7      From Subjugation to Embodied Self-in-Relation

An Indigenous Pedagogy for Decolonization

Candace Brunette-Debassige

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.

Learning to Be Disembodied: My Story

For me, the shackles of colonialism began to lift over fifteen years ago when I first took up the embodied practices of hatha yoga and meditation as a way to cope with my stress. As a new yoga practitioner, I cultivated inner faculties of awareness that supported me in renewing my relationship with my body from disembodied subjugation toward holistically embodied “self-in-relation” (Graveline 1998). The concept of being embodied was initially so foreign to me that I experienced a strong reaction to it, but after some time, I slowly began to feel safe, unravel, open up, and learn a different and more empowering way of being—embodied in my own Indigenous presence.

Until I began practicing yoga and meditation, I lived in a relatively disembodied way. It was a familiar place for me—a survival mechanism that helped me cope with the pain and trauma of my history. Like many Indigenous people, my family has endured poverty and violence connected to the fragmenting effects of colonialism and residential schools in Canada. My grandmother was apprehended from her family, community, and muskeg land at the age of seven and forced to attend an Anglican-operated and government-legislated residential school in Moose Factory for nine years. During that time, she was prohibited from seeing her family and was physically beaten for speaking her Cree language. She was coerced into abandoning her “heathen” and “savage” ways and forced into adopting the “superior” English language and dominant European Christian values. These early childhood experiences left devastating imprints on my grandmother and have had intergenerational impacts on my mother and all her sixteen siblings, as well as on the grandchildren, the location from which I speak.

As a result of family breakdown and cultural dislocation connected to this colonial history, my grandparents struggled with parenthood; my mother ran away from home at the age of fifteen and soon after became pregnant with me. In grade ten, she dropped out of high school to care for me and, like many young single mothers without an education, ended up on social assistance for a period of time. More than thirty years later, I still vividly remember the mistreatment that my mother experienced on the “welfare system,” which was laden with stigma, discrimination, racism, and social rejection associated with ingrained societal ideologies about social assistance.

As I grew into adolescence and became more independent, I often found myself negotiating my mixed identity in relation to social pressures imposed by my environment, including my non-Indigenous peers, by the dominant culture’s expectations of me, and through the settler government’s narrow gendered and racialized definitions of “Status Indian” which excluded me for many years. Nonetheless, I was always aware of my Cree ancestry, but I often struggled to fit into colonial definitions of “Indian” and reconcile my tenuous connections to my faraway coastal First Nation community as a “mixed-blood,” “off-reserve,” and “non-Status” Indian.1 Despite the colonial pressures within our small town to assimilate into the dominant settler norms, my mother encouraged me and my sister to learn about our Cree culture and language and to connect with the local Indigenous community. I always felt more connected to my Cree culture and identity, since the large role played by my mother and maternal grandmother in my early development greatly shaped my sense of self.

While my mother did her best to instill a sense of pride in our Cree identity, I grew up in a small rural community where the acceptable and dominant culture was, at best, English, at worst French Canadian, and certainly never First Nation. I quickly learned that it was dangerous to express my Cree identity, and silence soon became a coping strategy. My discomfort increased after I left my ancestral territory and moved to the urban landscape of Toronto. My fairer complexion marked me as the target of assaults on my identity by non-Indigenous people who were disappointed because I did not meet their expectations of what a “real Indian” should look like. At the same time, my lack of government authentication, in the form of a “Status Indian” card, enabled certain members of the Indigenous community to reject me on the grounds that I wasn’t “Indian enough.” Indeed, for most of my life, I have felt as if my sense of self has been regulated by colonial constructs of “Indianness,” by how others perceive me through colonial definitions, making it challenging for me to attend to who I actually am—my lived experiences, my ancestry and connections to land, and how I feel inside.

