At BSU, we have held several internal forums to
address racial and social injustices, and we have established the President’s
Racial Justice Task Force. However, there is concern about the ways in which
decolonial pedagogies and decolonization are being applied (or not). This forum
will take a deeper look at colonial legacies and how intertwined the university
is with colonial ideologies. We will not move far in our efforts for racial
justice unless we are willing to untangle ourselves from these embedded
practices.
Dr. Leigh Patel is Professor of Educational Foundations,
Organizations, and Policy at the University of Pittsburgh and affiliated with Education
for Liberation. As a transdisciplinary scholar, she
studies the narratives that create material realities in society. Her research
focuses on both the ways schooling delivers inequities and how education can be
a tool for liberation. She is a highly sought-after speaker and well-regarded
scholar across the fields of education, ethnic studies, critical higher
education studies, and literacy. Her recent publications include There is no
study without struggle: Higher education and settler colonialism. July 2021
Beacon Press and Decolonizing educational research: From ownership to
answerability. 2015 Routledge: NY.
Dr. Nitana Hicks Greendeer, a citizen of the Mashpee
Wampanoag Tribe has worked for the past 15 years with the Wopanaak Language
Reclamation Project as a teacher, researcher, and curriculum developer, and
currently as the Head of School for the Wopanaak Language immersion school,
Weetumuw Katnuhtohtakamuq. She has served her tribal community as the Director
of the Education Department for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. She teaches in the
Native American and Indigenous Studies program at Brown University, previously
as a Presidential Post-doc and now as an adjunct professor. Her broader
interests include culture-based education and culturally appropriate curricular
models, language education, and Indian Education. She teaches these and other
topics of Native Studies at Brown University.
Linda Jeffers Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag) is a member
of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe on Martha's Vineyard, and have lived in Mashpee
for more than 40 years. Her two grandchildren are enrolled with the Mashpee
Wampanoag tribe, as was their father and grandfather. Linda has worked for 45
years as a museum educator and spent 11 years at the Boston Children's Museum,
30 years in the Wampanoag Indigenous Program at Plimoth Plantation, and 9 years
at the Aquinnah Cultural Center. She has been an interpreter, an artisan, a
researcher; led workshops and teacher institutes; written children's stories
and articles on various aspects of Wampanoag history and culture; and has
developed and worked on all aspects of a wide variety of exhibits. Linda is one
of Bridgewater State University’s Indigenous Scholars and organizer of the
recent Indigenous History Conference Here It Began: 2020 Hindsight or
Foresight held virtually through Bridgewater State University.