Starting in a good way: Acknowledgements and positionalities

We start with acknowledging territories, Elders, language, and people. čɛčɛhatənapɛšt (We thank and honour) the work of the ɬaʔəmen peoples, their Land, and their work on language revitalization. This paper was written with the permission of Tiy’ap thote (Erik Blaney), councilor at ɬaʔəmen Nation, with drafts shared with him and other staff. We would also like to acknowledge the community members from tiskʷat who spent time helping us understand the complex settler-Indigenous relationships in the area. Specifically, we would like to extend our deepest thanks to Dr. Elsie Paul, whose book, Written as I Remember It: Teachings (Ɂəms tɑɁɑw) from the Life of a Sliammon Elder, helped us form an understanding of the ɬaʔəmen people throughout the course and beyond. Finally, much gratitude to the students of “Socio-ecology and Reconcili-action in the Northern Salish Sea,” the Salish Sea Institute, and Canadian-American Studies at Western Washington University, whose engagement made this experience possible. This course was held over 11 weeks in winter of 2023, with most classes taking place on Western Washington University’s campus. A short field portion of the course was held over one long weekend.

All the authors of this work identify as settler-colonists, with various ancestral backgrounds. Below are our positionality statements:

Liz is a 23-year-old white woman currently living in Bellingham, Washington, on the ancestral land of the Lummi Nation and Nooksack Tribe. Her ancestry is Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Irish and Scottish. She was born and raised in the Salish Sea bioregion and has lived in the area her whole life. She is a sixth-generation settler in this region — her great-great-great grandfather was a delegate to the Cowlitz Landing Convention, which resulted in the creation of Washington Territory in 1853. She is descended from and was raised by seafarers, storytellers, and educators, all roles that she feels called to embody. She was also raised in the Unitarian Universalist faith tradition, which informed her core values of justice, curiosity/inquiry, and shared humanity.

Tegan is a 24-year-old white woman of Northern and Western European ancestry who is still learning about her family history. She has lived in the Salish Sea all her life, and identifies as a settler hoping to become a guest. She is committed to a lifelong process of learning, reflection, and action to develop relationships of reciprocity and respect with the land and its original inhabitants.

Nick identifies as a cis-gendered white colonial settler 44-year-old man. His great-grandparents moved to so-called Quebec from England and Scotland in the late 1800s. His last name is of Anglo-Saxon heritage and connects him to families and places in Bavaria. He most recently calls lək̓ʷəŋən territory home, near so-called Victoria BC, though he has worked and lived in Coast Salish territory for most of his life.

The Salish Sea: a set of lungs

The Salish Sea is an inland sea straddling the modern border between so-called British Columbia and Washington State. It includes the Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where the sea meets the Pacific Ocean. These waters are fed by 102,727 km2 of biogeographic watersheds, including the Coastal, Cascade and Olympic Ranges. The place name “Salish Sea” was first proposed by Settlers/Immigrants at a Coast Salish Gathering to describe the transboundary region (Sobocinski, 2021) (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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Map of the Salish Sea & Surrounding Basin shared with permission (Freelan, 2023) 

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More than 65 sovereign Tribes and First Nations have continuously inhabited the Salish Sea since time immemorial, long before the modern Canada-United States border was imposed. Colonizing settlers started arriving in the Salish Sea in the late 1770s on Spanish and British ships in search of a Northwest Passage, in addition to natural resources like otter pelts, gold, timber, and salmon. By the 1870s, after decades of cultural and virus-laden genocide, Washington State was annexed into the United States of America and British Columbia into Canada, further displacing and dispossessing Indigenous peoples from their Lands and sea. Today, 8.7 million people live in the Salish Sea region, including hundreds of thousands of Indigenous diaspora community members who practice culture, ceremony, and tradition (Sobocinski, 2021).

The Salish Sea and its surrounding basin are home to many other-than-human species as well, including orcas, salmon, eelgrass, bivalves, bears, otters, and eagles. These beings are impacted by natural events exacerbated by climate change, including ocean acidification, increased forest fires, and temperature changes (Khangaonkar et al., 2019). Indigenous Nations in the Salish Sea are leading the way in adapting to these challenges through scientific research and restoration (Hatch et al., 2023), guardian watchmen programs (West Coast Environmental Law, 2018), and collaborative protected areas (Wilson, 2020).

As a further introduction to this unique and important bioregion, we borrow a metaphor from Ryan Hilperts, a friend and educator at the University of Victoria:

The Salish Sea can be seen as a set of lungs. Every day, there are two massive exchanges of nutrients from the ocean and land through the Fraser and Nooksack Rivers. The tidal breathing of the estuarine waters provides life to a spectacular array of ecosystems. (Ryan Hilperts, Pers Comm, 2019)

This paper: Western Washington University and the colonial project

This paper critically explores the conception, implementation and lasting impact of a course offered at Western Washington University (WWU) located in Bellingham, Washington, on the ancestral territory of the Lhaq'temish (Lummi) and Nuxwsá7aq (Nooksack) peoples. In the context of Indigenous/settler relationships, WWU is no exception to the critique that the field of academia is deeply intertwined with the project of colonization in North America (Stein, 2022). Recently, WWU has been promoting its attempts at reconciliation, a shift sparked by a list of demands published by the Native American Student Union in 2016. At the time of reviewing this paper, Western Washington University broke ground on a long-requested longhouse to be used by students, campus, and community (WWU, n. d.). However, while WWU has made strides in terms of its relationship-building, student support and outreach tactics within the realm of reconciliation work, the University and its legacy continue to be a fixture of the settler-colonial society (Marker, 2000). Additionally, WWU remains on a list of institutions that still hold the remains of Native Americans, more than thirty years after the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed (National Parks Service, n. d.).

