley, 2009), which First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples have been, and continue to be, excluded from (Rasmussen, 2011; Van Ingen & Halas, 2006).
Symbolic Violence and Colonialism
have historically been denied the right to freely participate, and denied the right to study Indigenous knowledges, languages and spiritualities, the symbolically violent nature of this scenario must be grounded in the continuing affects of colonialism (Barker, 2009; Orr & Ronayne, 2009). A brief explanation of the differences between colonialism and settler colonialism through Verancini’s (2011) work will lay the basis for subsequent discussions of symbolic violence.
Verancini (2011) makes an important distinction between colonialism and settler colonialism, which he argues are antithetical, yet intertwining formations (p. 3). Colonialism always seeks to replicate the social, economic and physical boundaries of spaces between colonizers and colonized, to remain separate from each other in multiple ways (Verancini, 2011). This definition of colonialism speaks to Donald’s (2009) analogy of the fort, where the physical boundaries between colonizers and peoples Indigenous to the lands are maintained through force, if necessary. Settler colonialism, on the other hand, wants to “extinguish and erase” the original relations, blending the boundaries between Indigenous and colonizer until such distinction is no longer recognizable (Verancini, 2011, p. 3). Applying these definitions to Bourdieu’s (2010) concept of symbolic violence, where power is used to manipulate or coerce others to maintain seemingly normalized power imbalances, the classroom narrative can be viewed as an attempt to both preserve and replicate Canada’s mythological histories of bravery and heroics (as per colonialism) (Razack, 2002), while erasing the existence of MST through curricular and spatial silences (settler colonialism). The teacher in this scenario has substantial cultural capital due to their age, experience, ‘race’ and gender. Indeed, in my scenario, I was in ‘his’ class and my students and I were intruders in it. These privileges were used to create a classroom where there was complete control over the space and resources, and how they were allocated. However, my analysis is not to focus on this narrative as an isolated event, taking place in one room, in one school. This story is a replication of colonial dominance and symbolic violence that has been committed repeatedly in various historical contexts (Kanu, 2005). The reproduction of the fort, to create Indigenous others in educational contexts, is an all too familiar tale that is commonplace in educational settings (Smith, 2012; Van Ingen & Halas, 2006). While a lengthy analysis could be in the classroom through several complex and intersecting theoretical lenses, including our differences in gender, age and sexual orientations, for the scope of this paper I want to highlight the misuse of power in the classroom in ways that perpetuated colonial violence. Sadly, the teacher in this story did not want to engage in a collegial discussion, nor did I ever feel welcome, or safe, showing the various layers of complexity as the intersectional nature of our own identities factored into the (lack of) resolve in this scenario.
The classroom narrative is connected to Ahmed’s (2007) argument on how (colonial) institutional spaces are maintained as white. The “very placement of things” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 155) can be connected to ‘whiteness’ and how it manifests in institutional settings. The placement of the larger Canadian flag can be viewed as an ongoing, symbolically violent exclusion of Mi’kmaq peoples from the curriculum, and the physical space of the school, through processes of colonialism and settler colonialism. The presence of colonial artifacts around the room mirrors this reality. Continued control of the school boundary becomes, as Ahmed suggests, “implicit knowledge” (2007, p. 8) of who owns the space and who has the power to maintain/inhabit this space. These actions are what Ahmed (2007) calls a “stopping device” to
Ministers and national anthems, are daily reminders that ‘Canadians’ live in, and ‘own’/control this space, and those who are not part of this version of Canadian nationalism are silenced. These stopping devices are acts of racialized silencing, which are acts of symbolic violence as an extension of white settler dominance in educational spaces (Ahmed, 2007; Razack, 2002; 2012).
Process of Othering
The MST curriculum in Nova Scotia was created through efforts for greater inclusion of Mi’kmaw histories, knowledges and voices in Nova Scotia social studies curriculum (Nova Scotia Department of Education [NSDE], 2002a). In the 1990’s, there were several official reports that stated the need for students of Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian descent to be represented in the official curriculum (NSDE, 1993; 2002a; 2002b; 2002c; Black Learners Advisory Committee of Nova Scotia, 1994; Erasmus & Dussault, 1996). As an attempt to include historically marginalized knowledges in the public school program, due to official reports and mounting public pressure, the NSDE implemented two high school courses, MST (NSDE, 2002c) and African Canadian Studies (ACS) (NSDE, 2002a), alongside a third option, Canadian History (CHS) (NSDE, 2002b), any of which would satisfy the required high school social studies credit. The creation of MST and ACS courses entailed lengthy consultation and negotiation that spanned a decade to conclude with course implementation in 2002 (NSDE, 2002a; 2002c).
