Discussions about Indigenizing the academy have abounded in Canada over the past few years. And yet, despite the numerous policies and reports that have been written, there is a lack of clarity around what pedagogical methods could help to decolonize our institutions. In Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization, edited by Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong, contributors demonstrate how the academy cannot be decolonized while we still subscribe to the Western idea of mind over body. They argue that connecting the body, mind, and spirit is integral to decolonization projects and to the reimagining of pedagogy. In the following excerpt, chapter author Candace Brunette-Debassige outlines eleven principles to consider when taking up a decolonizing pedagogy grounded in embodied-learning.
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“Wabun Geezis nindishnikaas. Muskego iskwew endow. My Cree name is Morning Light and I am an Ininew iskew (a Cree woman) of James Bay Cree, French, and Métis heritage. I was born and grew up off-reserve in the small town of Cochrane in northeastern Ontario; however, my Cree lineage traces to Fort Albany First Nation, about 350 kilometres north of Cochrane, an isolated community near the shores of James Bay—a place where the stories of my ancestors continue to live beneath the landscape that I also call home. By beginning this chapter with sharing my cultural identity and ancestral lineage, I am both locating myself and grounding my work in an Indigenous epistemology. In Indigenous research methodologies, self-location is a significant entry point (Absolon and Willet 2005); it has also been recognized as “important in terms of being able to make research an embodied journey” (Batacharya 2010, 162). Indigenous research is becoming commonly seen as a “methodological approach that welcome[s] a more holistic, kinesthetic and soulful way of knowing” (Ritenburg et al. 2014, 69).
My story is unique but also akin to the stories of other Indigenous peoples. In fact, I have heard variations of my story many times from other Indigenous artists who have experienced the transformative impacts of learning through the body and expressing oneself through movement and story in the context of Indigenous performing arts. These artists, like myself, have awakened their bodies through embodied knowing and found in creative expression a means to release the internalized systemic silencing of colonization. Their experiences, along with my own story, have led me to recognize that embodied practices in Indigenous performing arts can contribute in essential ways to the growing discourses on embodied learning and can function as a decolonizing tool for Indigenous peoples.
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I have reflected on and distilled eleven key principles to consider when taking up a decolonizing embodied-learning pedagogy. These principles—along with their purposes, underlying theories, and some practical applications—are outlined here.
- Activate Indigenous pedagogies.
First and foremost, it is helpful for embodied-learning educators, when working with Indigenous people, to take up Indigenous pedagogies that privilege Indigenous ways of learning. Indigenous ways of learning inherently recognize the holistic nature of knowledge and its relationship with mind, body, emotions, and spirit within a powerful embodied centre of knowing. Indigenous approaches support students in coming from this subjective centre whenever possible, often through stories and sharing. Indigenous pedagogies are experiential in nature, often allowing for activities connected to or on the land; they extend learning outward to one’s relationship with family, community, and nation, honouring the significance of community and social responsibilities. Sharing and giving back to the collective is a significant facet of Indigenous ways of knowing. Indigenous pedagogies also recognize the history of colonization and its impacts on Indigenous peoples in a contemporary context.
Embodied-learning educators play a powerful role by telling their own personal stories, locating themselves through sharing their identities and connections to land and place. Indigenous educational strategies like Fyre Jean Graveline’s (1998) “circle teaching format” are useful in nurturing a sense of community and encouraging students to share subjectively and collectively. Especially for Indigenous people, who have learned silence, the act of sharing can be essential to processing experience. If time is limited, teachers can ask learners to share only a word, an image, or an idea that resonates with them. Augusto Boal’s Image Theatre techniques are helpful in unlocking hidden messages of the body in nonverbal ways, thus dislodging the culture of oppression. Sound and movement techniques used in Indigenous Storyweaving approaches also provide powerful mirroring effects that privilege the body’s centre of knowing. The purpose here is to give Indigenous learners space to be and to be heard or witnessed collectively.