As a Cree woman, I have also been subjected to intolerable attitudes against Indigenous women, a combination of gender discrimination and colonial sexual violence. Early colonial writing represents Indigenous women as “Indian princesses,” “traitors,” “whores,” and “squaws” and denigrates them as dirty, sexually deviant, and uncivilized, judgments that are still rampant in dominant societal perceptions and subconscious attitudes (Lawrence 2004; Anderson 2000). As a result, Indigenous women are disproportionately affected by violence and are at greater risk of experiencing sexual and physical assaults (Amnesty International 2004; Pearce 2013). My mother was a victim of sexual violence, and despite her vigilant efforts to protect me as a young girl, I was sexually abused at the age of five by a babysitter. Through this confusing and shameful experience, I was taught that my body was an object to be manipulated for sexual gratification. I also learned not to trust my body and to keep secrets, thus silencing my expressive life. I grew up with a skewed perception that a young woman’s worth is measured by another’s desire to be with her. As a survivor of sexual abuse, I embodied this belief. In this sense, I related to my body in terms of how it was objectified by others rather than how I felt inside.

Without a balanced sense of “self-in-relation,” an understanding of the interdependence between self and community that provides a place from which to view “life, the natural world, and one’s place in it” (Graveline 1998, 57), I turned to drugs and alcohol to cope. In my early teenage years, my parents broke up and my father passed away suddenly of alcohol-related issues. This only exacerbated my own substance abuse. During this vulnerable stage of my life, I spun out of control, weaving a complex web of dysfunction around me. At the age of thirteen, in an effort to reshape my body to accord with the ideals of femininity imposed by hegemonic Eurocentric and heteropatriarchal norms, I began a five-year battle with bulimia. Bulimia stole my relationship with food and land, transforming it from a form of nourishment and sustenance to a foreign substance to be controlled and disembodied. I regarded my body in terms of how it looked from the outside rather than how it felt on the inside—a result of an “objectified body consciousness” rooted in sexism, oppression, and trauma (McKinley 1998).

Through the privileges afforded to me in my many formal educational and embodied training opportunities, I have learned to understand how power and privilege shaped my past circumstances, choices, and sense of agency. I also recognize that all experience is connected to complex interlocking systems of power based on one’s gender, race, age, sexual orientation, class, religion, dis/ability, embedded in an overarching structure of settler colonialism. These social hierarchies all too often serve to subordinate Indigenous people, especially Indigenous women. It is clear that many Indigenous women have internalized the effects of colonization. The very notion of Indigenous as other is a subordinating position that reinforces the perception of one’s self as an object judged from the outside by external authorities rather than as a subject experienced within a holistically embodied (mind-body-spirit) centre of knowing. The creation of other is deeply embedded in the imperial-colonial enterprise, firmly entrenched in the white European gaze of the nineteenth century. This othering is reinforced in education and mainstream media and through Canadian government legislation that has regulated Indigenous identity and that, for hundreds of years, prohibited Indigenous people’s free expressions through ceremonies, song, and dance (Murphy 2007). Consequently, Indigenous people’s relationships with our bodies have been socially manipulated and habituated; we have been taught to ignore our internal bodily messages, to hold our breath, and to bite back our words and not express our truths. This systemic and oppressive approach by governments and institutions has fragmented many Indigenous people internally and has affected individuals, families, and communities intergenerationally. The impacts of colonization have created a sense of disembodiment at both individual and collective levels.

