When I graduated my teacher education program, I taught on call for the Greater Victoria School District Board and a private Montessori School in Victoria BC.

My first full year of teaching was in North Spirit Lake, a remote Oji-Cree community in so-called Northern Ontario. I was twenty-four years old, an out queer teacher, a social-justice minded individual … and ultimately incredibly naive. In NSL, I was the only high school teacher. I taught all subjects and I drove a pick-up truck badly. I would sit tentatively on the edge of the truck’s seat that would not move forward and drive to one of the two stores in the community. I would pick up food so I could make stew and grinds and filters for coffee — anything to inspire my students, aged 14-60, to come to school and not hate it. The community had one room where students who stayed in the community could take online high school courses and receive support from yours truly. While I was living there, I wrote a blog highlighting what I was learning.

Five years later, I remain humbled by my time there. I think of the students I had the pleasure to teach and learn from. I think about running baking club for the elementary school, playing zombie tag with students while we waited for brownies to come out of the oven. I continue to learn and think more about how I can ethically engage in anticolonial work as a white woman and urge other educators (particularly white settlers) to do the same. Prior to me teaching in North Spirit Lake, I was painfully unaware of the vast injustices against Indigenous peoples. I had taken classes about Indigenous education, read novels by Indigenous authors, but I had no lived experience of anti-Indigenous racism. Moreover, I had no embodied knowledge of Indigenous ways of knowing and being. When I look back at that experience, I am so grateful for the students and community members I met, but I also feel deeply conflicted about my presence there — as if I should not have been teaching in an Indigenous community as a young white woman. Indigenous children and youth deserve to be taught by those who understand their lives on a deep, felt level. This is not to say educators with different backgrounds to their students cannot teach them, but educators from any dominant group need to closely examine why they are drawn to work with students from any non-dominant group.

My focus as a educational researcher is on queer and trans education. That being said, I carry my learning from North Spirit Lake into everything I do, meaning that I cannot think about 2S/LGTBQIA+ issues without thinking about whiteness and coloniality. Speaking to any white settler educators or educational researchers who might be reading this, I urge you to become hyperaware (compassionate yet radically accountable) to the ways we represent generations of harm against Indigenous communities, as well as Black communities, and people of colour. It should never be on the shoulders of BIPOC students, teachers and community members to teach us about systemic racism. We need to always be thinking about how to disrupt whiteness and coloniality in schools and educational systems through our curriculum, pedagogical choices, assessment practices and community-building practices. There are many resources by BIPOC educators, scholars and activists out there to deepen your learning. If you are a white settler educator like myself, please commit to following the lead of BIPOC leaders when it comes to any form of antioppressive education.