Reflexive inquiry as critical reflection

WWU does offer several programs that are promising sites for meaningful reconciliation work. In particular, the Center for Canadian-American Studies and the Salish Sea Institute are geographically rooted organizations operating outside the usual college-faculty-administration relationship. In this paper, we explore our attempt to build an emergent and experimental course with the support of the Salish Sea Institute and the Center for Canadian-American Studies. The goal of this course was to learn about and engage in reconciliation in the Northern Salish Sea, or as some scholars have proposed, reconcili-action (Madden, 2019; Styres, 2020). Styres articulates this term’s potential as “reconciliatory efforts based on critical social action” (2020, p. 159). Our course sought to engage students in Land-based learning and relationship-building that would translate into real benefits for an Indigenous community in the Northern Salish Sea.

Working with First Nations on reconcili-action can be slow, complex work that may appear incompatible with fast-paced settler-colonial university systems. We ask the reader to recognize and hold gently the paradox that a course like this presents — one that engages in work that cannot be fully realized on a university-mandated, 10-week quarter timeline. It prompts the question: Can students engage in meaningful reconcili-action from within a settler-colonial university system?

The instructor of the course, Nick, and two of the course’s students, Liz and Tegan, were interested in exploring this question. Six months after the course was completed, the group began meeting by video conference and using collaborative writing software to reflect on how the course was administered, how it affected students, and to what extent the community was impacted. These reflections appear here as a series of vignettes, offered as a case study of what reconciliation through higher education could look like (Trahar, 2009; Yazan, 2015; Yin, 2015). They include personal narratives about each author’s reflections, which act as pathways to understanding and locating ourselves in relationship to the course, and its offerings. We then co-edited each other’s reflections, explored resonance within the literature, and identified mistakes made in the course. The paper ends not with a fixed conclusion but with a commitment by the authors to continue responsible engagement into the future.

Critical stance on reconciliation in settler-colonial higher education

Though our goal in this course was to engage in reconciliation, we want to recognize that many Indigenous scholars argue that reconciliation is a limited framework for change and is in fact complicit with ongoing settler colonialism. In considering the history of reconciliation politics in Canada and the United States, we agree with the argument made by Coulthard (2014) and Simpson (2017) that state-controlled efforts to implement reconciliation (whether they arise from governments, universities, or other settler institutions) have failed to produce lasting material change in Indigenous communities, or to transform the colonial relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state.

Glen Coulthard (2014) argues that Canada’s Federal Government’s efforts to advance reconciliation have failed to meaningfully transform the relationship between Indigenous peoples and settlers. He traces the rise of contemporary reconciliation politics in Canada back to Indigenous anticolonial activism in the 1960s–1980s that forced the federal government to shift its colonial strategy away from overtly genocidal practices and towards liberal policies oriented around recognition of Indigenous identity through renewed relationships with the state. These include the 1996 report by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the 1998 Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan, the 2007 Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (which created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)), and the Prime Minister’s 2008 apology to residential school survivors.

Coulthard (2014) argues that these efforts frame settler-colonialism as a concluded event rather than an ongoing structure. The denial of a colonial present justifies the state in focusing its reconciliation policies on “fixing” Indigenous people, rather than transforming the colonial system. Leanne Simpson (2017) emphasizes that the ineffectiveness of reconciliation in dismantling colonial structures is not accidental, but a deliberate strategy to give the illusion of change while maintaining the state’s power.

It is worthwhile to look more closely at the TRC’s final report, which includes 94 Calls to Action to “redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, p.1). According to the Yellowhead Institute, an Indigenous-led research and education center, 81 of the 94 Calls remain unfulfilled (Yellowhead Institute, 2023). Michelle Daigle (2019) likewise observes that reconciliation by settler institutions is largely performative. She describes reconciliation in Canada as a “spectacle” (Daigle, 2019, p.703) of white settlers responding to stories of Indigenous suffering in residential schools with performances of remorse and guilt. These performances create the illusion of settler innocence without holding settlers accountable for meaningful change or forcing them to confront the ongoing reality of settler-colonialism in Canada.

Daigle (2019) specifically draws attention to spectacles of reconciliation in Canadian universities, which she argues are an intrinsic part of the settler-colonial state. Universities have been increasingly seen as sites for decolonization and indigenization by disrupting superficial virtue signaling and inaccessible theory generation (Stanger & Claxton, 2018; Stein, 2020). This includes “pretendiansFootnote 1” (Kolopenuk, 2023), content and cultural appropriation (Morreira et al., 2020), neocolonial citizenship education (Sabzalian, 2019), culturally unsafe workplaces (Thunig & Jones, 2021), and unfair expectations of service labor of Indigenous scholars (Stein, 2020).

Numerous scholars have critiqued the settler education system as disconnected from place and unresponsive (if not actively harmful) to the local community. Leanne Simpson (2017) argues that settler education systems do not produce Land-based, community-oriented Indigenous intellectuals capable of engaging in resurgence work. Eve Tuck (2013) critiques conventional schools for not engaging students in “deep participation” (p. 11), which centers student self-determination and has the potential to generate real structural change. Grace Lee Boggs (2011) argues that schools should create opportunities for students to work collaboratively on projects that address community needs. These scholars characterize universities embedded in the “Western academic industrial complex” (Simpson, 2017, p. 159) as detached from place and incapable of linking students into collaborative, meaningful change-making work.

