Attending to “Land as School” and the “Colonial Resident Question”

Unravelling always occurs in particular places and localities and is connected with the ongoing history of land grabs and imperialism. This chapter addresses the educational and existential importance of tuning into land and addressing the colonial resident question in a time of unravelling. Thinking about the school as a particular form of gathering (Masschelein and Simons) in space, time, and place allows us to better understand the essential commoning dynamics at the centre of the idea of school, and conversely, how external demands for efficiency associated with industrial modernity impact upon our ability to understand Land and place as educationally significant in the first place (Land/place as school). This is part of a broader effort to make perceptible the ways in which mainstream education and schooling practices are simply incommensurate and insufficient for the calls of decolonization, just as they are insufficient for the task of educating for a future beyond growth. This chapter connects what Lilburn calls autochthonous practice —practices aimed at the challenge of how to be in the world as if it were home —with the acknowledgement that being a member of colonial society underwrites our primary estrangement from Land. Acknowledging the acute intellectual and spiritual poverty of settler society offers essential educational and existential openings towards encountering and tuning into the polycrisis. Cary outlines the significance of this reconceptualization for the possibilities and controversies of decolonized place- and Land-based environmental education and the promises of settler-Indigenous reconciliation in a time of social and environmental unravelling. This chapter also emphasizes the importance of positioning work (to self, place, and land) in this task of connecting with land as a colonial resident, and includes a short positioning reflection from the author.