Social Practice: Reflections on practice, power, and affecting social change
I created this blog as my final assignment for a first-year class called “SOPR 6000: Social Justice and Transformational Change” (a required course for the Social Practice and Transformational Change PhD program at the University of Guelph taught by Drs. Roberta Hawkins and Julia Gruson-Wood). I believe we are all always in a state of becoming. With humility, I offer this messy, partial, and in-process piece as a reflection of my current understanding and thinking.
Introduction
A photo of three canoes resting on the shore of a lake with red rocks that appear to be part of the Canadian shield in the background. There is a conifer tree in the foreground - its scraggly branches are covering the sky.
Three and a half years ago I started a new job at the University of Guelph, where I was hired to manage the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership (CRP), a seven-year SSHRC partnership grant. The CRP aims to 1) support the transformation of nature conservation in Canada and 2) help Indigenous governments with the creation and implementation of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) (Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership, 2023). I am an able-bodied, white, cis-hetero woman and settler-Canadian with ancestral ties to Scotland and England. For the past 11 years I have had the great privilege of learning from and working in support of Indigenous peoples in a variety of capacities. However, my previous roles had always focused on social policy, so the conservation world was brand new to me.
Now, at the mid-point of the CRP, I find myself starting a PhD program in the hopes that I will be able to make a substantive contribution to the goals of the partnership. My personal commitments are aligned with the decolonial project as described by Tuck and Yang (2018): the “rematriation of Indigenous land and life” (pg. 9). Due to my affiliations with the CRP, my professional and research interests are located within the field of conservation – a field that has a dark colonial history and is grappling to re-imagine land and water relations in a future where Indigenous peoples are the primary decision makers over their territories. Within this context, the aim of my project is to explore how settler-conservationists’ emotions can get stuck and/or move in ways that support the cultivation of a decolonial conservation practice in Turtle Island/Canada.
My engagement with the SOPR 6000 class on “social justice and transformational change“ introduced me to the concept of social practice as an analytical tool to investigate social change. The reflection below explores my current understanding of the concept of social practice with specific focus on three main takeaways related to social practice, power, and change. I weave together examples from the assigned SOPR 6000 course materials with examples from the conservation field to reflect on the implications of my learning for my future research. To begin, I provide a brief overview of social practice as a concept.
What is social practice?
“…the idea that the world is “made” – in a very extended and complex sense, of course – through the actions of ordinary people also meant it could be unmade and remade”
What is social practice? Social practices can be anything people do regularly as individuals or as collectives (Williams et al, 2021, pg. 2). This includes everyday activities that are largely unconscious and automatic, such as selecting food to eat or commuting to work, as well as “trans-personal activities embedded in organizational routines, structures, and processes” (Swidler, 2000, pg. 83-84). For Shove et al. (2012), social practices are typically comprised of three components:
1. materials (objects, technologies, things);
2. competencies (skill, knowledge, technique); and
3. meanings (symbols, ideas) (pg. 4).
Social practices are not isolated but are often part of a larger pattern or block of activities (Shove et al., 2012, pg. 8). They are not valueless - rather, social practices reflect and are driven by the unconscious values of both individual and collective/organizational actors, and consequently “reveal notions of morality and normativity” (Swidler, 2000, pg. 83-84; Williams et al. 2021, pg. 18). Williams et al. (2021) argue that everyday practices, which are organized according to “unseen and unquestioned” rules, bind some groups of people together and exclude others (pg. 3). For example, they explain how someone with autism or sensory sensitivities may experience challenges navigating a supermarket to demonstrates how people with disabilities may be excluded from some common social practices (Williams et al. 2021, pg. 3).
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My colleague, Nealob, recently described an example of a social practice she engages in. Nealob crochets her own clothing, styling herself in beautiful, colourful pieces that reflect her unique subjectivity (Kakar, SOPR 6000, April 4 2023). Through this example, Nealob shows how her practice of making clothing, which requires materials (yarn, needles), competencies (knowledge and skill of crochet), and meanings (self-expression, being perceived by others) is part of a larger pattern of practices as she selects her clothing and dresses for school (Kakar, SOPR 6000, April 4 2023).