Awakening Embodied Knowing Through Yoga

Certainly, all of my difficult experiences as an Indigenous woman and my understandings of colonialism have informed my decolonizing research and pedagogical interests. More than anything, though, my everlasting passion for embodied learning emanates from my ongoing practices of hatha yoga and meditation and their imprints on my way of being. Turning inward through yoga and meditation helped me restore my relationship with my body-mind-spirit and cultivate an inner awareness, a sense of relaxation, and a trust in the present moment. As the dominance of my conditioned mind began to wane, I discovered inner silence and gained the ability to listen to my body’s many messages with curiosity. The constant negative and paranoid chatter of my mind from years of internalized colonial narratives and oppressive beliefs, subordinating positions, rationalized and judgmental thinking eventually quieted. The repetition of gently returning my awareness to my breathing nurtured a sense of safety, expansiveness, and curiosity. I can now observe my mind without judgment and can recognize that my mind is deeply influenced by its exposure to external messages. This was something that I had been incapable of doing because I believed every stereotype and had internalized the master colonial narrative that “Indians are not good enough.” By learning to be in my own presence and sit with difficult emotions, I began to understand and disassociate from the colonial messages I had internalized and the years of tension absorbed by my body unraveled. The sense of liberation that ensued is impossible to convey in the confines of an academic paper, but the impacts are lived and have been transformative in my life.

Through the embodied practices of hatha yoga and vipassanā meditation, I also began to hear my inner voice, and as my intuition and body-spirit connections grew, I became more interested in Cree spirituality, from which I had distanced myself during my teenage years. I began to see how, for the most part, I identified being Cree/Indigenous with the oppressive narratives of victimhood rather than associating my Cree identity with the strength, resiliency, and beauty of my culture. Together with my academic learning in university, my yoga and meditation practices began to generate within me a strong desire to reconnect with Cree teachings and ceremonies. I also recognize that this desire to connect spiritually was first awakened through the embodied practice of yoga and that my disconnection from Cree spirituality had been reinforced by a lack of access to Elders and knowledge keepers. This lack reflected the general loss of culture linked to residential schools, but it was partly the result of my feeling that I wasn’t “Indian enough” to deserve to access my own ancestral knowledge. These internalized feelings of not belonging are connected to a genocidal violence that has attempted to erase Indigenous people (Lawrence 2004). Thankfully, I mustered up the courage to source out and reconnect with Elders and ceremonies, both of which have nurtured a stronger sense of self-identity and connection to community. I still recognize, however, the role that embodied learning played in opening me up to a deeper sense of spirituality. My experiences with yoga were so transformational that I had to keep on learning, and eventually, I became a yoga teacher.

While yoga training supported the development of my personal practice, it often left me wanting more, since I felt that many of the training programs were not critical and did not take an approach that recognized the history of yoga or the impacts of oppression on the body. I also found that too many yoga teachers were on a quest for self-realization in the absence of community, society, and critical reflection around issues of privilege, oppression, colonial violence, and cultural misappropriation. As an Indigenous woman, I was also sensitive to the problems with taking up yoga in a New Age boutique approach, especially when teaching yoga within an Indigenous community context. I often criticized the larger yoga community for being overly commercialized, inaccessible to marginalized groups, and uncritical of its scientific or fitness approaches to teaching about the body. These tensions, which I found myself negotiating in isolation, became so intense at one point that I took a hiatus from teaching yoga altogether. While I have since returned to teaching yoga, the distance and time for deep reflection allowed me to process my experiences and develop a personal pedagogy and teaching practice that incorporates decolonizing approaches to taking up Western yoga along with critical understandings of the body, embodiment, healing, and well-being.

Finding My Voice Through Indigenous Theatre

When I first began teaching yoga, I was completing my undergraduate degree in Indigenous studies. My journey of finding my voice and expressing myself through Indigenous performance writing began during a summer course on Indigenous theatre in which I was introduced to plays written by Indigenous female artists like Maria Campbell, Thomson Highway, Marie Clements, Yvette Nolan, Spiderwoman Theater, Monique Mojica, and the Turtle Gals. These oral-based texts spoke to my experiences in deep and complex ways. In the play Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots, Monique Mojica resists the misrepresentations of Aboriginal women as “traitors and whores”—stereotypical labels that I too clearly understand. Like my grandmother and my mother, I was often called “squaw” on the playground by my white male counterparts. These oral counternarratives resisted Western misrepresentations of Indigenous women and talked back to colonial narratives, in turn undoing the silencing of my own experiences.