The university system also gives rise to competing objectives that may limit students’ ability to engage in transformational work. Students may enter the higher education system with the intention of engaging in deep learning but must contend with the pressure (typically driven by financial obligation) to graduate with a degree as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. Each student is influenced by the pressure to perform well, the need to sustain themselves in the wage economy without a degree, and the desire to seek out a strong foundation of knowledge to a varying degree. It is difficult to be fully engaged in courses such as ours while balancing so many objectives.

Because of this, utilizing the higher education system as a container for reconcili-action inevitably leads to imperfections. At best, the university classroom can plant a seed of reconcili-action that continues to grow beyond the confines of the settler institution. This can be achieved even if, such as in Liz’s case, the external stressors of that quarter’s workload and personal obligations led to a level of engagement and performance that felt less than adequate.

This course is complicit in many of the critiques listed above, specifically the white gaze of Indigenous culture and lifeways (Paris, 2019). The romanticization of Indigenous cultures (and acts of reconciliation) are framed in a Western worldview laundry cycle: acknowledge territory, work with Indigenous community to highlight historic knowledge, use this knowledge to frame sustainable practices in the Western world, sing a song, watch a dance, and repeat. Courses like “Socio-ecology and Reconcili-action in the Northern Salish Sea” must responsibly weigh diverse student intentions and the flawed settler education system against the overall desired outcome: to create greater capacity for reconcili-action among settler and Indigenous populations.

Such courses must also consider the possibility that the framing of reconcili-action is all wrong. What possibilities for transformational action exist beyond reconciliation? Leanne Simpson (2017) describes how self-affirming Indigenous place-based practices shift power back into Indigenous nations through a process of “radical resurgence” (p. 34). Related efforts to create meaningful impacts in Indigenous communities beyond those achievable through reconciliation include the calls for #LandBack and #CashBack. The Land Back movement centers the repatriation of Indigenous Land as its goal (Yellowhead Institute, 2019), while the Cash Back movement seeks the restitution of stolen Indigenous wealth and restoration of life-giving Indigenous economies (Yellowhead Institute, 2021).

Remember we asked you to hold the paradox gently? Well, here it is again, does reconciliation work in a university setting? We say: this course took direction from the Nation as a way to help them recenter power. It was imperfect in many ways, as noted, yet much of the work sought to support the ɬaʔəmen Nation in their efforts around sovereignty in their Land, their education, and resources. First, we need to provide some more context for this course.

tiskʷat: community conversations in the Northern Salish Sea

Our course on the Northern Salish Sea was born of curiosity around the conversations happening among settlers and Indigenous communities in the town of so-called Powell River. The town is located within a municipality formerly known as the Powell River Regional District; in 2018, it was renamed the qathet Regional District (qathet Regional District, n. d.). The name “qathet,” meaning “working together” in ʔayʔaǰuθəm, the ɬaʔəmen (Tla’amin) language, was gifted by the ɬaʔəmen Nation to the Regional District (qathet Regional District, n. d.). For a thorough exploration of the pronunciation of ʔayʔaǰuθəm, we highly encourage readers to explore the First Voices website, which supports language revitalization work of many Nations worldwide (First Voices, n. d.).

The official name change reflects the work of the ɬaʔəmen Nation (as well as supporters from the settler community) to raise awareness of the painful history associated with the namesake of Powell River. Dr. Israel Powell was British Columbia’s first superintendent of Indian Affairs, and helped develop the reserve system (DeWark, 1991). He also led the establishment of residential schools throughout B.C., including the residential school located in the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc community and known for the 2021 uncovering of 215 unmarked graves (Greenwood, 2021).

The effort to remove Powell’s name from the Regional District was successful in part because it helped disambiguate the city from the larger district (McElroy, 2017). Since then, similar name change efforts have succeeded throughout the Regional District, including at the qathet Museum and Archives Society in April of 2022 (qathet Museum and Archives, n. d.), the qathet General Hospital in July of 2022 (Galinski, 2022), and the qathet School District in September of 2023 (Powell River Board of Education, 2023). However, the name change efforts have not yet succeeded at the city level. It was in examining this name change movement and its exemplification of Indigenous/settler reconcili-action that our course began.

In May of 2021, the ɬaʔəmen Nation asked the City of Powell River to consider changing its name (Powell River Possible Name Change Joint Working Group, 2022; Newbury, Harvey & The Name Matters, 2023). By November 2021, the city had created a Joint Working Group consisting of representatives of the ɬaʔəmen Nation and residents of the City of Powell River. For settler-colonial states working with and for Indigenous communities, the Joint Working Group is a model of effective and meaningful consultation as outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), of which Canada and British Columbia are signatories (United Nations General Assembly, 2007).

Through a series of public consultations and expert reviews, the Joint Working Group made 11 recommendations to guide community conversations about the proposed name change and navigate through racism and misinformation. These recommendations are essential to highlight, as they offer a framing for the “Socio-ecology and Reconcili-action in the Northern Salish Sea” course.

Recommendations from the Joint Working Group

  1. 1.

    That additional public education and community engagement activities be planned on issues of shared values, history, and reconciliation.

  2. 2.

    That engagement activities be targeted to under-reached demographics.

  3. 3.

    That future engagement on the name change be designed to maximize the safety of all participants.

  4. 4.

    That the City make reconciliation and relations with ɬaʔəmen Nation a strategic priority.

  5. 5.