Her practice is not neutral or valueless, but rather, clearly reflects her personal morals and ethics (Shawn Wilson as cited in CLEAR Lab, 2017). By creating her own clothing, Nealob is refusing to participate in the consumption of cheap, disposable ‘fast-fashion’. Instead, she is deliberately choosing to take time and invest the effort to make clothing for herself.
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My colleague, Brooklyn, provided an example of a social practice linked to change. Brooklyn regularly reads picture books with their young niece. These books are often written by queer authors and show the diverse ways people embody and experience gender. Through this practice, Brooklyn invites opportunities for conversations about gender in an accessible and open way (Ciccotelli, SOPR 6000, April 4 2023). In doing so, they are subverting hegemonic categorical logics which constrain and prescribe rigid gender categories, and are teaching their niece to do the same (Lugones, 2014).
This is a photo of two bookshelves filled with colourful children’s books.
For my research, I am interested in engaging with new material feminist, critical queer, and decolonial scholarship to consider how emotions can move in ways that block and/or enable the cultivation of a decolonial conservation practice. For Smith (1990), social practice theory aligns with feminist theory and methodologies for its ability to observe “actual subjects situated as they actually are” (pg. 33). Smith (1990) argues that social scientists should move away from developing conceptual indicators to represent human behaviours (e.g. extracting data from subjects, assigning codes to the data, conducting analysis, and making generalized conclusions) (pg. 36). Instead, scholars should turn their attention to observing social practices, which “insists on the discovery of relations and processes that arise in and only in the actual activities of actual people” (pg. 36). The alignment between social practice theory and feminist approaches will be beneficial for my research, which seeks to articulate what a decolonial conservation practice might entail while exploring how settler conservationists experience their attempts to enact elements of this practice in an embodied way. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed (2004), I am interested in mapping how settler conservationists’ emotions circulate in relation to their practices, in ways that open or foreclose possibilities for transformative change. In the following section I reflect on three main ‘take-aways’ from the SOPR 6000 course related to social practice and change.
Practices and the production of social subjects
Our practices have the power to shape who we understand ourselves to be, our perception of the world around us, and our interactions. “You are what you eat” and “practice makes perfect” are common colloquialisms that reveal the ways activities can shape our bodies, skills, knowledge, and competencies. Ortner (2006) argues that social practice theory is compelling because it offers a “general theory of production of social subjects through practice in the world, and how the world is produced by practice” (pg. 16-17).
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The paper, the Game of Queer Family Life: Exploring 2SLGBTQI+ parents’ experiences of cisheternomativity, racism, and colonialism through digital storytelling in Ontario Canada, provides examples of how social practices can produce social subjects. The story, “The myth of mother” by Michel Dumon, features Michel, a “single, disabled, Two-Spirit, gay father raising his son in their northern city” (Gruson-Wood et al., 2022, pg. 16). Through imagery, Michel explains how the “myth of the mother”, an ideal depiction of motherhood as the “white, middle-class, able-bodied, apron-wearing, recipe-sharing, grocery-shopping wives of 1950’s North America), is juxtaposed by his own family experience. Michel provides examples of social practices embedded in systems, and how they have shaped him and his son as a social subject.
Michel describes a time when his son was required to make a Mother’s Day card in school, even though the child explained he didn’t want to (pg. 17). In another example, Michel is questioned by border officials, because he and his son have different last names. Michel’s computer, which had photos of his son potty training, “raised suspicions of bestiality and child pornography” (Gruson-Wood et al., 2022, pg. 17). The practices of the education system has erased michel as a single father, where the practices of boarder control officers have transformed Michel into a potential criminal - someone to be questioned and feared.