Carlson (1995) termed the process of negotiating curricular space ‘curriculum settlements’ as an ongoing struggle between official curriculum and the need to address experiences, realities and knowledges that have been historically denied official space in Western schooling contexts. This process, according to Carlson (1995), opens up dialogue with racially marginalized groups to enter into a political negotiation of power imbalances within school systems. However, privilege and dominance is not fully interrupted in this process, in the sense that dominant groups truly do not give up power; they simply ‘settle’ for inclusive practices, allowing marginalized groups entry into the system through welcomed practices of diversity and multiculturalism. These settlements “embody contradictions that generate contradictory outcomes…because they are tentative and fluid, settlements are prone to periodically become unsettled” (Carlson, 1995, p. 409). When discussing the creation of a MST course, strides were made in terms of incorporating antiracist educational principles into curriculum, such as the acknowledgement of historical and contemporary realities of colonial power and dominance in Canada, and the social construction of race (Dei, 1996). Racial settlements (Carlson, 1995) reached through curricular reform become unsettled through a process of ‘contradiction’ or racialized othering, as seen in my teaching narrative. Contradictions include the intentional and/or unintentional acts and decisions of teachers and administrators to reestablish the previous power relations before racial settlements were reached.
marginalized knowledges are “dropped” into a Eurocentric framework, further contributes to the invisibility of Indigenous peoples in educational settings (p. 21). Similar to Ladson-Billings’ (1998) concept of master script in the curriculum, where particular knowledges have greater amounts of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 2010), Indigenous knowledges are treated as trivial in comparison to normalized, universalized Eurocentric content, positioning MST as a course that is secondary to the ‘official’ history curriculum, CHS. The (re)positioning of Indigenous knowledge as inhabiting the peripheral space outside of mainstream knowledge (Battiste, 1984, p. 21) is in itself a process of othering, thereby delegitimizing the significant progress gained from the previous racial settlements agreed upon (Carlson, 1995). This unsettling, or contradiction, is the reestablishment of power in the classroom through manipulation of the physical space (Van Ingen & Halas, 2006) that reifies a master script of normalized, allegedly neutral curriculum (Ladson-Billings, 1998). The master script in this case is the CHS, which celebrates and upholds the colonial artifacts in the classroom as true representations of nation. In the naming of the courses, which are worth the same credit, only one is called a ‘history’ course, while the two racialized knowledges are ‘studies’ courses. In my master’s thesis, I completed a critical discourse analysis of the three curriculum documents, where deep epistemological incommensurability between the MST and CHS courses was found in the major units of study (Rogers, 2011). The MST units of study are: spirituality, education, culture, politics and justice (NSDE, 2002a). Comparatively, the CHS units of study are: globalization, development, governance, sovereignty and justice (NSDE, 2002b). In the CHS course, colonialism and racism are not only missing from the conversation on Canada’s history, but the words are missing from the document; they are silenced (Rogers, 2011). Instead, exploration, progress and economic expansion are historical concepts to be discussed, furthering the notion that Canada was a barren and wild land, a place for explorers to reap the benefits of their bravery to build a Nation (Razack, 2002; Rogers, 2011).
A second key feature in this document is Canada’s place in international peacekeeping in the latter half of the twentieth century, which Barker (2009) adds, is an important feature of upholding the Canadian ‘peacekeeper’ myth, where all immigrants all welcome, and no colonial violence is (or ever has been) enacted. This telling of Canadian history through official curriculum, and manifested through artifacts found in the classroom, discussed below, embodies a taken for granted misunderstanding of Canada’s history, its peoples and its representations (Billig, 1995; Hall, 1997). In this way, colonialism informs the curriculum, which is reinforced by colonial violence in the classroom.
living in Canada.
Creating Exclusions
The classroom, its artifacts, set-up and bodies that inhabit the space can be understood as a distinct social geography (Frankenberg, 1993). Frankenberg (1993) uses the term social geography to map physical spaces, or geographies, by identifying unique features of people that live and work in certain places (p. 54). Social geographies represent both material and conceptual aspects of a particular landscape, meaning that both the physical environment and the symbolic elements of a space need to be taken into account when analyzed, including processes of racialization. Frankenberg (1993) ‘races’ her spatial analysis of white women’s experiences growing up, by operationalizing race and gender as categories that structure our social geographies, therefore also structuring the ways by which one interacts with their environment. Following Stanley’s (2014) framework, these social geographies can be understood as racialized exclusions that are organized spatially.