    That ɬaʔəmen Nation develop a set of educational materials describing what they want their neighbours throughout the qathet region to know about them, and that the City include this information in training for City staff and leadership.

  6. 6.

    That the City, ɬaʔəmen Nation, and qathet Regional District, through the community-to-community-to-community (C3) process, establish a Reconciliation Committee mandated and resourced to advance reconciliation throughout the City and Regional District.

  7. 7.

    That the City establish staff position(s) to support the implementation of recommendations in this report and maintain positive reciprocal relationships with the ɬaʔəmen Nation and other Indigenous residents throughout qathet region.

  8. 8.

    That public information and engagement events for various ages, groups, and in a range of formats be undertaken to better understand racism and colonialism and promote action to achieve racial equity.

  9. 9.

    That ceremonial efforts be undertaken to reject all forms of racism and support healing and unification amongst all residents of qathet region.

  10. 10.

    That additional community engagement activities be planned on issues of shared values, history, and reconciliation as the basis for identifying options for a new name for the City.

  11. 11.

    That a referendum or assent voting process is one of many available tools to engage the public and gauge public opinion. It is not the appropriate tool to utilize right now. A possible assent voting process and topic should only be carefully considered after implementation of the recommendations of this report.

(Powell River Possible Name Change Joint Working Group, 2022, ¶ 3).

These recommendations combine public education and relationship-building to engage the community — at both a resident and government level — in reconciliation, unification, and healing. Inspired by this model, the “Socio-ecology and Reconcili-action in the Northern Salish Sea” course also sought to weave education and relationship-building to advance reconciliation. It was grounded in the belief that education must facilitate the growth of healthy relationships between students, community members (both human and other-than-human), and the Land. These relationships support students in developing the respect, responsibility, and resilience necessary to engage in reconciliation work beyond the end of the course itself.

Despite the leadership of the Joint Working Group, in the Summer of 2022, the City deferred the name change due to an upcoming civic election. The new council has been silent on the recommendations to the date of writing this article. However, despite this example of erasure through silence (Clarysse & Moore, 2019), reconciliation has progressed in other ways. On October 27, 2023, the ɬaʔəmen Nation and the province of British Columbia signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) titled yixmɛtštəm tiskʷat (“we are going to take care of tiskʷat”) (Tla’amin Nation & British Columbia, 2023). tiskʷat was the Nation’s principal settlement before the ɬaʔəmen people were forcibly removed in the late 1880s (Tla’amin Nation, 2023). The MOU does not grant the ɬaʔəmen Nation ownership of tiskʷat or come with any funding (Marlow, 2023), but it does recognize the significance of the site to the Nation and mandate the creation of a forum (co-chaired by the Nation and the province) to protect tiskʷat (Tla’amin Nation & British Columbia, 2023).

Weaving together the kind of educational and relational experience through which students develop the capacity and commitment to engage with these complex reconciliation processes is not straightforward, especially when it is devalued and inhibited by the settler university system. Our intention in sharing our reflections on this course is not to prescribe a particular approach to navigating the complexities of educating for reconciliation. Rather, we hope to open space for others to join the conversation and offer their own innovative strategies for using Land-based learning to further reconciliation.

Land-based learning as an act of respect and reciprocity

Many higher education institutions are grappling with the difficult but necessary task of transitioning to Land-based learning (Drouin-Gagné, 2021; Wabie et al., 2021). Land-based learning engages students in learning about truths from the past as they relate to the present within the context of Indigenous traditional territories. If done well, it replaces the colonial undertones of place-based learning (Tuck et al., 2014). Land-based learning has respect of place, history, and knowledge woven into it from its outset and prioritizes relational accountability as its thru-line (Wilson, 2009).

Our stance, as learners and educators, is that supporting Indigenous resurgence, agency, and sovereignty is one of the most important social justice issues of our time. Therefore, the challenge was to develop a 10-week course that facilitated student engagement with these issues through a Land-based learning method, all without falling into problematic neoliberal approaches to learning with Indigenous communities.

Using previous connections to the community and the Joint Working Group’s 11 recommendations, Nick arranged for a course that would focus less on didactic teaching about place and more on emergent collaborative learning. That is, learning that invited community members to direct the projects in which students invested their effort. However, there was a lesson learned here: by leaning into Nick’s personal connections in a short time frame, it limited the time for deep consultation with the Nation and community groups. More time, more capacity-building, and more effort were needed to sustain meaningful relationships.

For the most part, students participated in the course through the usual presentations, written documents, and reflections. However, a major difference was the way in which they immersed themselves in learning about the qathet Regional District and then engaged with its present challenges, both in person during a field trip to qathet and remotely through projects to support the ɬaʔəmen Nation.

An essential component of the students’ learning process was reading the work of Dr. Elsie Paul, a revered ɬaʔəmen Elder and author of the book Written as I Remember It: Teachings (Ɂəms tɑɁɑw) from the Life of a Sliammon Elder (Paul, 2014). The students also connected with settler members of the qathet community with experience collaborating with Indigenous communities. These interactions were limited by time and distance, but they included Zoom calls with Emma, a representative of the local University, and Tai, a local filmmaker and activist.

