Unsettling decolonizing geographies

Theoretical essay

The article argues that geography is a colonial discipline. Part one explores how decolonial scholars have exposed how the norms and assumptions of the discipline still reflect a colonial mindset. Part two argues that decolonial scholarship has its own limitations, as in settler colonial societies such as Canada, colonialism is part of the active present and continues to shape the everyday life of Indigenous people. Indigenous geographies offer a way of unsettling or truly decolonizing geography as a discipline.

Knowledge is not neutral. It is produced in places and by people who are often linked to or bound by a colonial context and its violence towards Indigenous people. Acknowledging this is a basic, but often still overlooked, step in decolonizing geography.

Decolonizing geography is effective only when it is based on asserting the Indigenous presence in geography and in "upholding Indigenous spatial knowledge and place‐based practices on their own terms." (p. 8).

Theoretical essay

Publishing in academic journals are not the only way that scholars can decolonizing geography. Supporting Indigenous people on grant applications, legal demands or following their requests are also valid steps in decolonizing the discipline.

"Making visible places where knowledge is produced, and who produces it, is an important place‐based and anticolonial practice (which is different than a decolonizing practice) at the heart of our questioning how the discipline of geography continues to enact particular practices and ways of knowing." (p. 3).
"…we argue that geography remains at risk of normalizing non‐Indigenous ways of knowing and being and perpetuating colonial power." (p. 3).

Geography
Indigenous studies