Words that Come Before All Else: An Embodied Decolonizing Praxis

Heather Bensler; Michelle Scott Paul

doi:10.25071/2291-5796.174

Authors

Dr. Heather Bensler University of Calgary https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8803-7929
Dr. Michelle Scott Paul University of Calgary https://orcid.org/0009-0006-5100-9226

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/2291-5796.174

Keywords:

Thanksgiving Address, Anti-Indigenous racism, Indigenous ways of knowing, Decolonizing practices

Abstract

Abstract: In this article, we consider the communal practice of reading the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address: Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen as an entry point into anti-racism work in nursing education. We describe how this practice, inspired by Kimmerer’s (2013) Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teaching of plants, creates brave and generative spaces for students and educators to engage in difficult conversations about settler colonial violence and its ongoing impacts on Indigenous Peoples. We consider a broad theoretical overview of the history and practice of the Thanksgiving Address and how as a decolonizing practice, it works to counter the colonial logics that often dominate western academic institutions. The intentional and embodied practice teaches us about our kinship responsibilities, moves us toward a renewed relationship with the human and more-than-human world, cultivates gratitude, reciprocity, and a sense of belonging, and prepares us to engage in anti-racism work.

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Author Biographies

Dr. Heather Bensler , University of Calgary

Dr. Heather Bensler RN MSN EdD joined the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary in August 2017 as a tenure-track assistant professor (teaching) and the Director of Indigenous Initiatives with a focus on faculty and curriculum development. She is the current Assistant Dean Academic Partnerships for the Faculty of Nursing. In this role, Dr. Bensler is responsible for ongoing development, sustainment, and extension of collaborative partnerships with rural and Indigenous academic partners in the profession of undergraduate nursing educational programs. As a white settler of Scottish and German heritage, her research focuses on white settler identity formation. She is a trained Theatre of the Oppressed Joker and helps to build the capacity of nursing students to disrupt racism through participatory theatre.

Dr. Michelle Scott Paul , University of Calgary

Dr. Michelle Scott Paul, Anaatsa'poopaki (Pretty Plume Woman) is Associate Dean Indigenous Education in the Faculty of Nursing. She joined UCalgary Nursing after being the director, Indigenous Initiatives at St Mary’s University in Calgary for over eight years. Michelle is a proud L’nu (Mi’kmaw) and Irish/English woman whose ancestral home is Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). She grew up in Tkaronto (Toronto) where she received a BA in Sociology from UToronto and has called Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary) home for the past 23 years. She completed her MEd at the University of Saskatchewan, and her EdD at Werklund School of Education at UCalgary.

Michelle is committed to opening up spaces within the western academy to centre Indigenous voices and Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing - to bring community together to learn alongside each other at the fire of all our relations about the historical and ongoing legacy of colonization in the place we now know as Canada and to provide the space at this fire for people to begin to understand themselves, their world and the future they want to create together, in a good way, on the path of reconciliation.

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