The students also spoke (through Zoom) with Tiy’ap thote (Erik Blaney), an elected councillor of the ɬaʔəmen Nation, cultural educator and sweat lodge keeper. This one-hour conversation was the fulcrum on which the course pivoted. Erik’s gracious energy and extensive expertise helped clarify the purpose of the course. Not only did he share his perspective on the area’s historical context and his lived experience, he also gave the students three projects to work on that might support the challenges the Nation currently faces regarding rights, title, and sovereignty. These projects consisted of compiling research on fish restoration to support efforts to reintroduce sockeye salmon to Powell Lake, conducting archival work to help demonstrate the presence of a historic village at tiskʷat, and researching 13 Moons calendars as a form of law, life, and education within Coast Salish communities. These projects produced three white paper deliverables, presented to the Nation as research support for their ongoing process of resurgence and revitalization.

In taking the time to learn about the history and present challenges of the qathet Regional District, we hoped to lessen the burden of settler education that often falls to Indigenous communities (Cole, 2012). These preparations were as essential and intentional a part of the course as the trip to qathet itself — an important way of demonstrating respect to the community we would be visiting. We acknowledge the problematic nature of decolonial narratives that focus solely on “decolonizing the mind” (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p.19), but simultaneously emphasize that education is an essential element of reconciliation and decolonization work. Our work to educate ourselves prior to traveling to qathet was a necessary step, but not claiming to be decolonial in itself.

A more hidden aspect of this learning revolved around the emotional, spiritual, and psychological engagement of the students with the content of the course. The diversity of the classroom, with some students identifying as women, gender-queer, recent immigrants, others as non-European settlers, and others with Indigenous ancestry, required significant work around emotional and cultural safety. Space, time, and discussion was paramount to this safety, but also, de-centering the instructor seemed to help too. This is not to say that emotional and cultural safety was done perfectly — at times students were uncomfortable, triggered, or turned off by the content of the course. This too required time to unpack, understand, and share.

Coming ashore: the trip to qathet

The phrase “coming ashore” references the landing page for Elsie Paul’s website As I Remember It, which acknowledges the site as ɬaʔəmen territory and explains the site visitors’ obligation to abide by ɬaʔəmen guest-host protocol (Paul, 2019).

We set out on the long drive from Bellingham to tiskʷat before sunrise. One international border, two ferries, 260 kms of travel, and multiple playlists later, we drove past the welcome signs for the ɬaʔəmen Nation. The three-day field trip that followed included participating in a sweat lodge, meeting community members, and visiting local museums, forests, bluffs, beaches, and creeks. Our time in qathet was brief, but we tried to plant the seeds of relationships with the people, other-than-human beings, and Land that we encountered. With this short-term trip, there were lessons learned: not every student could engage meaningfully in the entirety of the class. The focus was on supporting students to get to the Land, but not everyone could afford the time, cost, or mental demands of participating in the field trip. Traveling to Canada also limited the learning, as some students weren’t allowed to cross the US-Canada border (Figs. 2 and 3).

Fig. 2
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Welcome sign at the entrance of ɬaʔəmen (Tla’amin) Nation Traditional Territory. čɛčɛhaθɛč is an expression of gratitude and welcome (First Voices, n. d.)

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Fig. 3
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The Dome in Lund, B.C. where the class stayed during our trip

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The afternoon of the last day was spent on a hike with local activist, consultant, and filmmaker Tai. Massive trees engulfed us as we trudged up the short trail to χaχagɩɬ (Hurtado Point), a deeply important space with medicinal history for the ɬaʔəmen Nation. At the viewpoint, the trees opened to a shelf of mossy rock looking out on ʔayhos (Savary Island). We stood high above the gray waters of the Salish Sea, listening to the faint sound of California sea lions barking below.

We had read about the places, plants, and animals we would encounter during our preparations for the trip. But only once we were physically present could we experience how Land emerged from the combined presence of those beings. We were met full force with the beautiful complexity and vitality of ɬaʔəmen territory, a humbling reminder that the places, people, and issues we had spent weeks learning about were not theoretical. The name change effort, the Memorandum of Understanding to protect tiskʷat, the ɬaʔəmen Nation’s work that we were supporting through our three projects — these were not just case studies in Indigenous resurgence and reconciliation work. They were manifestations of the enormous resilience of the ɬaʔəmen people, their language, and their connection to the Land. While on that Land, we were guests — and that meant something more than a token acknowledgement of our settler identities, it had real obligations attached to it. We were traveling back to Bellingham the next morning, but as long as we continued working on our projects and engaging with ɬaʔəmen history and knowledge, those obligations remained. Our task was to figure out how to honor them once we had returned to the distant confines of the university. Yet, despite good intentions there were also important lessons learned: due to the ephemerality of courses that exist in a quarter system, long-term relationships with community members are difficult to maintain for undergraduate students. The instructor is often responsible for managing the relationship during the course, so continuing those relationships outside the course can be awkward and complex for students.

Personal reflections on the course and its impact

Liz

I was raised by a family of educators. From a very young age, I found myself surrounded by a wealth of knowledge and a culture of learning and intellectual debate. My grandparents often said that they raised their children and, subsequently, their children’s children, to be “free thinkers.” Arguments over politics, history trivia questions shot at my brother and cousins, and discussions of the latest and greatest books and films were all commonplace at family functions. As the youngest in my generation, I observed this intergenerational knowledge exchange every time I entered a room at a family gathering.

It filled me with feelings of aspiration, curiosity and pride to be raised by such a smart family. It still does. But it also skewed my sense of what intellect was, how and why knowledge is kept, and what learning and education can truly mean. It was this class that helped me take another step in realizing that I have to untangle my preconceived notions of education and learning from my intention to forge a path for myself to participate in individual and collective practices of decolonization.