In the context of a classroom, there is a need to examine physical elements for their choice and placement, while also questioning how these ‘things’ are representative of a larger narrative, and how artifacts are used to create racialized exclusions (Frankenberg, 1993). Secondly, the relationship between the physical environment and its being to the curricula being taught in that classroom is vital; both physical and symbolic expressions in the room are important factors of a social geography (Frankenberg, 1993). Using Frankenberg’s (1993) definition to conceptualize the inner workings of this racialized space, the MST classroom can be analyzed as a space where racialized white knowledges/histories/legacies/symbols are celebrated through both physical and conceptual spatial placements, while racialized others are largely invisible, silenced and excluded. Adding to this racialized exclusion is the fact that I, a self-identified racialized white settler, was hired to teach MST two days before school began. This fact complicates my original analysis of the space to include human representation as a possible colonial artifact: questions of who should teach Indigenous studies courses and which students should take the course are highly politicized and often disputed in educational circles. Tompkins (2002) and Kanu (2005) discuss the implications of white settler teachers in Indigenous studies courses as being potentially problematic, but also symptomatic of long histories of colonial exclusion of Indigenous peoples from spheres of teaching. Using the analogy of moving sidewalks in an airport, Tompkins (2002) describes this exclusionary segregation between Indigenous and settler communities as constantly moving, but never interacting.
colonial history, which is reproduced and normalized by the physical presence of artifacts as everyday, banal realities, borrowing from Anderson (2000), in an attempt to ‘fix,’ Canadian history as belonging to racialized white peoples (Billig, 1995; Stanley, 2009). The physical tenets of a social geography therefore uphold and condone the conceptual meanings of the space. To a visitor looking into the classroom, Mi’kmaw history would not been seen as ‘belonging’ in this space; it is not as important as the dominant version of history and is excluded from dominant narratives of Canada as a nation, though spatial silences and omissions (Anderson, 2000; 2006; Billig, 1995).
The second lens for analyzing the nationalist artifacts in the classroom is through one of gendered, racial exclusion. These artifacts racialize the classroom as a dominated space in which the dominant are white and male (Lewis, 2003; Mahtani, 2001), by perpetuating and creating categories of inclusion and exclusion, or ‘us’ and ‘them’ (K. Anderson, 2000; B. Anderson 2006; Billig, 1995). Arguably, us (racialized white settlers) is represented through the anthem, Canadian flags, colonial artifacts of the Queen, Prime Ministers and war memorialization through visuals. Although there is female representation through the framed picture of Queen Elizabeth II, her presence is a symbol of British imperialism and colonialism, which was built upon British masculine ideological values of power, conquest and control. Overall, these visuals depict racialized white, overwhelmingly male, ideas of what it is to be a Canadian (Stanley, 2009; Van Ingen & Halas, 2006). Van Ingen and Halas’ (2006) study on Manitoba schools found that First Nations cultures, perspectives and bodies are continually displaced and excluded from school landscapes. In this way, First Nations, Métis and Inuit groups become perpetually redefined as an out-group in the social geography of a school, or to use Donald’s (2009) fort analogy, First Nations histories and physical realities are continually displaced outside of the colonial fort. The out-group can be expanded to include many other racialized other groups who are not represented in this space, nor are discussed in the textbook or curriculum (Montgomery, 2005a). Them/they is also the category of people who identify with the Mi’kmaq flag: a symbol of nationhood and continued resistance to colonization.
The third analytical lens is that the classroom is a microcosm of the larger construction of colonialism and white supremacy in Canada. Reflecting historical Mi’kmaq-British relations in Nova Scotia, my teaching was relegated to a ‘reserve’ while the rest of the space was saved for white colonizers. The classroom I taught in was only one of two spaces in the building dedicated to MST, and in this classroom, only a sliver was given, or ‘reserved’ for the students and knowledge taught in the course. Indeed, the same is the case for the MST curriculum in relation to the large space of the official Nova Scotia CHS curriculum. When I challenged this dominance from my reserve, dominance was reasserted, as indeed has been the case when First Nations peoples have challenged, and continue to challenge, both colonization and settler colonization (Verancini, 2011).
through the teacher’s attempts to re-claim, and literally flag, this space. The act of raising a larger Canadian flag as a response to the Mi’kmaq flag, is what Rasmussen (2011) calls an act of internal racism—where dominant interests and power are protected by excluding those racialized as abnormal (p. 38). Through an analysis of the social geography of this classroom, MST is depicted as ‘abnormal,’ therefore is excluded from official Canadian history discourse and representations of the nation.
(Re)asserting White Supremacy
Domination, according to Leonardo (2004), is the “patterned and endured treatment of social groups” through ongoing historical processes (p. 138). Linked to colonialism and settler colonialism discussed earlier in this article, North American histories of slavery, colonization, racist government policies and their historical legacies in social institutions sustain the material basis of domination in white settler societies (Razack, 2002). These historical processes allow dominance to exist as a “state of being” (Leonardo, 2004, p. 139) or a social condition that arises out of the historical foundations of domination. Dominance is naturalized through the accrued privileges of racialized whites based on the material conditions that societal institutions were built upon. White supremacy, then, is manifested through the eugenicist belief that dominance is a ‘natural’ order, and racialized whites have earned benefits because they are essentialized as harder working, smarter and better at adapting to their environment (McLaren, 1990). The history of white supremacy and racial dominance in educational institutions, as Stanley (2009) notes, “go[es] unmarked in everyday discourse…it is taken for granted” (p. 149). Taken for granted educational privileges include having your first language as the language of instruction, being instructed by people who are from the same racialized or cultural group as you, learning information that is thought to be important to your family and community and seeing yourself in the curriculum, textbook or other materials used in instruction. All are aspects of schooling that can be considered part of racialized privileging in an institutional setting. When these aspects of school are left unchanged or unquestioned, patterns of racial dominance, specifically white supremacist attitudes of schooling in white settler societies, also are left intact (Battiste, 1984).