The course was taught by an Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi theatre practitioner and scholar, Jill Carter, who nurtured her students’ voices and provided them with a safe space to write and share their stories through monologue. I responded enthusiastically to this Indigenous approach to teaching and learning. I chose to write/tell the story of my birth—a deeply personal story about my mother running away from violence in the home, living on the streets, and getting pregnant with me at age fifteen. The opportunity to explore my place in the world and to share my story through breath and body in an oral performance strengthened my inner voice and ignited within me a burning desire to continue expressing myself through orality and embodied ways of writing.

Weeks after my performance in the Indigenous theatre course, I approached Jani Lauzon, a Métis performer and playwright, and invited her to work with me in an independent study course. This course not only provided me with an opportunity to explore Indigenous theatre but also introduced me to theatre methods and helped me gain some experience in scriptwriting, rehearsal, and performance. Jani, whose mantra is “our bodies are our books,” spent time teaching me practical approaches to writing that privileged the body. This independent study culminated, in April 2005, with my performance of a forty-minute work-in-progress titled Wandering Womb—a play that explored my disenfranchised history, mixed-blood ancestry, and tenuous connection to my First Nation community.

My undergraduate theatre studies left me thirsty for more. In the summer of 2005, I participated in a Storyweaving program with Muriel Miguel that was offered through the Centre for Indigenous Theatre (CIT) in Toronto. In January 2006, I joined the Young Voices Program with Native Earth Performing Arts (NEPA), also in Toronto. Both CIT and NEPA offer emerging Indigenous performers and writers opportunities to develop and showcase creative work. With the direction and support of Anishinaabe/Cree dramaturge Lisa Ravensbergen, I wrote Old Truck, a story inspired by real-life experiences that examines the effects of alcoholism on family. This second play-in-progress was presented at the Weesageechak Festival in 2006 and 2007. Since then, I have further developed Old Truck, with the support of Muriel Miguel (of the Kuna and Rappahannock nations) and the Ontario Arts Council, and I continue to complete theatre projects. In my graduate work, I furthered this passion by looking at the role of Indigenous theatre in my own healing journey of decolonizing and re-membering myself to narratives from family, community, Elders, land and place, as well as to those embodied within. In this scholarship, I explored the experiences of six collaborators involved in a community theatre project that involved returning to land and place and Elders to gather stories in order to create a play.

Until my exposure to Indigenous theatre, my inner truth was stifled and my self-expression was filtered through the lens of the colonized other. I walked through life trying to be what I was taught I should be, based on dominant Eurocentric prescriptions. I rarely expressed my inner truth, and I hid facets of my cultural and personal identity out of fear of not belonging. I did not acknowledge my inner voice, follow my intuition, or explore creative impulses. Instead, I was subdued by the oppressive conditioning of the colonizer’s inherent subjugating and silencing nature. I recognize now, however, how systems of power reinforced and stifled my own voice and how these disembodied ways of being served the colonial project by subordinating my agency, reinforcing conformity and assimilation, and preventing freedom of expression—all of which perpetuates the cage of oppression (Frye 1983, 5–8).

A Decolonizing Embodied Pedagogy for Indigenous Peoples

As my embodied knowing expanded through my yoga and Indigenous theatre practices, I began to recognize the value of bringing embodied learning and creative expression together to formulate an Indigenous decolonizing and embodied pedagogical approach. My experience of decolonization in postsecondary education was entirely theoretical, consisting of reading, writing papers, and participating in discussions about the politics of knowledge production, the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of colonialism, and the need to dislodge the universality of Western knowledge production and its inherent assumptions. But the theory alone always left me wanting more and feeling frustrated and disempowered. Like many Indigenous scholars, I wanted to live decolonization rather than simply, talk about it within the confines of a Western academic institution. A handful of professors supported students like me, offering us a space to share and reflect upon our decolonizing practices that were happening both within and outside the institution.