In the Reconcili-action class, I saw a different mode of teaching and learning in action. It was a sharp divergence from the mainstream education of my upbringing and the college curricula I was immersed in at the time. The class used an approach that my family would likely scoff at. I could hear critical voices in the back of my head — lessons don’t “emerge,” lessons are taught; the plants, animals, rocks and waterways aren’t our “relatives”; you’re not a settler, our family is from here. With inherited skepticism in the back of my head, my knee-jerk impression of this class was quite negative and filled me with insecurity. I didn’t think the class had enough structure, that the whole “emerging lessons” concept was just an excuse not to give us a detailed syllabus, and that my professor was a cheesy, performative white dude. Even though I was excited to see a new place, I thought that visiting the ɬaʔəmen Nation was unnecessary — I was afraid of the optics of a bunch of settler students from America visiting a Nation up in Canada. Although we were actively being welcomed into the community with shared time and food, I was convinced that we were not meant to be there. But, those original skepticisms of the trip and curriculum style were rooted in my own personal insecurities, feelings of settler guilt, and a posture of judgement, all of which I continue to grapple with in the present. Truthfully, I don’t know if these difficult emotions will ever disappear — but I see it as a personal obligation to continue to show up in the work of decolonization, even when I find myself overwhelmed with the prospect of making a mistake or being wrong. That’s what I chose to do in this class, and it ended up being one of the most rewarding and enriching experiences of my education.

There are so many distinct memories that I still hold of this class, even now that I’ve graduated. The classroom itself was all windows on three sides, with a view of the sea. I remember Nick pointing out the window and telling us truths about European exploration of the Salish Sea — that when George Vancouver arrived in the Salish Sea in 1792, it wasn’t a sparsely inhabited, untouched place; the basin was one of the most densely populated pre-contact geographical areas in North America. When we had our discussion with Erik Blaney, I found myself floored by the depth of his knowledge. He helped me understand what it’s like to be a father raising Indigenous kids in this particular moment, highlighting the fact that Indigenous children today are the first generation raised by parents who were not collectively harmed by the Canadian residential school system. His discussion gave me hope for the future when I realized how special and opportune this moment of time is. When we read Elsie Paul’s Written as I Remember It (2014), I felt the same wave of knowledge pour over me. It was while reading her chapter on learning at the start of the quarter that I began to unravel those preconceived notions of what learning “should” look like. I continue to revisit that chapter often.

Then, when we actually visited qathet, I felt learning happen in an embodied way when Erik welcomed us to participate in the sweat ceremony. We all knew how generous it was for him to invite us into that space. Even though we were still in the same Salish Sea region I had grown up in, my worldview was expanding. I was learning from people who were different from my typical teachers. Further, I was learning lessons from the place — the land, the water and my relationship to them both.

By the end of the trip, I was full of gratitude, and felt indebted to the ɬaʔəmen people, land and waters. When it came time to finish up our projects for the Nation at the end of the quarter, I felt like I hadn’t done enough for Erik or the community. But, as I reflect on this, I realize that “enough” isn’t definable in the context of reconciliation. It only further feeds into an idea of personal perfection that has been placed upon the individual by the very systems we seek to exist beyond in decolonial spaces. It would be delusional to try to fit the work of reconciling colonial harm into 10 weeks, or to think that one person can achieve it. That is not what this class sought to achieve. Instead, what the class did for me was plant a seed of resistance that continues to grow within me and my mind, and manifests in my daily actions, my role at my day job, and the way I treat others. There’s a lot of work to do — socially, politically, environmentally. It is scary to be a young person right now. Before this class, I didn’t know how to begin the work of managing those fears and insecurities. Now, I feel I do. And it’s all thanks to the lasting and resilient wisdom of Coast Salish Indigenous people, and Nick, who wasn’t afraid to approach learning in a different way.

I was raised to believe in a notion that the teachings and ontologies of a select few were paramount. Almost without fail, the people who were in charge of my early learning (writing the textbooks, teaching the classes, crafting the curriculum) were white, well-off, liberals. Admittedly, this is still true of Nick himself, and of WWU, as a predominantly white institution. Nick was not shy about acknowledging the inherent flaws that arise when teaching a class on decolonization from within the University structure and with him as the one facilitating. What set the class apart was his commitment to directing us toward culturally diverse ways of thinking, learning, and relating with one another. I am grateful for the way this class allowed me to see myself, my education, and my role in reconciliation differently. I can now see with a critical lens where my education has reflected the systemic injustice and supremacy of the settler state. At the same time, I am also eternally grateful for the public schooling that formed the basis of my understanding of this world. It is with a renewed definition of “learning” that I realize that my education will only build upon itself. I view education not as an achievement with a set end, but as a lifelong practice.

This class, and my experience in it, shows that with the right intentions and under certain circumstances, the college classroom can become a relatively natural container for settler students to begin doing the work of anti-racism, decolonization and reconciliation. These are all lifelong commitments, and this class gave me the space to explore how I could bring my full self to the table for these commitments. I was, and continue to be, profoundly humbled by the way that a course centered on land-based, emergent curriculum turned out to be one of the most impactful experiences of not only my college education but also my journey in the space of social justice work. As a society, we are reeling from the effects of our history of settler colonialism. We will never be “done” with the recovery from those actions — it takes generations of healing to recover from generations of harm, and we are only in the beginning.