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The book, And Grandma Said: Iroquois teachings as passed down through the oral tradition, Sakokweniónkwas (Elder Tom Porter) begins with a recitation of the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, or the Thanksgiving Address. Sakokweniónkwas, a Bear Clan Elder of the Mohawk Nation, explains to the reader that reciting the Thanksgiving Address is a social practice that is part of Mohawk governance - it is recited before meetings, ceremonies, dances or any big gathering (Tom Porter, 2008, pg. 8). The Thanksgiving Address is a retelling of the Mohawk Creation story, which acknowledges all aspects of creation. It is a practice of deep gratitude for life, and each person will recite the address differently. Importantly, the Thanksgiving Address is a living practice, coming from the heart of the speaker, and grounded in the present moment (Tom Porter, 2008, pg. 9).
In Sakokweniónkwas’ (2008) version of the Thanksgiving Address, human beings are created last, after all of creation. He says:
“That’s why Grandma and other elders have suggested - they didn’t say this as a fact, but they made a strong suggestion - that because we were last of thousands and thousands of millions of creations, the Creator might have been exhausted and tired by the time he came to making us” (pg. 22).
Sakokweniónkwas goes on to describe the ways in which humans are imperfect: humans tend to exaggerate; we don’t tell the truth; and we are always trying to be someone we are not” (pg. 22).
This social practice is complex and is deeply nuanced in its meanings. It produces social subjects with a sense of humility and respect for more-than-humans in creation. It also creates social subjects who are imbued with agency and are empowered to personalize their connections to the collective and the practices the Nation.
I am interested in exploring how conservation practices produce social subjects (both people and more-than-humans), and how those practices shape the world more broadly. I created the digital story below about a childhood visit to Bon Echo, an Ontario Provincial Park. While not something we did daily, camping in provincial parks was a practice, comprised of a block or pattern of discrete activities, our family engaged at least once a year for one week at a time (Shove et al., 2012, pg. 8). This story highlights recreational activities such as swimming, playing on the beach, riding our bikes, and roasting marshmallows. These activities were a central part of our family’s camping practice. Our camping activities were shaping me as a social subject: I was learning to engage with more-than-human entities (Land, Water, plants, animals) as instruments for my pleasure. It was an extractive, unbalanced relationship, where my desire for fun, adventure, and novelty was privileged. The campground was full of other white settler families engaged in similar practices – I was being produced as part of a new generation that would participate in these relations and processes as a collective. These activities were made possible within the context of the Canadian state’s conservation practices, which produced the park as a playground for middle class white settler Canadians.
The digital story I created also showcases Bon Echo Provincial Park’s interpretive practices, which tell stories about the park through signage, guided tours, and other programming. The description of the pictographs is inspired by a boat tour our family participated in. The tour, which is led by park employees, brings campers by boat to where the Canadian shield dramatically meets the water of Mazinaw Lake. Drawn onto the cliff are several pictographs created by Algonquin peoples. In the story, the tour guide, a park employee, briefly mentions that the park staff do not know the age or meaning of the pictographs. This speech act, which is also a practice, casts the original inhabitants of this land as peoples who exist in the past and are antithetical to both modernity and the existence of the park. This act of erasure does not acknowledge the historic and ongoing role of the park in displacing Algonquin peoples from this place. The interpreter quickly transitions to a story about the Group of Seven painters visiting the park. Through the interpretive practice, the relations of the Algonquin peoples in the park are painted over by the white settler artists who are said to have contributed to the national identity of the Canadian settler-state.
Each of the example above show how social practices can shape social subjects. Sometimes, like in the case of Elder Tom Porter reciting the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen (Thanksgiving Address), individuals actively participate in these practices. Other times, social subjects are produced by practices that that are imposed on them as they try to navigate complex social systems (like in the examples of Michel seeking to cross the border with his child). My experience of camping as a child shows how I was being produced as a social subject who would grow to maintain relations with Land and Water that advance settler goals (Coulthard, 2014, as cited in CLEAR Lab, 2017) . I expect many settler-conservationists will have had similar formative experiences camping as a children. I am curious about how people may be emotionally invested in certain practices, because they inform their sense of identity, and the way these affective attachments accumulate. I am also interested in how affective attachments to practices may make it difficult to enact social change, and/or how emotional learning may help make lasting transformative change. Having described social practice and it’s role in shaping social subjects, in the next section, I will explore connections between social practice, agency, and constraint.