One of these professors was Roxana Ng, whose course on embodied learning nurtured a space for students to take up the practice of qigong, her own ancestral knowledge, and to reflect upon our embodied learning through journalling. According to Ng (2011), embodied learning challenges the primacy of mind over body in education, disrupting the normative epistemological assumption that the mind, as the seat of rational thought, is the only legitimate gateway to knowing. Especially in the post-Enlightenment academy, the body has been positioned as unreliable. This lack of respect for lived experience as a source of knowledge lies at the heart of the tension between Indigenous ways of knowing and Western paradigms, and the ongoing failure to recognize the epistemological value of lived experience is arguably the greatest obstacle to fully Indigenizing the academy.

Outside the classroom, I gravitated toward Aboriginal student services and the Indigenous theatre community to do my community decolonizing work, which often merged my two passions—embodied learning and embodied writing. In “Embodied Knowledge and Decolonization: Walking with Theatre’s Powerful and Risky Pedagogy,” Shauna Butterwick and Jan Selman (2012) describe theatre as a process of decolonization that connects mind, body, and emotion through embodied activities that contribute to naming oppression; when facilitated effectively, they argue, this process can lead to enfranchisement and action. Butterwick and Selman also identify the need for pedagogical and ethical frames for educators to use to guide the risky processes of naming oppression and dealing with fears and triggered emotions that subsequently surface. The call for ethical guidelines is based on the need to keep participants safe in the theatrical process. The concerns identified by these authors are similarly noted by Jill Carter in “Towards Locating the Alchemy of Convergence in the Native Theatre Classroom,” where she addresses ethical conundrums when taking up Indigenous theatre in a university context. Carter (2012, 82–83) poignantly states that “grief is unavoidable” and that, in the intercultural and interdisciplinary exchanges, “there be landmines.” I agree with Carter that the project of decolonization should be shared by Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. I think that when intercultural exchanges are necessary, it is essential for a decolonizing framework to be introduced up front to help contextualize Indigenous experiences within a historical context that disrupts Western hegemonic thinking. I also believe that Indigenous ways of knowing can support the emotional triggers associated with the inevitable grieving that surfaces in this healing work.

In a decolonizing framework, I echo Alannah Young and Denise Nadeau’s recommendation that an embodied spiritual pedagogy be utilized as a strategy for decolonization. In their work, Young and Nadeau (2005, 2) not only identify the body as a site for decolonization but also emphasize the need for “tapping into our natural spiritual resilience” through connection to identity, community, and earth. Similarly, Roxana Ng (2011, 344) advocates for embodied-learning practitioners to “turn to and incorporate other epistemological and philosophical traditions” in the process of decolonizing and recovering the mind-body-spirit connections. Ng herself, as a visible immigrant and scholar in Canada, returned to her Chinese lineage and the practice of qigong to recover from the effects of colonialism. While Butterwick and Selman (2012) do not focus on the body-spirit interconnections within their proposed decolonizing and embodied pedagogy in theatre, they do recommend that future research focus on the use of Indigenous ways of knowing to identify ethical guidelines in decolonizing approaches.

It should be noted that while Indigenous ways of knowing is an important facet of a decolonizing framework for Indigenous people, we must also take up Indigenous ways of knowing in critical and respectful ways (Battiste and Henderson 2000). Because Indigenous knowledge has so often been misappropriated, Indigenous people must be at the forefront of this reclamation and integration movement. Without Indigenous knowledge keepers and scholars, leading the development of decolonizing and embodied pedagogies for Indigenous peoples, we risk the continued misinterpretation, misrepresentation, and misappropriation of Indigenous ways of knowing.