- Foster interconnections with land and cosmos.
Traditional Cree people have a deep respect for the bush and for our spiritual relationship with animals, who, in our understanding, sacrifice their lives for humans to live. The subsistence cycle of the Cree hinges in complex ways on respect, understanding, and communion with the movement of animals in relation to our six seasons (fall, freeze-up, winter, break-up, spring, and summer), which are influenced by larger cosmological factors, including the earth’s relationship with the sun, moon, and stars. This understanding among Cree people has been transmitted orally through stories since time immemorial, passing on mythologies, teachings, language, and histories from generation to generation. Cree mythological narratives often centre on human-animal relationships and position animals as no less significant than human beings. While oral traditions have been impacted by colonialism, storytelling today continues to be a pathway for igniting the “learning spirit” (Battiste 2013) among Indigenous peoples. Many Indigenous stories of being alive and well involve listening and moving in balance with and in relation to the land, which is seen as integral to our collective survival as human beings.
The interconnections among humans, animals, and the land is a key principle and underlying theme to teaching an Indigenous embodied approach to decolonization. For that reason, yoga sequences like the sun, moon, fire, and water salutations; postures like mountain and tree pose; and asanas like the eagle, crow, pigeon, and turtle, to name a few, have always resonated deeply with me. Exploring aspects of nature in the body was what initially engaged me and drew me into yoga practice. Strengthening interrelationships to land and place is a foundational aspect of Indigenous knowing and learning. For instance, Indigenous powwow dances embody and strengthen human, animal, and land relationships.
- Understand the kinesthetic impacts of colonialism.
It is also essential to teach Indigenous learners about the kinesthetic and embodied nature of colonialism and oppression. By introducing, examining, and reflecting on colonial histories and their impacts on our bodies, minds, and spirits, embodied-learning educators can help students unearth their lived experiences and dislodge colonial hegemonic ways of being. When settler-colonial ideologies about Indigenous people go undisrupted they form hegemonic thinking. Antonio Gramsci (1971), a Marxist scholar was one of the first to introduce the concept of hegemony which he related to the ways that the ruling class impose their values, beliefs, and perceptions onto society in a way that becomes assumed and common sense. From my perspective, hegemonic thinking about Indigenous people has been created by settler society and imposed onto Indigenous people. Teaching about how colonial narratives reinforce disembodied ways of being in the world and become internalized helps Indigenous learners not only to recognize colonial hegemonic silencing patterns in themselves but also to recover their own presence, voice, and agency, in turn opening themselves up to possibilities for change and transformation.
It is also critical for embodied-learning instructors to adopt trauma-sensitive approaches when working with Indigenous students. In the realm of psychology, the existence of traumatic experiences has been recognized since at least the late nineteenth century, and we have since gained a better understanding of the chemical and neurological impact of certain experiences on the brain. Feminist approaches to critical traumatology recognize that oppression is traumatic and often criticize psychology for its pathologizing tendencies (Burstow 2003). Critical pedagogies of embodied learning are well positioned to teach learners about the embodied impacts of trauma and oppression such as disassociation or alienation from the body, body shame, heightened startle responses, hyperarousal of the sympathetic system, bodily memories, and avoidance of stimuli. Rae Johnson (2007), in her doctoral work, uncovered three primary embodied responses to oppression and the embodied impact of trauma: embodied memories, somatic vigilance, and somatic withdrawal and alienation.