Tegan

Early in our course, Nick shared with us a lesson he learned from Dr. Elsie Paul about the necessity of beginning any work with good intention. I had struggled to cultivate this kind of intentionality around our trip to qathet amidst the stress of preparing for travel and crossing the border. It wasn’t until our first evening in the cedar cabin where we were staying that I began to feel prepared for the days of Land-based learning to follow. Before we sat down to share dinner, Nick asked us to step outside and find an object that represented our intentions for the trip. I remember being surprised by how quickly the atmosphere of the room changed from the laughing chaos of 10 people sharing a small space to a quiet, serious focus. I listened as each student shared what they had found — a small branch, a leaf, a scrap of lichen — and was struck by everyone’s thoughtfulness and vulnerability. I looked around our group and saw a shared commitment, an understanding that this trip was more than a lighthearted weekend adventure.

After dinner, we gathered outside in a circle, breathing together and watching the stars. I remembered something that one of our class speakers had encouraged us to ask ourselves when engaging with Indigenous communities — “what do I bring, and how can I offer more than I take?” I had known that in coming to this place as a guest, I was accepting a responsibility to act with respect and reciprocity. In that moment, I felt committed to offering whatever I could to honor that responsibility.

I remain uncertain whether our class succeeded in offering more than we took, and I don’t think that our intentions to be good guests excuse any shortcomings. But while I might not have been able to act on it fully, that feeling of intentionality was a unique experience for me. It has remained present in my heart as I reflect on the role of education in furthering decolonization and reconciliation. It has prompted me to ask, “What does it take to bring a group of students into a place of good intention from which reconciliation work can emerge?”.

I believe that the reason I was able to arrive at this place of intentionality was because this course was designed to connect the students into relationships — with each other, with the Land, and with the qathet community. These relationships, though nascent and in some ways limited, helped prepare and inspire us to engage in reconcili-action. They encouraged us to refuse the role of the passive, extractive, tourist-consumer. I saw the way the other students maintained their humor, commitment, and curiosity despite the challenges of the trip, and it encouraged me to lean fully into the experience alongside them. In doing so, I experienced powerful moments of gratitude towards the community and Land we were visiting. With gratitude came the desire to act responsibly and respectfully instead of replicating harmful colonial relationships.

Most impactful to me of all our interactions during the trip was our meeting with Erik Blaney. He had already spoken with us over Zoom, but when we arrived in qathet he again took time out of his busy schedule to meet with us. Erik’s encouragement to us to be the “cycle breakers” of our generation and his generosity in sharing his knowledge — even when he acknowledged that educating settlers could be draining work — was powerfully inspiring. I remember feeling overwhelmed with gratitude and wondering how I could possibly reciprocate such a gift. I return to the memory of that moment as a reminder of the kind of intention I want to cultivate in my engagement with reconcili-action.

This, I think, is a key component of courses that effectively facilitate student engagement in reconcili-action: they support students in growing relationships grounded in respect, gratitude, and reciprocity not only with Indigenous communities but also with other settlers, the Land, and the other-than-human relations inhabiting it. I have realized that this includes growing a healthy relationship with myself — taking care of my mind, body, heart and spirit so that I can bring my full presence to the work I do. This means leaning into gratitude when it rises, listening when it urges us towards reciprocity and relationship-building. And it is these relationships that link students into networks of decolonial action and reconcili-action through which their good intentions transform into meaningful contributions.

Nick

It was a rainy, cold, typical Salish Sea Winter day. Quiet singing rose with the puffs of steam from the sweat lodge, a small cedar-bowed dome covered with heat-trapping blankets and tarps beside Sliammon Creek, where 10 Western Washington University students and I, a grey-haired white professor, participated in a ceremony of sharing wishes and prayers for future generations. There, we emerged from the small entrance, flushed and ready to take on the ceremony’s next stage: plunging into the creek that runs through t̓išosəm, the village site where many ɬaʔəmen members live. After the Grandmothers and Grandfathers heard our wishes, we were invited to wash our eyes, ears, head, mouth, and hands in the stream by fully submerging ourselves and brushing off with cedar boughs.

The sweat ceremony proved to be a significant learning experience for the students. One student described themselves as “surprised at how quick to vulnerability” the sweat made her feel. After dunking in Sliammon Creek, students described feeling grounded, warm, more awake, and aware of their surroundings. One student said that their “perspective totally shifted.” I saw how the Land and its people had opened their arms so generously to support my students, and I was grateful for witnessing it. The morning activity of the sweat was an impromptu and emergent activity for a Land-based learning field trip.

In January of 2022, Western Washington University’s Canadian-American Studies Director, Christina Keppie, called for Canadian-American Studies courses that could be offered in the 2022–2023 academic year. I jumped at the opportunity with two requests: 1. Could I cross-list this course with Salish Sea Studies to focus on the lesser-discussed Northern areas of the bioregion? and 2. Could I have a Land-based learning component? There was enthusiastic support, and thus, I created the working course “Socio-ecology and Reconcili-action in the Northern Salish Sea,” drawing on my years of experience running field schools in the cross-border Straits Salish region with WWU and University of Victoria students. After many years of supporting students learning on the Land (capitalized to recognize the significance of Indigenous sovereignty) and in place-based field schools (a contextual education approach popularized through environmental education), I was confident that similar transformative events would happen on this trip. I also had the fortune of welcoming Dr. Tuti Baker, Fairhaven and Salish Sea Studies Assistant Professor, to join me and the students.

