Marie Battiste’s edited volume, Visioning a Mi’kmaw Humanities: Indigenizing the Academy, offers many reasons why we should decolonize educational institutions. The book joins others accentuating how the secondary education and university systems in North America are structured by and support imperial, colonial, and capitalist ideologies. Previous writers, though, have focused on broadly labeled “Indigenous” methods and theories. Such agendas often ignore the often-huge differences between tribal worldviews, languages, cultures, geographies, and social organizations. An “Indigenous methodology” might mean “non-European” but then generalizes thousands of tribes. Since we know that erasing tribal differences has been the tool of colonizers, this tribally specific book stands out. Edited by Mi’kmaw scholar, Marie Battiste, the collection contributes multiple perspectives that help us understand what educational decolonization might look like from the perspectives of peoples working in one specific Indigenous nation that shares a particular territory and language.

Marie Battiste’s wonderful introductory essay, “Reframing the Humanities,” connects “European” educational practices with ecological collapse, societal confusion, Indigenous delegitimization, and the continued subjugation of sectors of humanity. Battiste explains that the book results from a large, multi-year Social Science and Humanities Research Council grant that enabled researchers to map Indigenous humanities “as a holistic area of study” (9). Decolonizing scholarly practices has a new rallying cry in Battiste’s craft as a writer and in this valuable edited volume. Some readers outside of Canada might be confused by what constitutes “humanities,” and the “human sciences,” since these terms are used throughout without much specificity. Yet the book lives up to its promise to include secondary education, since several chapters are focused on curricular development, including mathematics and language instruction, in high schools and colleges.

In his essay on Mi’kmaw creation stories, Stephen J. Augustine positions Mi’kmaw humanities in contrast to European humanities being founded in Christian and Greek stories. Unfortunately, he does not explain how present-day teachers should interpret the often heteronormative, highly poetic (wrongly perceived as fantastical) histories almost always reflecting smaller-scaled societies. I agree with Augustine’s theoretical premise. And as a hereditary chief and university dean, Augustine is an honorable contributor. His remarks lead to an excitement to act accordingly. But how? Important questions remain about the specific interpretive methods of discerning authoritative Indigenous stories’ “principles, morals, ethics” (28) while also remaining mindful of the stories’ translations and transformations, all while accounting for communities’ histories of linguistic and cultural transformation.

James Sa’ke’j Youngblood Henderson beautifully weaves together Mi’kmaw concerns for history, language, and politics in the chapter entitled “L’nu Humanities.” Henderson moves from a general conversation on language and worldview to the notion of energies and life forces. We get the sense from Henderson that a L’nu or Mi’kmaw humanities attends to good relations and a care ethic extending beyond human-centric communities, where “society” includes humans, animals, land, and “other-than-human persons” (as frequently called in the ontological research). What a key insight, then, not really taken up by the authors: “humanities” might be too limiting a term. Once again, I am excited by the claims and proposals but hunger for the details and deeper questions. For example, in the U.S., we have curricula that teach worldviews about energies, ancestors, and life forces, and that aim to shape our social structures to reflect those values. We call those programs “theological” or “faith-based” schooling. To avoid facile dichotomies of story vs. history, we would benefit by learning how Mi’kmaw storying practices are epistemologically grounding.

Similarly, Lisa Lunney Borden proposes that a Mi’kmaw humanities would attend to “mawita’mk,” meaning that everyone has something to contribute and to learn. That feels good and inclusive. But readers are not shown how to actually administer such educational values in terms of admissions, class size, evaluating learning progress, and on and on. And since high schools and colleges often bring together students from multiple Indigenous communities, what does it mean to offer one tribal approach to curricula and pedagogy at the exclusion of other communities’ approaches?

Such questions do not detract from the engaging writing throughout the book; notable are Youngblood Henderson, Jaime Battiste, and a fantastic final piece by Ashley Julian. Margaret Robinson’s seemingly effortless writing moves between personal stories and scholarly analyses in a fluid manner worthy of emulating across multiple writing genres. Similarly, Marie Battiste and Marjorie Gould write with such a gentle strength, emplacing the readers as listeners around a kitchen table, hearing treasured stories that nourish and sustain.

As an educator ready to get to the business of decolonizing my approaches, for me the book is at its strongest when focusing on praxis. Len Findlay’s directness in chapter 4 reads partially like a “to do” list. And Battiste’s essay on symbolic literacy articulates a Mi’kmaw means of communicating that does not aim “to resolve the paradoxes of life.” Her groundbreaking insight, while not fully proven through the evidence, offers multiple directions for further research, particularly in terms of ethnographic writing. Again, more questions abound: Is such a use of language much different from literary theory or art history scholarship? Aren’t they too engaged in constantly revising, re-appreciating, multiplying how we communicate our reality? Battiste’s chapter 4 offers one of the more theoretically promising essays. Perhaps evidencing a form of Mi’kmaw symbolic literacy, she raises more questions than she answers and does not resolve paradoxes.

The essays in the book unevenly bring us toward the book’s stated aim of displacing and expanding the problematic and mostly Eurocentric educational practices in settler states. Some writers use storytelling as a means of teaching, leaving the work of interpretation and analysis to the readers. Other essays reach toward implementing possible Mi’kmaw humanities. Nancy Peters explains that we must unlearn foundation representations of both Indigenous peoples and the colonizers. Her focus on “shame” is ingenious: many teachers could benefit from helping settlers walk toward shame, rather than away, as a catalyst for action. Peters sees the work ahead as focused on teacher involvement inside Indigenous communities, sensitivity training for school administrators, and evaluating textbooks. Jennifer Tinkham asks us to alter our citational practices and to adopt “genocide educational” teaching modules. Lisa Lunney Borden wisely cautions not to try and replicate or imitate the non-Indigenous teaching practices. Ashley Julian accentuates both learning on and with the land; and she joins many other contributors by emphasizing the central role of Indigenous language learning.

In sum, these essays are invigorating and timely. Let’s hope they lay the groundwork for the important phase of writers offering specific “how to” models. Battiste has completed a major labor of love by caring for the project, from her preliminary research, through the grant writing and administering, to editing such a fine collection of writers. The fruit of that labor, Visioning a Mi’kmaw Humanities, demonstrates the promise of decolonizing education not simply as deconstructive, but also as restorative and balancing.

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[Review length: 1132 words • Review posted on June 28, 2018]