Within Indigenous scholarship, historical trauma has been linked to residential schools in Canada, the effects of which have been passed on intergenerationally (Wesley-Esquimaux and Smolewski 2004). The experience of colonization and residential schools has also been characterized as a form of “ethno-stress,” or what Eduardo Duran (2006) calls a “soul wound,” that has engendered a deeply ingrained lack of trust. While this wariness serves as a social coping mechanism, it also contributes to diminished health and well-being. The embodied nature of historical trauma, I believe, leads many Indigenous people to disembodied ways of being, manifesting in chronic tension, breathing and muscular holding patterns, and other forms of dis-ease that wreak havoc in our relationships with our own bodies and with others through inter-embodied relationships. In Overcoming Trauma Through Yoga, David Emerson and Elizabeth Hoper (2011) outline four key themes to a trauma-sensitive approach: experience the present moment, provide opportunities to make choices, talk about effective actions, and create rhythms to foster a sense of connection. These approaches may be helpful to those working with Indigenous people who have experienced trauma.
Critical theories also help educate students about how power, privilege, and systems of oppression are embodied and inter-embodied and, more importantly, how the body is simultaneously a site of both personal agency and social power that can help one cope with one’s experience of oppression. In this sense, embodied learning can be considered a practice leading to self-determination that counters internalized oppression through raising one’s consciousness and embodied presence.
- Know through experience.
As the living libraries in Indigenous communities, Elders play a central role in Indigenous ways of knowing and learning. Indigenous ways of knowing, therefore, inherently honour the experiential way of knowing, recognizing that knowledge is not merely about content or conceptual learning but is activated through the process of life experience. Embodied learning educators can inherently honour Indigenous ways of knowing; they respect the learners’ journeys by helping them to come back into their bodies to experience their own knowing. It is integral to begin a teaching session almost immediately by bringing Indigenous students back inside their bodies to experience their own sensations as reliable sources of knowledge. This practical work directly counters and resists the normative tendency of Western thought and education to privilege mind-intellect over mind-body-emotion-spirit centres of knowing.
Early scientific philosophers such as Plato, Socrates, and Descartes all asserted that the body was unreliable in perceiving objective truth. These dominant Western positivistic assertions have positioned the body at an inferior level, closer to animals, in the hierarchy of Western intelligence. The reorientation of becoming our own authorities according to our bodily sensations rather than relying on external objective truths can be foreign territory for many people, since in formal education in the West, we are taught from outside of our bodies. Bringing marginalized peoples who have been bombarded by external authorities speaking for them back into their bodies is critical in empowering them to discover their personal power and agency.
This can be a radical paradigm shift for Indigenous people and requires unconditional, gentle, and ongoing practical work, with reminders for students to listen to, experience, and open up to the subtle nuances of their bodily messages. The dominant mind will inevitably want to analyze and categorize sensations, but this experiential practice is simple and requires the temporary suspension of the mind. The purpose is to develop inner faculties that are nondiscursive (preverbal, with no need to search for cause or give title). It is simply to experience sensations and open up an expansive space of limitless possibilities inside.
- Breathe.
Heightening one’s awareness of one’s breathing cycle is a freeing practice and a primary principle of a decolonizing embodied pedagogy. Frantz Fanon, the notable anticolonial scholar, famously linked the effects of colonization to breathing patterns of the colonized: “There is not occupation of territory, on the one hand, and independence of persons on the other. It is the country as a whole, its history, its daily pulsation that are contested, disfigured. . . . Under these conditions, the individual’s breathing is an observed, an occupied breathing. It is a combat breathing” (Fanon 1965, 65).
Fanon shone a light on the damaging effects of colonization on one’s breathing cycle. The focus on breathing is therefore foundational when addressing the effects of colonization for the oppressed. Since breathing generally happens at the perimeter of our consciousness, students can become greatly empowered by learning more about their own breathing patterns, especially in terms of how to release “combat breathing” through embodied techniques. Embodied-learning educators can provide students with various active and passive breathing techniques as tools for calming and energizing. Many yoga practices offer myriad breathing techniques connected to a long-held prāṇāyāma practice, which is meant to purify the complex meridian energy channels.