of white supremacy in any given school (Osborne, 2001). When applying the above discussions of white supremacy with the racialized classroom geography, MST is denounced from being a legitimate, Canadian body of knowledge. The constructed space at once reasserts white, male colonial dominance through the physical control of the environment, while upholding white settler mythologies through the use of celebrated colonial artifacts in the classroom, reinforcing the structure of the fort (Donald, 2009). The use of the available space in the classroom further naturalizes and reenacts cultural performances of gendered dominance and white supremacy, and in effect, the classroom reflects deeply held racist beliefs of what ‘Canada’ is, who belongs
in this space, whom it belongs to and how the nation should be represented in institutional contexts.
Conclusions
The use of classroom space is an example of racial othering and creating racialized exclusions, is symbolically violent towards a particular racialized group of people, and (re)asserts white supremacy, having distinct consequences for racialized other students in the classroom. This use of space also denies racialized white students the chance to engage in antiracist thinking from further removing their historical and contemporary realities from a more nuanced understanding of Canada’s actual histories. Mi’kmaq histories and peoples become racialized others through the displacement of the Mi’kmaq flag, as it symbolically upholds the maple leaf and Canadian flags as ‘true’ representations of the nation. Further nationalist artifacts of racialized white men around the class also contribute to the racializing process of MST as being outside of official discourses or master scripts (Ladson-Billings, 1998) of Canadian history. The narrative also shows how racial curriculum settlements (Carlson, 1995) can be contradicted or shifted away from their original intentions of progress through discourses of diversity and multiculturalism (St. Denis, 2011). The exclusionary actions in the narrative further the racializing processes of who belongs or does not belong in a Canadian history class in a white settler society. This can be seen through the constructed social geography of the classroom space, through what historical acts are commemorated and which peoples’ stories are ignored. Not welcoming the Mi’kmaq flag on the classroom wall creates racialized exclusions based on nationalist categories of us and them. The distance created between what is Canadian and what is other is symbolically violent as it blatantly structures Canadian history class as us, and my class, students and the curriculum, as them, which is evidenced through the continued colonization of the physical space. Othering, creating exclusions and symbolic acts of violence all connect to white supremacist ideas of whose knowledges, which peoples and whose histories are worthy of being told in official settings.
The constructed classroom space is a physical manifestation of a racialized social geography, structured through colonial artifacts, and intentional inclusions and exclusions of nationalist symbology. This coincides with posters on the walls, creating a space where the only legitimate version of history is that of Canada’s colonial, yet mythologized past of exploration and bravery through battle. In essence, this version of Canadian history is rooted in deeply held white supremacist attitudes. As stated earlier, this narrative is not one isolated event, committed by one racist person. Historical patterns of colonial violence perpetrated against First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples in educational settings replicate struggles for land ownership and nation building in subtle, commonplace ways. The claiming of space in institutional settings through use of colonial artifacts is not new, nor is it hidden.
Canadian history can be retold, shaped by educators, curricula and texts that open dialogue for historical thinking, and ‘poke holes’ (Lowe & Stanley, in press) through the everyday, taken for granted representations of race and nation in Canadian school settings. Although in discussions with my students I did not offer my analysis of the larger flag or the classroom space, I did not need to, as the very presence of the Mi’kmaq flag remained a resistance to the created white history class. This scenario also demonstrates that antiracist interventions can be quiet; the students began to ask questions about their classroom, and started to see the connections between learning about racisms in the content they were studying, and how it manifests in daily life. The teacher’s attempt to patch the ‘rip in the wallpaper,’ or the hole in the flag, in order to return it to its original, colonial, white supremacist stasis. However, the students’ reactions show that the process of maintaining dominance can backfire and be used to further antiracist pedagogies by questioning the purpose and intent of peoples’ actions and interactions in the spaces they inhabit. As Puwar (2004) argues, “the homogenization of space is thus contradictory, as space carries properties which are simultaneously open to transformation, just as much as they are sedimented” (p. 2). The meticulous maintenance of classroom space as a colonial artifact in this narrative demonstrates the power of antiracist acts to slowly dismantle the fort, and transform institutionalized white classroom spaces.
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