Practice, agency and constraint
One of the benefits of social practice theory is its ability to examine how individuals make choices and exert agency over their lives, while recognizing the ways these choices are shaped by external forces. Ortner (2006) explains that practice theory emerged in the 1970’s when social science was dominated by three paradigms: “interpretive/symbolic anthropology (Geertz); Marxist political economy (Wolf); and structuralism (Lévi-Strauss)” (pg. 1). Ortner brings our attention to how each of these paradigms is focused on constraint – examining how “human behaviour is shaped, molded, ordered, and defined by external forces like culture, structures and capitalism” (Ortner, 2006, pg. 1-2). For Ortner (2006), social practice theory emerges in response to these “theories of constraint” by offering an account of human agency and the ways that human activities can “produce and reproduce constraints” (pg. 2). Ortner (2006) describes how social practice theory unifies structuralist and culturalist perspectives by “bringing the actor into social processes without losing sight of larger structures that enable and constrain social action (pg. 3)”.
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The documentary film, United in Anger: A history of ACT-UP, tells the story of the AIDS activist movement from the perspective of community organizers in New York City during the peak of the AIDS epidemic. The documentary features the practices ACT UP undertook as a grassroots organization, including:
• regular Monday meetings where anyone could contribute their ideas;
• creating communications materials to disrupt harmful normative narratives about the AIDS epidemic;
• demonstrating in front of the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to accelerate the approvals of life-saving drugs. This action also helped ensure the drugs were formulated for and distributed equitably to diverse bodies; and
• holding political funerals where the remains of loved ones who had died of AIDS were marched through the streets. During the Ashes Action in 1992, the remains of loved ones who had died of AIDs were scattered on the White House lawn (Hubbard, et al. 2013).Despite an environment of profound constraint – the number of 2SLGBTQI+ people dying during the height of the epidemic was staggering – ACT UP’s practices are an incredible example of collective agency. ACT UP engaged in a series of activities in direct opposition to systemic external forces, like the public health and political systems (state and federal), which were having deadly consequences. This example shows how practices of refusal and direction action, enacted by a grassroots collective, can have a profound impact and can influence social change on both micro and macro scales.
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This blog, written by Chloe Dragon Smith (Dënesųłı̨né Métis) and Robert Grandjambe (Mikisew Cree First Nation) in 2020, describes how Indigenous peoples have been forcibly removed from Wood Buffalo National Park, in what is colonially known as Alberta. Within a generation, relationships with Land, language and culture have been severed. The practice of removing Indigenous peoples from living within the park boundaries is recent. Robert had his home, a cabin in the park, burned by Park officials in 2015 (Dragon Smith & Grandjambe, 2020). The practice of removing Indigenous Peoples from permanently living in the park, where settlers are encouraged to temporarily live in the park for recreational purposes, is an example of how the park’s practices constrain the ability of Chloe and Robert to maintain their ancestral connections with their more-than-human relations in their territory (Dragon Smith & Grandjambe, 2020).
A second blog written by Chloe and Robert in 2023 reveals that despite the National Park’s practices of removal, they are building a life together inside the boundaries of Wood Buffalo National Park. 2022 marked 100 years since Wood Buffalo was created and Parks Canada began managing the park. Today, Chloe and Robert are the only Indigenous people living in the park. As “Land-based peoples”, Chloe and Robert are demonstrating their agency, engaging in practices every day that “rehabilitate their ancestral ways, knowledge, and systems” (Dragon Smith & Grandjambe, 2023).
Thinking about social practice in the context of agency and constraint is helpful for considering the relationships between power, scale, and social change. In her book, Black Feminist Thought (2000), Patricia Hill Collins describes a “Matrix of Domination” comprised of four interrelated “domains of power” that work together to maintain oppression. The four domains (structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal) constrain Black women (and others) in several ways, including: though the organization of large-scale social institutions/structures; organizational practices, ideology, culture, and consciousness; and individual behaviours and practices. Despite this, there are opportunities for resistance and agency within each domain.