From a more scientific perspective, the reduction of autonomic stress responses through active breathing can be incredibly powerful, especially for Indigenous peoples, who have often experienced violence and oppression. Recent research has shown that yoga—including meditation, relaxation, and physical postures—can “reduce autonomic sympathetic activation, muscle tension, and blood pressure, improve neuro-endoctrine and hormonal activity, decrease physical symptoms and emotional distress, and increase quality of life” (Emerson et al. 2009, 124). As students become aware of and reflect on their own unconscious breathing patterns, they can begin to examine the ways in which they may interfere with their own natural breathing cycle during times of stress.
- Relax.
As part of an embodied-learning approach to decolonization, fostering the ability to relax is crucial. Educators can also share the theory behind this practice to help facilitate and integrate the learning. Yoga has greatly contributed to my appreciation for conscious relaxation at the beginning and end of one’s embodied practice. In hatha yoga, this form of relaxation is called śavāsana (resting pose) and is believed to be integral to a healthy and balanced practice. Conscious relaxation is believed to help process information and learning and to facilitate deep integration of knowledge. In our society, we often move from activity to activity quickly without much time for repose, and through this orientation, reinforced via societal norms and educational approaches, we become socially conditioned to do rather than to be. This way of being can be unlearned through the practice of relaxation. Until the mind-body-spirit can rest, the integration and mending of disconnections caused by colonization cannot occur. Through various embodied techniques including yoga, meditation, or just simple breathing in silence, educators can help students recover from the withdrawing and alienating effects of colonial oppression.
- Ground yourself.
The technique of grounding, or relating our bodies to the earth’s gravitational pull, is a paramount principle in a decolonizing embodied pedagogy. This interaction initially happens physically and energetically by consciously and intentionally releasing one’s weight, energy, and intention into the earth—exhaling, giving, releasing, and letting go into gravity and then waiting for the spontaneous, natural, and reciprocal response of inhaling and rising. Students of yoga can learn to embody this concept of grounding in nearly every movement, every breath, and can reflect upon it in relation to their embodied reality and orientation toward others.
My former teacher Roxana Ng challenged us, her students, to consider this energetic relationship in our personal and professional lives and in our activist work. As a result, I often find myself coming back to grounding when I find myself in a difficult dynamic with others, and students can learn to do the same in their own difficult experiences. I find this concept philosophically compelling, since I have spent much of my life in unconscious states of resistance. The resistance became lodged in my body, resulting in a disembodied way of being. I find it empowering to notice when my energy shifts from being in strong opposition to others to trusting the earth beneath me to support me. I have discovered that the act of grounding is both embodied and inter-embodied. A striking example of embodied forms of resistance came with the Idle No More movement of 2014, when Indigenous people across Canada activated their embodied and inter-embodied ways of being through collective round dances.
It is especially important for colonized peoples—who, for complex reasons, are forced into states of resistance—to practice grounding in their personal and professional lives. For me, the purpose of grounding through yoga is not to ignore the colonial past or become complacent in the ongoing colonial present; instead, grounding provides me with a pathway to become aware of my disembodied states of being and, more importantly, to choose to create a more embodied way of being and living in the present. Grounding is also an excellent way to support survivors of historical trauma in self-care and self-determination. I do believe that there are times when Indigenous peoples need to resist in order to protect the earth and our sovereign rights; at the same time, I also believe that we need to have embodied learning processes in order to come back into our holistic bodies and Indigenous presence for the well-being of ourselves, our families, and our communities.
- Release tension and obstructions.
It is helpful to recognize how tension, or the absence of relaxation, is embodied and constricts and inhibits the free flow of energy, breath, and bodily fluids, causing internal blockages. Many somaticists assert that muscular tension not only obstructs energy flow but also affects attitudes, thoughts, and feelings (see, for example, Green 1993). These obstructions need to be released. The release of tension absorbed in the fascia can happen in different ways, including muscle and fascia lengthening, yawning, sighing, voicing, spontaneous tears, and/or even spontaneous acts of creativity. The key for embodied-learning educators is to become stewards of a safe space where students can feel free to relax, let go, and release without having to understand, explain, or rationalize their experiences. Indigenous practices such as drumming, singing, sharing circles, and smudging can promote the releasing processes in culturally relevant ways (Nadeau and Young 2006). In my experience, relaxation and releasing go hand in hand and are greatly enhanced when a teacher can step back and allow learners to do their own embodied work in their own time. The role of the educator in these sacred moments is to act as a witness and hold a safe space. There is nothing more respectful of a person’s learning journey than to be present and share the space in a noninterfering and compassionate way. Noninterference is an Indigenous ethical practice.