Of course, running courses like this fills me with trepidation, even after leading hundreds of students in programs that work in and with Indigenous communities. Sometimes, I feel as young as my students, eagerly rolling with the learning experience, frustrated with the waiting or worrying about what is next. At other times, I recognize my significant role in holding space, creating space for learning, and getting out of the way when appropriate, though I realize I don’t do this enough, or with enough grace. I also notice in my courses that collective touchstone experiences, such as this shared group field school, enhance learning at a scale of magnitude that is hard to measure. However, peak experiences and field-based learning isn’t anything new in educational theory (Raschick et al., 1998)). These experiences are often novel for a student whose education has been interrupted by COVID.

I was learning alongside the students, working with them in coordinating projects, editing documents, considering complexity, and practising language. We had lots of good intentions around our learning. I knew that intention was important, but impact was also important. And how we engage and conduct ourselves in community, with our relations (be they human or not), was the crux of the matter. We met each other twice a week in a classroom setting. But I disrupted our routine of learning with two things. One, we learned alongside and at the direction of the First Nations community in real time. Two, we had a prominent state change by physically adapting our bodily cells with the water, food, air, and relations of the place we were learning about. We also started to change our worldviews, seeing through the eyes of ravens, red-cedar trees, and ocean water. This transformation is a path to respect, which is the problem with most education processes: Western education systems don’t start with respect (Yunkaporta & Shillingsworth, 2020).

Reflecting on starting with respect is where I experienced a lesson learned. I made many assumptions of the prior knowledge of the students before we started. Some students had been exposed to Canada’s colonial history through the Canadian-American Studies and Salish Sea Studies programs, but this course may have been more effective with the addition of pre- and post-courses that would have supported deeper integration, action, and reflexivity of the work.

However, we showed up with respect and continued to focus on respect well after we left. We familiarized ourselves with the language, ate, connected with the community, and engaged in the reciprocity protocol. Now, it wasn’t all easygoing in this process. There is still the conundrum of the institution and me. We still require “summative” assessment products in Higher Education. If anything, our products for the ɬaʔəmen First Nation were nascent beginnings of support. They were gestures towards support — not reconciliation (or even reconcili-action). Were they helping appease our settler-guilt? Maybe. Were they even really assessments? No. When marking the student’s work, I read, watched, and experienced them as further stances of respect rather than “directs,” as Yankuporta and Shillingworth put it so eloquently.

The approach that many Western education systems take for teaching and learning within the hyper-encapsulated liberal arts timelines has rendered it nearly impossible for societal reform. The degree-mill orientation of the entire university system is complicit with the neo-colonial marginalization of oppressed peoples.

Where does the bleak reality of university degrees leave innovation, disruption, and radical learning that is so necessary for massive positive societal change? It leaves it in spaces that aren’t managed, monitored, accredited, and en-vultured. These are the Salish Sea Institutes, the Center for Canadian-American Studies, and the field schools run with minor funding but oodles of passion. The things that get cut as soon as a button-tightening budget rolls into town.

This course was one of those attempts at disruption; though minorly transformational in the large scheme, it helped some students see that learning is not an act but a stance, “in that it can become a way of being a learner ~ teacher ~ researcher; the lens through which we look that draws from our cultural paradigms and worldviews” (Tanaka et al., 2014, p. 2). Our learning is both generative and reflexive and happens in context.

Emerging responsibilities

Breathing the Salish Sea air, 

participating in traditional ceremony,

eating the needles of a grand fir,

squishing the watery moss,

touching the cool arbutus trunks, 

dunking in the cold creek, 

tasting the gifted elk meat, 

and quietly watching the sunset. 

This is the process of (re)connecting to place, 

and with connection comes responsibility.

While reflecting on the course near the end of the quarter, some of the students expressed concern that the projects they completed for Erik Blaney and the ɬaʔəmen Nation did not sufficiently reciprocate Erik’s generosity.

The authors have chosen to interpret this sense of incompleteness as a reminder that the responsibilities students take on in courses oriented around decolonization and reconciliation are not tidily wrapped up in a single quarter. And that tidiness is perhaps counter to the greater good that these courses can offer, especially with the learning that comes from making mistakes. We helped extend the research capacity of the ɬaʔəmen Nation, with access to resources, time, and much needed research.

Now that the course has ended, we are left asking what responsibilities are guiding our ongoing learning and engagement with reconcili-action. We close this paper by naming the responsibilities to learning that we have already identified, knowing that more may reveal themselves with time:

Learning Partners

  • We will seek to learn from/with a diversity of peoples, beyond those legitimized by the higher education system, especially Indigenous community members.

  • We will deepen our relationships with the Land we inhabit and the communities we share it with, both human and other-than-human.

  • We will seek to maintain relationships after the “work” is done, seeing our connections to Indigenous communities as ongoing and not contractual.

  • We will remain critical of the motivations behind the reconciliation efforts to which we contribute, especially reconciliation efforts arising from state-controlled institutions.

Learning Process

  • We will learn with gratitude, respect, and reciprocity.

  • We will remain mindful of the intention with which we approach learning.

  • We will not let fear of making mistakes limit our learning.

Learning Products

  • We will apply our knowledge in ways that generate positive and meaningful change.

  • We will creatively make space to engage in — and beyond — reconciliation, even in environments where it is difficult.

We can only make these commitments for ourselves and we recognize that our course was one pathway of many leading towards reconciliation. However, we urge higher education administrators to join us in adopting similar commitments, and to creatively work to redistribute the power they are afforded by their position within the settler-colonial academy. We take as a model a non-Indigenous anthropologist described by Leanne Simpson (2017), who “divested his power and authority as an academic that had been placed on him by the academy…and placed that responsibility where it belonged: with the leaders and the intellectuals of the (Indigenous) community” (p. 15).