Life and Death at Talawanda Ridge

Abstract

Abstract

In this exploratory treatment of a fictionalized scene of conflict on indigenous land, framed inside a “currere” project, I “try” to frame a narrative of value and possibility by centering the violent, destructive, and ubiquitous colonizer, who is, of course, me.  For me, this is a troubling (not your problem), never ending project of discernment, critique, deconstruction, and transformation on a personal and socially political level in education.  I am constantly asking, “What is the educational, curricular, and critical project of self-examination? What forms can it take?  What outcomes can it have? What are the possibilities for producing personal, political, and social justice?  How does one account for the persistent logics of “othering” and other factors that block the inquirer from insight, communication, and liberation, or even from a place to stand, though I, colonizer, stand in the middle of all of it, empowered, at every turn? What are the possibilities for this type of work, and how can it lead to forms of solidarity that are educative, defensible, and perhaps revolutionary?  Can we create or even live within the sanctity of a “relational, transitive, and/or creative pedagogy of solidarity”? (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2012)