In the example of ACT UP, we see how behaviours and practices by individual members of ACT UP scale up to inform their organizational practices, ideology, culture and collective consciousness. Refusing hegemonic logics and practices that devalue queer, poor, and racialized lives in the interpersonal domain becomes an essential part of ACT UP’s organizing. Where ACT UP members have more agency and power to influence the interpersonal, their practices scale up to influence change in the structural domain and large-scale social institutions, such as the FDA. Through their protests and communications campaigns, they are also influencing the hegemonic domain which reifies harmful dominant ideologies. Their agency and power to influence change becomes more limited in these domains, but they were still effective at influencing change.
In this photo, several buffalo are grazing on grass. They are in the distance with conifer woodland behind them.
This is similar to the example shared by Chloe Dragon Smith and Robert Grandjambe. Chloe and Robert have more power and agency to engage in practices that influence social change in the interpersonal domains. They have reclaimed their ancestral territories within Wood Buffalo National Park, thereby reconnecting to Land, ancestral knowledge, responsibilities and relations. Though more limited, their practices may have an impact across the other domains and at different scales. For example, their blogs have reached hundreds of people, helping to shift ideology, culture, and consciousness within the conservation sector. Through engagement with Park operations staff, they have the potential to influence change in the disciplinary and structural domains as well - though there is more constraint at those scales.
For the purposes of my future research, I’m interested in the ways in which emotions may surface and move at different scales and in different domains of power. More specifically, I’m curious about whether there are particular emotions that surface, and how they might move, in relation to changing social practices at different scales and in different domains of power. This seems important as change moves from individuals to collectives. In the final section, I reflect on how anti and decolonial practices can move us away from settler colonialism and generate new possibilities.
Anti and decolonial practices: “Flight paths out of colonialism”
“...rebel against the permanence of settler colonial reality and not just “dream alternative realities” but create them, on the ground, in the physical world in spite of being occupied”
While practices can reify oppressive and violent social structures and relations, they can also be powerful forces for social change. In her book, We have always been here, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Nishnaabeg) (2017), argues that decolonial politics needs to be taken up and embodied in every day practices (pg. 191). Thinking with Kwagiulth/Sara Hunt (Kwakwaka’wakw), Betasamosake Simpson (2017) contends that living “decolonial queer politics in intimate spaces and everyday acts of resurgence can be a force for dramatic change in the face of the overwhelming domination of the settler colonial state…” (pg. 192). As an example, she describes resurgent Indigenous artistic practices as an act of “affirmative refusal” (pg. 206). These practices disrupt the colonial state, and, grounded in “Indigenous intelligence” result in “disruption, interrogation, decolonial love, and profound embodiment of nation-based Indigeneity” (Betasamosake Simpson, 2017, pg. 198). For Betasamosake Simpson (2017), these practices have the power to unmake and remake worlds, creating “flight paths” out of colonialism and they are particularly powerful at the micro-scale (pg. 192; pg. 196). This is why she focuses on the intimacy of our daily practices, which directly affect our relations in our immediate circles.
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University of Guelph professor, Dr. Tad McIlwraith and his student, and Natali Euale Montilla, recently collaborated with Splatsin Elder Nuxnuxskaca Ctw’e7i7elt (Julianna Alexander) to write a paper that centers her perspectives on the interconnectedness of life, including the links between human and environmental wellbeing. The peer-reviewed article has been published with Nuxnuxskaca Ctw’e7i7elt as the first author and Sáwllkwa (Water) as the second author (Nuxnuxskaca Ctw’e7i7elt et al., 2019).
The citational practices and written style of the paper represent an attempt ethically engage across knowledge systems by elevating Splatsin epistemologies. Sáwllkwa is imbued with agency – the needs of Sáwllkwa are listed as a “motivator for the research undertaken” (Nuxnuxskaca Ctw’e7i7elt et al., 2019, pg. 2). The way the authorship for the paper is presented signifies respect and care for both Nuxnuxskaca Ctw’e7i7elt and for Sáwllkwa (Nuxnuxskaca Ctw’e7i7elt et al., 2019, pg. 2).