As a Cree yoga teacher from Turtle Island, I have struggled with teaching a practice that is rooted in a tradition from South Asia and is considered by some people to be an Indigenous knowledge that is outside of my cultural and ancestral background. At the same time, I recognize the diversity of modern yoga practices, and while yogic knowledge can be contextualized as originating within Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, it is, like my own culture’s Indigenous ways of knowing dynamic and constantly evolving. To complicate matters further, yogic knowledge has been shaped by colonial powers stemming from Britain’s colonization of India. Modern-day yoga has been further influenced by its importation to the West and by New Age social movements. Rather than avoid teaching the contemporary practice of yoga altogether, I have, at least in part, reconciled my own tensions by taking up some of these historical and political issues in my approaches to teaching yoga. I acknowledge my self-location and the tensions of taking up the contemporary practice of yoga in the West. Sheila Batacharya’s (2010) research helped me reflect on my own teaching position and to better understand and articulate some of the problematic tendencies of taking up yoga in the West (see Batacharya’s chapter in this collection).

Reflecting on My Teaching Practice

In 2008, I taught a noncredit course titled “Decolonizing the Body Through Yoga,” which was offered through the student services division of the university I attended. This was followed, in 2009, by a course called “Introductory Movement,” which I taught in an Indigenous community-based theatre setting. In my evaluation of my own teaching in these courses, I applied Cole and Knowles’s (2000) model of “reflexive inquiry” by using daily and weekly journal reflections to critically examine my teaching philosophy in relation both to classroom practices and to student experiences. Both courses were created with a decolonizing methodology in mind (see Smith 1999; Battiste 2013): the purpose was to guide the Indigenous student participants through processes of embodied learning with the goal of challenging the kinesthetic reality of colonization. My course objectives focused on providing Indigenous students with embodied-learning frameworks and tools that would promote self-determination (Nadeau and Young 2006). My methodology was also based on an Indigenist approach that acknowledges a personal and subjective relationship to knowledge and “focuses on the lived, historical experiences, ideas, traditions, dreams, interests, aspirations, and struggles” of Indigenous peoples (Rigney 2006, 45).

In 2010, after reading Batacharya’s (2010) PhD dissertation, I was inspired to reflect further on my teaching practice. My decision to examine my teaching was also greatly influenced by the internal tensions I endured being both an Indigenous woman and a yoga teacher in the West. I felt the responsibility to reflect critically upon my teaching in relation to the history and globalization of yogic knowledge(s). My hope was that through reflexive inquiry, I would grow professionally and develop a more critical pedagogy. My goal was to decolonize and develop a teaching practice that was more congruent with my epistemological and ethical values and political goals. I also wanted to challenge myself to begin incorporating more critical theories and learning strategies into my yoga classes, including embodied-learning theories that challenged the positivistic notions of learning and included sociological understandings of the body through social and cultural dimensions of health, healing, and embodiment.

As a teacher working with Indigenous people in an urban context, I understood first-hand the health conditions prevalent in the population I was working with. I was working with a segment of the population who, because of complex historical and social factors, were sometimes struggling with being embodied. By modifying my pedagogy, I learned that it was helpful to talk about the kinesthetic realities of colonialism and make connections to its impacts of disembodiment. I also learned that integrating Indigenous notions of health, healing, and wellness were useful and that I was not the only one who found that yoga’s innately embodied and spiritual nature complemented an Indigenous paradigm. In order to bridge different understandings and privilege Indigenous epistemologies and knowledge, I worked with Elders to share traditional teachings about holistic understandings of health and relationship to land.

Offering yoga classes to Indigenous university students called for a more critical engagement with yoga and its history and with contemporary realities, which also greatly enhanced my critical pedagogical approach. Early on, students expressed concerns about melding different traditions (yoga and smudging) and about taking up cultural practices outside their own belief system, voicing apprehension about New Ageism and cultural misappropriation. Through reflection, I aimed to privilege these issues—to integrate readings about them and make time in my classes for dialogue about New Ageism and misappropriation. These experiences have helped me grow and have informed my critical teaching philosophy and practice.

Teaching Philosophy and Theories

I wish to continue to work with Indigenous people, sharing practical and theoretical ways to help mend the mind-body-spirit fractures of colonialism and repositioning the body as a holistic source of knowing and a pathway for decolonization. I recognize that our experiences are encoded in our bodies in complex ways that are linked to historical, political, and social dimensions of embodiment and experience. And while these experiences and centres of knowing have been impacted, fragmented, and silenced by colonialism, I understand through personal experience that embodied learning offers pathways to healing.

