Abstract:
What does collective care look and feel like in educational settings centering Indigenous and Black and all young people, families, and communities of the Global Majority? Educational settings, including schools, community organizations, and protest spaces have offered powerful models of collective care as connected to contemporary movements for racial justice, liberation, and decolonization. In the context of ongoing climate catastrophe, pandemic, genocides, and emboldened white supremacy—all connected to systems of racial settler capitalism—these enactments of an educational otherwise that seeks to uphold relationships with the land, people, and all beings have become ever-more pressing for global futures. In this panel, I offer some examples of culturally sustaining pedagogies from learning with Indigenous and Black children, educators, families, and graduate students. These enactments offer us paths out of educational systems that require inequality and suffering and toward those that uphold collective care and mutual freedom.