K. Wayne Yang is a professor and scholar of community organizing, critical pedagogy, and Indigenous and decolonizing studies. He is a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego and Provost of John Muir College. [1] He writes about decolonization and everyday epic organizing, often with his frequent collaborator, Eve Tuck. Currently, they are convening The Land Relationships Super Collective, editing the book series, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education, and editing the journal, Critical Ethnic Studies. He is interested in the complex role of cities in global affairs: cities as sites of settler colonialism, as stages for empire, as places of resettlement and gentrification, and as always-already on Indigenous lands. [2]
Wayne Yang graduated with his M.A. in Education from University of California, Berkeley, and received his Ph.D. in Education from University of California, Berkeley. [3] He also holds a B.A. in Physics from Harvard University. [3]
Yang received the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award in 2010. [4]
Before his academic career, he was a public school teacher in Oakland, California for 15 years. During this time, he co-founded the Avenues Project, a non-profit youth development organization, as well as East Oakland Community High School, which were inspired by the Survival Programs of the Black Panther Party. [2]
In partnership with Eve Tuck, Yang is the co-founder of the Land Relationship Super Collective. The Land Relationship Super Collective is a grassroots collective of university-based academics that aid decolonization through land reclamation. [5]
At the University of California, San Diego, he co-founded the Indigenous Futures Institute (IFI) and Black Like Water. IFI is an Indigenous-led institute that aims to counter the legacy of unethical scientific practice and Indigenous peoples. IFI channels a community-based participatory model to create community-driven solutions to climate crisis, global pandemics, and the continued denial of Indigenous sovereignty. [6] Black Like Water is a place-based approach to Black belonging in Matkulaxuuy, Kumeyaay territory (a.k.a La Jolla, San Diego) which identifies, amplifies, and analyzes narratives and practices that highlight the significance of honoring Black relationships to the natural world. The signature program of Black Like Water is Black Surf Week, which has taken place annually since 2019. [7]
Yang has coedited three books and written one under the avatar la paperson.
Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View, edited by Yang along with Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Eve Tuck, is a series of chapters that explore the relationship between decolonization and education. Each chapter is written by a different author, and present educational methods that are rooted in Indigenous principles.
Towards What Justice? Describing Diverse Dreams of Justice in Education, which Yang coedited with Eve Tuck, features essays by various authors discussing different ideas of justice within colonialism. The book analyzes the ways in which settler colonialism and anti-Blackness permeate the educational system.
Youth Resistance Research and Theories of Change, also coedited by Eve Tuck, explores new ways to understand and engage in youth resistance and challenges traditional conceptions of what “counts” as progress that conventional analyses of youth resistance deploy
A Third University Is Possible, written under the avatar la paperson, describes the university as an assemblage and posits the “scyborg” as one who, plugged into a machine such as the university, retools that machinery towards decolonizing purposes.
The Highlander Research and Education Center, formerly known as the Highlander Folk School, is a social justice leadership training school and cultural center in New Market, Tennessee. Founded in 1932 by activist Myles Horton, educator Don West, and Methodist minister James A. Dombrowski, it was originally located in the community of Summerfield in Grundy County, Tennessee, between Monteagle and Tracy City. It was featured in the 1985 documentary film, You Got to Move. Much of the history was documented in the book Or We'll All Hang Separately: The Highlander Idea by Thomas Bledsoe.
Participatory design is an approach to design attempting to actively involve all stakeholders in the design process to help ensure the result meets their needs and is usable. Participatory design is an approach which is focused on processes and procedures of design and is not a design style. The term is used in a variety of fields e.g. software design, urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, product design, sustainability, graphic design, planning, and health services development as a way of creating environments that are more responsive and appropriate to their inhabitants' and users' cultural, emotional, spiritual and practical needs. It is also one approach to placemaking.
Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach to action research emphasizing participation and action by members of communities affected by that research. It seeks to understand the world by trying to change it, collaboratively and following reflection. PAR emphasizes collective inquiry and experimentation grounded in experience and social history. Within a PAR process, "communities of inquiry and action evolve and address questions and issues that are significant for those who participate as co-researchers". PAR contrasts with mainstream research methods, which emphasize controlled experimentation, statistical analysis, and reproducibility of findings.
Photovoice is a qualitative research method used in community-based participatory research that gathers participant-taken photographs and narratives to translate experience into actionable knowledge. Photovoice is commonly used in the fields of community development, international development, public health, and education. According to Wang and Burris, the creators of the process, a Photovoice project should aim to: (1) empower individuals to document and reflect on community assets and concerns, (2) invite critical dialogue and create knowledge about important community issues while using photographs as a medium for group discussion, (3) reach policymakers and stakeholders. Photos taken by participants are used as reference material to guide discussion and interviews in groups, with researchers, or both. Unlike traditional interviews, photovoice it does not solely rely on verbal communication. Since participants address issues non-verbally with photographs, photovoice can be used to overcome social, cultural and linguistic barriers to communication. As a result, photovoice can be implemented with participants regardless of age, education level, language, gender, race, class, disability, etc. Photovoice is used to gather new insights and perspectives that raise awareness of hidden or overlooked issues and aspects of a given community.