I draw from many theoretical frameworks including Indigenous ways of knowing, decolonizing methodologies (Nadeau and Young 2006; Smith 1999), embodied learning (Batacharya 2010; Johnson 2007; Ng 2011), and critical pedagogy (Freire 1970; hooks 2003). I am also influenced by my first-hand storied experiences as a survivor of various forms of colonial violence and historical trauma and by my transformative embodied experiences in yoga and theatre.

As an adult educator, I recognize the complex nature of adult learners, who bring with them rich experiences and understandings of the world; their ability to engage with new understandings is sometimes challenging. My critical pedagogical approach recognizes the value in unlearning, learning, relearning, reflecting, and evaluating (Freire 1970). I apply this critical framework by sharing various understandings of the body and embodiment, along with embodied practices that facilitate self-awareness and new ways of being that, in turn, can dislodge internalized hegemonies embedded in the body from past experiences of oppression. Through embodied unlearning and relearning, I believe that we can awaken and liberate ourselves from being continuously revictimized from past colonial oppressions.

My embodied teaching repertoire draws primarily from the practices of hatha yoga (Sivanada and Iyengar-Scaravelli yogic lineages), Indigenous theatre approaches (for example, Indigenous Storyweaving (Carter 2010), as well as Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre and Image Theatre (2002, 1979), and other somatic techniques (for example, Laban/Bartenieff movement). In hatha yoga philosophy, I have been taught that there are six limbs of yoga (areas of knowing), which are commonly referred to in Sanskrit as āsana (postures), prāṇāyāma (breathing techniques), pratyāhāra (ability to withdraw from external world stimuli and step back to look at oneself), dhāraṇā (single-focused concentration of the mind on a specific energy centre or sound), dhyāna (meditation without focus), and samādhi (transcendence from self and interconnection with all living things). As a lifelong yoga practitioner, I am still learning to embody these limbs through a regular personal practice. I also believe that the yoga limb framework offers a set of learning outcomes that can support holistically embodied pedagogies for Indigenous people.

Eleven Pedagogical Principles

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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.2 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.

11. 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.

Final Thoughts

My experience of recovering from the kinesthetic impacts of colonialism through the embodied-learning and storytelling practices of yoga and theatre taught me that embodied learning can be a powerful tool for healing. When combined with critical and decolonizing pedagogical approaches, embodied learning can be transformative for Indigenous people, helping them to unlearn the internalized forms of oppression. However, the work of decolonization does not take place simply at the individual level; instead, it must involve a multidimensional, inter-embodied approach in which many players work from at various levels to unravel the complex effects of colonialism. Clearly, this is not to say that work at the level of individual embodiment is unimportant, but as the impacts of colonization continue to rage on inside many bodies of the oppressed, embodied-learning and decolonizing educators need to work on all fronts to support affected individuals and communities.

My proposed pedagogy does not impose change on others or the world from the outside. Instead, it offers a safe space in which to encourage individuals to embark on their own embodied journey, whether alone or with the support of a community and alongside embodied-learning educators. It is important to recognize, however, that, from the standpoint of decolonization, individual embodied work does not exist in isolation but rather acquires its power in relation to others. Through the sharing process, individual transformation can be extended beyond the borders of self and serve as a model for inspirational change. In other words, individual work must be connected to a systemic process of decolonization that challenges settler colonialism and works toward the political repatriation of Indigenous lands and the restoration of Indigenous rights and Indigenous ways of being. It is my hope that the pedagogy presented here will be considered by decolonizing educators who are searching for embodied approaches to education with the aim of fostering self-determined communities.

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1  In the eyes of the government, I was a “non-Status Indian” until 2010, when the Gender Equity in Indian Registration Act was passed. Only then was I able to register with my Fort Albany band.

2  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.”