We Cannot Call Back Colonial Stories: Storytelling and Critical Land Literacy

Abstract

This article examines the role of stories and storytelling in both shaping and revealing pre-service teachers’ understandings of land. The authors conducted a study using digital storytelling as a participatory method of inquiry examining participants’ conceptions of land. Participants’ narratives reflect stories they have been told about their families, communities, and nations, revealing inextricable links between conceptions of land, nation, and self in relation to others. The authors propose the notion of critical land literacy as a pedagogical goal in Teacher Education. They define critical land literacy as an understanding of, and relation to, land informed by Indigenous knowledges and a critique of ongoing settler-colonialism in Canada.