This practice is an example of the anti-colonial commitments of the authors, which aim to disrupt colonial land relations. As explained by the CLEAR lab, anti-colonialism is described as land relations in opposition to colonialism, which are “relations of domination that keeps land available for settler goals, and gives settlers “ongoing access to land as a resource” (Coulthard, 2014, in CLEAR Lab, 2017). In opposition to settler epistemologies, which see water as a resource for human use, the paper elevates water and the relationships between water and its caretakers.
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First Light is described as a “collaboration between hundreds of leaders, 65 organizations and Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Mi’kmaq Communities to re-learn history, recenter Indigenous voice and to return land, resources and power” (First Light, 2023). The Conservation Community Delegation for Wabanaki Engagement is part of First Light. The purpose of the delegation is to “pool resources and coordinate the conservation community’s skills and abilities to best collaborate and respond to the needs and requests from the Wabanaki Commission on Land and Stewardship; Nil yut ktahkomiq nik (the whole earth is our home)” (First Light, 2023). In collaboration with the Wabanaki Commission on Land and Stewardship, the Conservation Community Delegation is creating protocols and processes to enable the return of land to the Wabanaki, while also reducing administrative burden and alleviating capacity by responding to requests from the broader conservation community (First Light, 2023).
First Light also convenes gatherings and offers training opportunities for settler conservationists and are committed to radical transparency. The public can see documents that guide the organization and its various committees, where money is flowing in the organization, and what the conservation community organizations are contributing materially to the collective through in-kind and/or financial contributions (First Light, 2023). These organizational practices are explicitly decolonial: they are intended to help facilitate the return of land to the Wabanaki, and to change settler-colonial land relations.
Image of a hand gently touching a pool of water. The hand is open, with its palm facing the camera. There are ripples in the surface of the water where the fingers have touched.
The examples above explore anti and decolonial practices, albeit at different scales and in different contexts, which can offer “flight paths out of colonialism” (Betasamosake Simpson, 2021, pg. 196). The peer-reviewed paper written with Nuxnuxskaca Ctw’e7i7elt (Julianna Alexander), Sáwllkwa (Water), Natali Euale Montilla, and Tad McIlwraith challenges the dominance of western hegemonic epistemologies by centering Splatsin intelligence and relational ways of knowing. The citational practices of the paper represent an anti-colonial politics that destabilize the canon of anthropological studies - elevating the lived and embodied knowledge of Nuxnuxskaca Ctw’e7i7elt as a Splatsin Elder and knowledge holder. These practices offer new possibilities for knowledge production in the academy by refusing extractive models. Instead, they are co-creating a new, relational approach to creating and sharing knowledge.
On a structural level, the example of First Light demonstrates a unique approach to re-imagining the conservation sector. The organization’s practices reflect their mandate: to facilitate the return of land which was stolen from Wabanaki peoples through colonial conservation practices in the area now known as Maine. Tuck and Yang (2012), describe decolonization as a material project focused on the rematriation of Indigenous lands. First Light’s focus on land return and material reparations is one clear example of a conservation organization committed to cultivating and facilitating decolonial conservation practice.
In both examples, settlers are active participants in these anti and decolonial practices and processes. For my research, I am curious about the emotional shifts that enable settlers to cultivate decolonial practices. It is often said that decolonial work requires settlers to move from thinking with their head to feeling with their heart. I’m interested in exploring what this means within the context of decolonial conservation practice. What happens when settler-conservationists’ practices are informed by their hearts instead of their heads? Why might this be important? How are settlers feeling their way through cultivating a decolonial conservation practice? These are some of the questions I am prompted to think about when considering how anti and decolonial practices connect to my research interests.
Conclusion
This has been an incredible year learning about social justice and transformational change. In particular, I enjoyed learning about the concept of social practice and thinking about how our embodied, every day actions can help catalyze social change in different domains. In this blog I have reflected on three main “take-aways” related to social practice and how they intersect with power and change.
1) I have considered how our practices produce us as social subjects. For my research, I’m interested in the emotional investments we may have in our practices because they inform our identities, and how this emotional attachment may affect social change efforts.