- Unlearn and relearn movement patterns.
Our bodies move, act, and react in relationship to experiences, other bodies, and the environment (Johnson 2007). Every person’s body has a somatic memory and develops its own habits, patterns, and tendencies of moving, which come to acquire hegemonic force, such that our movements become automatic. Somatic practitioners see their role as helping learners to become more aware of their movement patterns and, more importantly, to unlearn them and learn healthier, more conscious and empowering ways of being and moving. Many somatic techniques guide students through slow movements that identify individual patterns. Somatic education comprises a growing group of bodywork disciplines that tend to privilege the internal subjective experience of the body, including yoga, Laban/Bartenieff fundamentals, mind/body centring, the Feldenkrais method (1991), and Alexander techniques. Many somatic techniques are experiential approaches to movement that support self-observation and movement enquiry. Somatic techniques generally allow students to experience their bodies in space and to re-educate themselves into more conscious ways of moving. In my opinion, a teacher’s pedagogy plays a paramount role in guiding learning and supporting conscious self-exploration. I have attended many different classes that involve movement (including yoga classes) in which teachers approach the body from the outside, as an object that students learn to manipulate, while also encouraging a competitive atmosphere among the students. Such an orientation is antithetical to both the spirit and the goals of embodied learning and, from that perspective, tends to produce counterproductive results. In my experience, it is helpful to expose students to various techniques and provide them with opportunities to explore what works for their subjective bodies and to reflect on their experiences and responses (for example, their holding patterns, breathing responses, emotional responses, preferences and tendencies, challenges and abilities in moving freely and maintaining focus). Being aware and observing consciously without judgment are critical to raising our embodied consciousness. It is also sometimes helpful to have a teacher as an external witness who can provide gentle feedback about learners’ patterns of movement. Sometimes instructors can mimic students’ movement back to them in a mirroring way or offer new ways of moving that allow students to shift holding patterns.
- Develop embodied consciousness.
It is transformative for students to develop their embodied consciousness—the ability to be a witness to their own mind, body, and spirit connections. Meditation techniques offer gateways to developing this introspective embodied consciousness. The practice of meditation in the West draws primarily from the Buddhist vipassanā tradition. Mindfulness meditation has been introduced by Jon Kabat-Zinn (2003) as a form of stress reduction to treat anxiety, pain, stress, and illness in hospitals and health and medical centres around the world.
Meditation is also increasingly being practiced by a growing number of Indigenous scholars—including Bonnie Duran (2017) and Michael Yellow Bird (2013)—who recognize meditation’s congruence with Indigenous epistemological frameworks. Deborah Orr (2002) considers mindfulness meditation to be a tool in an anti-oppressive pedagogy, and Renita Wong (2004) encourages bringing mindfulness approaches into the classroom when educating social workers about power and privilege. In Australia, mindfulness practices have been introduced as a part of curriculum in Indigenous educational contexts—drawing comparisons between mindfulness and the Aboriginal concept of dadirri, or deep listening.[1] Michael Yellow Bird (2013) also positions meditation as an Indigenous form of decolonizing the mind. In the United States, mindfulness approaches have also been implemented as a preventive intervention for suicide among American Indian youth populations, resulting in “positive indications in terms of better self-regulation, less mind wandering, and decreased suicidal thoughts” (Le and Gobert 2013).