Jorge N. Ferrer is a US-based Spanish psychologist who wrote about the applications of participatory theory to transpersonal psychology, religious studies, integral education, and sexuality and intimate relationships.
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an equitable approach to research in which researchers, organizations, and community members collaborate on all aspects of a research project. CBPR empowers all stakeholders to offer their expertise and partake in the decision-making process. CBPR projects aim to increase the body of knowledge and the public's awareness of a given phenomenon and apply that knowledge to create social and political interventions that will benefit the community. CBPR projects range in their approaches to community engagement. Some practitioners are less inclusive of community members in the decision-making processes, whereas others empower community members to direct of the goals of the project.
Indigenous decolonization describes ongoing theoretical and political processes whose goal is to contest and reframe narratives about indigenous community histories and the effects of colonial expansion, cultural assimilation, exploitative Western research, and often though not inherent, genocide. Indigenous people engaged in decolonization work adopt a critical stance towards western-centric research practices and discourse and seek to reposition knowledge within indigenous cultural practices.
Prefigurative politics are the modes of organization and social relationships that strive to reflect the future society being sought by the group. According to Carl Boggs, who coined the term, the desire is to embody "within the ongoing political practice of a movement [...] those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal". Besides this definition, Leach also gave light to the definition of the concept stating that the term "refers to a political orientation based on the premise that the ends a social movement achieves are fundamentally shaped by the means it employs, and that movement should therefore do their best to choose means that embody or prefigure the kind of society they want to bring about". Prefigurativism is the attempt to enact prefigurative politics.
Afrocentric education refers to a pedagogical approach to education designed to empower people of the African diaspora with educational modes in contact and in line with the cultural assumptions common in their communities. A central premise behind it is that many Africans have been subjugated by having their awareness of themselves limited and by being indoctrinated with ideas that work against them and their cultures.
Indigenous education specifically focuses on teaching Indigenous knowledge, models, methods, and content within formal or non-formal educational systems. The growing recognition and use of Indigenous education methods can be a response to the erosion and loss of Indigenous knowledge through the processes of colonialism, globalization, and modernity.
Linda Tuhiwai Te Rina Smith, previously a professor of indigenous education at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, is now Distinguished Professor at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. The daughter of Sidney Moko Mead, she affiliates to the Ngāti Awa and Ngāti Porou iwi.
Critical pedagogy of place is a curricular approach to education that combines critical pedagogy and place-based education. It started as an attitude and approach to place-based and land-based education that criticized place-based education's invisible endorsement of colonial narratives and domineering relationships with the land. The scholars critiquing place-based education mainly focused on re-centering Indigenous voices in the curriculum. In the early 1990s, C.A. Bowers advocated for a critical pedagogy of place that acknowledged our enmeshment in cultural and ecological systems, and the resulting need for this to figure in the school curriculum. In 2003, David A. Greenwood introduced and defined the term "Critical Pedagogy of Place." In the years since, the general ideas of critical pedagogy of place have been incorporated into many scholars' critiques of place-based, land-based, and environmental education.
Eve Tuck is an Unangax̂ scholar in the field of Indigenous studies and educational research. Tuck is the associate professor of critical race and indigenous studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.
Angie Morrill is a member of the Klamath tribes in Oregon. She is a former Native admissions recruitment officer for the University of Oregon. She is currently the Program Director of Title VI Indian Education for Portland Public Schools.
Susan D. Dion (Potawatomi-Lenapé) is professor at York University in the Faculty of Education. Dion specializes on issues related to Indigenous matters in education and the role of Indigenous relationships in teacher education.
Dr. Krystal Tsosie (Diné) is a Navajo geneticist and bioethicist at Arizona State University and activist for Indigenous data sovereignty. She is also an educator and an expert on genetic and social identities. Her advocacy and academic work in ameliorating disparities in genetics through community-based participatory research has been covered by various national news sources, including The New York Times, Nova, The Washington Post, NPR, The Atlantic, Forbes, and The Boston Globe.
Roxana Chu-Yee Ng (1951–2013) was an activist and scholar for fair migrant labour, gender and racial equality, and decolonising pedagogy. She is noted for her research on the garment industry in Canada and its relation to immigration, gender, race, and class, as well as her contributions to institutional ethnography, embodied learning and critical pedagogy.
Decolonization of knowledge is a concept advanced in decolonial scholarship that critiques the perceived hegemony of Western knowledge systems. It seeks to construct and legitimize other knowledge systems by exploring alternative epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies. It is also an intellectual project that aims to "disinfect" academic activities that are believed to have little connection with the objective pursuit of knowledge and truth. The presumption is that if curricula, theories, and knowledge are colonized, it means they have been partly influenced by political, economic, social and cultural considerations. The decolonial knowledge perspective covers a wide variety of subjects including philosophy, science, history of science, and other fundamental categories in social science.
Decolonization in Latino culture refers to contemporary treatment of and work with past colonialist and imperialist influences on Latin American society in the US.
Rebecca Sockbeson is a Wabanaki scholar and activist in the field of Indigenous Peoples' education.