2) Social practices can demonstrate the agency of social actors while also demonstrating how external forces shape and constrain our actions and movements. I reflect on agency and constraint at different scales and in different “domains of power”, and consider how emotions may move and accumulate in the different domains (Hill Collins, 2000).
3) I consider how anti and decolonial practices can act as “flight paths out of colonialism” (Betasamosake Simpson, 2017, pg. 192) and am curious about whether settlers who engage in these practices may have undergone emotional shifts to enable their participation.
Settler feelings of discomfort, fear, anger, shame, love and hope all have a tremendous influence on the potential to achieve transformational change. I know this because I have felt my own body respond to uncomfortable and painful truths about settler colonialism and my own complicity. I’ve felt my cheeks burn and my heart race with shame when my practices were challenged. I have felt myself shrink away from the pain of having been shown that the central narratives and beliefs I held true about my identity and community were false. But my body also remembers what it feels like to feel connected, to be grounded in ethics of love and mutual respect, and move towards positive change. I look forward to building on my learning from this course to further explore how emotion may affect settler conservationists’ efforts to cultivate a decolonial conservation practice.
Works Cited
Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. University of Edinburgh Press.
*Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance. University of Minnesota Press.
Bishop, A. (2023 April 20). Ontario, ours to discover [Film].
*CLEAR Lab. (2017). Anti-colonial science: CLEAR is a feminist and anti-colonial laboratory. But what does that mean? https://civiclaboratory.nl/2017/12/29/feminist-anti-colonial-science/.
Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership. (2023. April 19). Our Message. https://conservation-reconciliation.ca/.
Dragon Smith, C. & Grandjambe, R. (2023, February 8). CoP-15 - What does the Land say? Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership. https://conservation-reconciliation.ca/blog/cop-15-what-does-the-land-say
Dragon Smith, C. & Grandjambe, R. (2020, October 20). To Wood Buffalo National Park, with love: Reflections from the authors. Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership. https://conservation-reconciliation.ca/blog/to-wood-buffalo-national-park-with-love- reflections-from-the-authors
First Light. (2023, April 18). About First Light. https://firstlightlearningjourney.net/about/.
First Light. (2023, April 18). Our commitment to transparency. https://firstlightlearningjourney.net/transparency/.
*Gruson-Wood, J., Reid, K., Rice, C., Haines, J., Chapman, G.W., & Gibson, M.F. Game of Queer Family Life: Exploring 2SLGBTQI+ parents’ experiences of cisheternomativity, racism, and colonialism through digital storytelling in Ontario Canada. Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2132581
*Hill-Collins, P. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Psychology Press.
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*Lugones, M. (2014). Radical multiculturalism and women of color feminisms. Journal for Culture and Religious Theory, 13 (1), 68–80.
*Nuxnuxskaca Ctw’e7i7elt (Julianna Alexander), Sáwllkwa (Water), Natali Euale Montilla, Thomas McIlwraith. (2019). “Doctors and professors aren’t the professors of the land”: Reflections on the interconnected environment with Splatsin Elder Nuxnuxskaca Cts’e7i7elt. Collaborative Anthropologies, 11(2), pp. 1-25.
*Ortner, S. (2006). Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, power and the acting subject. Duke University Press.
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*Swidler, A. (2000). What anchors cultural practices. In K.K. Cetina, T.R. Schatzki & E. von Savigny (Eds). The practice turn in contemporary theory. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203977453
*The Atlantic. (2019, June 3). Recycling is like a band-aid on gangrene [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgLKoJZ0dHw
*Porter, T. (2008). And Grandma said…Iroquois teachings as passed down through the oral tradition. Xlibris Corp
Tuck, E. & Yang, W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1, (1), 1-40.
*Tuck, E. & Yang, W. (2018). Born under the rising sun of social justice. In E. Tuck & W. Yang (Eds.), Toward what justice? Describing diverse dreams of justice in education. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351240932.
*Williams, V., Gall, M., Mason-Angelow, V., Read, S., & Webb, J. (2021). Misfitting and social practice theory: incorporating disability into the performance and (re)enactment of social practices. Disability & Society, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2021.1947195