Embodied consciousness helps students develop internal capacities, including the ability to witness their thoughts and feelings without judgment. This internal space within each of us is where our true willpower lives. As we learn to witness our thoughts, we realize that regardless of our social conditions, we always have a choice in our reactions, an understanding that is often extremely empowering. While distinct from mindfulness meditation practices, which are based in Buddhism, Indigenous spiritual practices support introspection while seeking guidance from the Great Spirit, or Creator, through fasting, dreams, and other types of meditative approaches.
- Find your voice and express your truth.
The final principle in my decolonizing embodied approach is to help students find their voice and express their truth freely. To be silenced is to be unable to speak or be heard. Paulo Freire (1970) was one of the first scholars to articulate the silence of oppression, linking it to a culture of fear. The culture of fear plays out when the colonized refrain from speaking their truths. Silence, therefore, can become a learned behavioural pattern that is reinforced by institutions in government, education, and the media (Dunlap 2007). Silence manifests in many forms, from not having a political voice within larger governmental structures to not feeling worthy to express our own feelings out loud in smaller circles. This kind of silence creates knots and blockages among oppressed people that need to be unlearned and released.
Decolonizing approaches to theatre provide powerful mechanisms for releasing the voice. Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (1979) provides pedagogical and dramaturgical approaches to social action. In a similar way, Spiderwoman Theater’s Indigenous Storyweaving technique undoes the silencing nature of colonization by combining storytelling, acting, and writing to create theatre in response to Indigenous people’s real lives (Carter 2010). Releasing the voice is an inherent part of Indigenous performing arts training. Indeed, voice work is a part of most quality theatre training programs. It usually begins by working at the impulse level and recognizing the role that inner impulses play in stimulating our breath. Kristen Linklater (2006, 13), a well-known voice teacher, describes the physiological mechanics of speaking in her book Freeing the Natural Voice and provides exercises that help people to release their voice and understand the complex relationship among impulse, breath, sound, and body. According to Linklater, the voice is an instrument of truth in that the natural voice makes direct contact with emotional impulses, which are natural reflexes powered by breath. Through relaxation, the muscular system loosens up, allowing energy to channel emotional impulses throughout the body. Linklater notes that, sadly, many people have been socialized to control the primary emotional reflex of their natural voices (19–20). The habit of restraining our emotional impulses can become so deeply engrained that it functions as form of social conditioning. I believe that Indigenous practices such as traditional singing, drumming, and dancing, as well as various other forms of creative expression such as poetry, monologues, journalling, and collage or vision boards, can serve to undo the silencing nature of colonialism.
The collective sharing process of our creative truths is an equally important facet of a decolonizing process. Educators may wish to facilitate a final culminating activity that involves a presentation of students’ work to their family and community, which can further support students in undoing the silencing of oppression and in developing their agency and power. Through the collective sharing process, one’s self is turned outward into the larger community (Nadeau and Young 2006) and thus can engage others in education.”
Read the rest of the chapter, “From Subjugation to Embodied Self-in-Relation: An Indigenous Pedagogy for Decolonization,” on our website for free.
Candace Brunette-Debassige is a Mushkego woman from the Fort Albany First Nation, in northeastern Ontario (Treaty 9 territory). She has been working in Indigenous education for more than fifteen years. She is an educator and storyteller with a background in Indigenous theatre and embodied and story-based approaches to teaching and learning. Running like a thread throughout Brunette-Debassige’s work is a commitment to furthering the liberatory struggles of Indigenous peoples in the context of education. She is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education at Western University, where she is investigating the storied experiences of Indigenous women who are leading efforts to Indigenize universities in Canada.
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[1] See, for example, “Working Together: Module 2—Mindfulness,” esp. 6–7. Available at “Working Together: Intercultural Leadership—Program Resources,” Curtin University, n.d., http://academicleadership.curtin.edu.au/IALP/program/program_resources.cfm. Click on “Module 2 Resources” and then “Module 2: Mindfulness, File Notes.”
