What is planning without property? Relational practices of being and belonging

What is planning without property? This question was recently posed to me following a conference presentation. In this paper, I argue that taking this question seriously reveals unchallenged assumptions about the relationship between planning and property. Focusing on Canada as a settler colonial liberal democracy, I respond to this question by looking at the Indian Act which has supported colonial dispossession and assimilation in Canada for almost 200 years and rely on Brenna Bhandar’s conceptualization of “racial regimes of property” as a means of examining how racial subjects and private property are co-produced. I then look to the practices reflected in the creation of Nadia Myre's artwork Indian Act to show how Indigenous epistemologies can aid in the conceptualization of planning without property. I argue that planning without property would be an approach to planning that would be focused on identifying, making, and strengthening the human and more-than-human relationships the flourishing of life requires. Thus, planning without property would support practices of being and belonging rather than practices of exclusion and domination.

Dimensions of Culturally-Intensive STEM Education

Disenfranchisement of indigenous Pacific voices from STEM limits self-determination and the development of Pacific-led solutions to regional challenges. To counteract this trend, Chaminade University's Inclusive Excellence program delivers culturally-sustaining STEM education focused on sense of belonging and family/community engagement. It seeks to authentically enculturate curriculum, pedagogy, and practice to privilege and separate Western and indigenous epistemologies and to provide deeply immersive non-academic support. This chapter discusses the imperatives for sustained, system-wide commitment to culture-based STEM education, theoretical and cultural frameworks guiding this paradigm, examples of IE program processes and practices, and a review of outcomes. Finally, next level challenges are considered: student experiences in structurally racist systems beyond the Pacific support bubble, tensions between providing opportunity and perpetuation of regional talent drains, and the implications of asking young scientists to balance cultural and professional identities.

The Fight Against Climate Change From an Indigenous System Perspective

The 21st century has witnessed that climate change has become an acute daily agony. In Africa, to be specific, it has made the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals a myth. It is argued that the implications of climate change are evident in numerous ways on the African continent: incessant floods, cyclones, droughts, and heat waves. These have introduced disastrous outcomes: a heightened threat of food security, inadequate water resource availability, diminished biodiversity, decline in human health viability, and increasing land degradation. At the centre of all this, a more robust understanding of climate change and appropriate palliatives is called for. In South Africa, conservation by the state and numerous stakeholders on the thorny issue of climate change has tended to favour and privilege Western scientific interpretations at the expense of the “indigenous” interpretations as informed by their indigenous epistemologies.

Rethinking the Politics of Creativity: Posthumanism, Indigeneity, and Creativity Beyond the Western Anthropocene

With the emergence of Western posthuman understandings, new materialism, artificial intelligence (AI), and the growing acknowledgment of Indigenous epistemologies, an ongoing rethinking of existing assumptions and meanings about creativity is needed. The intersection of new technologies and philosophical stances that upend human-centered views of reality suggests that creativity is not an exclusively “human” activity. This opens new possibilities and assemblages for conceiving of creativity, but not without tensions. In this article, we connect multiple threads, to reimagine creativity in light of posthuman understandings and the possibilities for creative emergence beyond the Anthropocene. Creativity is implicated as emerging beyond non-human spaces, such as through digitality and AI or sources in the natural world. This unseats many understandings of creativity as positioned in Euro-Western literature. We offer four areas of concern for interrogating tensions in this area, aiming to open new possibilities for practice, research, and (re)conceptualization beyond Western understandings.

Folauga mo A'oa'oaga: Migration for education and its impact on Samoa's development as a nation

<p>The first recorded scholarship programme in Sāmoa began in the 1920s under the New Zealand Administration. Since that time, more and more students have travelled abroad for education both through sponsored and privately-funded programmes. This thesis examines the stories of 18 Sāmoan research participants who emigrated from their homes for western education. It examines how their experiences have contributed to the development of Sāmoa as a ‘nation’ “Folauga” is a common Sāmoan term for a “journey” and can be used in different contexts. The most common context for folauga is the literal journey where people travel from and arrive at a particular destination. There are many and diverse motivation ns leading to the decision of the 18 research participants to migrate. However, no decision was made independently. With the support and assistance of their respective āiga (family), they were never alone. From birth they were taught the value of the āiga and fa’a Sāmoa (the Sāmoan way) and when they studied abroad their āiga were at the forefront of their minds, but so too was fa’a Sāmoa. These 18 research participants excelled in both the western and Sāmoan worlds. They gained qualifications and experience that supported their āiga, and ultimately benefited Sāmoa as a ‘nation’. The 18 participants did not all return to Sāmoa to live permanently. Some moved to Fiji and others to New Zealand. This should not be viewed negatively because through transnationalism, Sāmoan migrants are very much connected to their homelands through money, goods of many different kinds, artefacts, ideas and symbols. Their migration often involves individuals, families, groups and institutions. It is important however to define ‘Sāmoa’ in the context of this argument. Sāmoa has two constructions of place and of people: the first is Sāmoa as a land-mass and geo-political-legal jurisdiction that is centred on the land and sea and is vital in acknowledging roots and a place of identity. The second construct acknowledges, due to globalisation and migration facilitated by technology, Sāmoan people are no longer confined to the geographical location of Sāmoa. This research employed talanoa as a method to explore the experiences, attitudes, and reflections of the participants. The interview process involved not only long and wide-ranging conversations, but also a process of relationship building. Records of the discussions were written, checked and negotiated so that the 18 participants and the researcher produced a series of scripts – ‘mini biographies’ – that provided a rich body of data for analysis. The contribution of the stories of the 18 research participants to development as a discourse is significant. The participants have navigated their folauga confidently in a western setting as well as within fa’a Sāmoa. Many other Sāmoans have done the same. I therefore argue that not all earlier conventions of development such as modernisation were wasted on Sāmoa. While there is a place for newer development theories such as post development and indigenous epistemologies, for the 18 research participants, they were able to excel in a world of development much of which was externally defined but some of which could be shaped and adapted. The participants saw the good in modernisation and, coupling it with fa’a Sāmoa, they found a recipe to survive and thrive in both worlds.</p>

Folauga mo A'oa'oaga: Migration for education and its impact on Samoa's development as a nation

<p>The first recorded scholarship programme in Sāmoa began in the 1920s under the New Zealand Administration. Since that time, more and more students have travelled abroad for education both through sponsored and privately-funded programmes. This thesis examines the stories of 18 Sāmoan research participants who emigrated from their homes for western education. It examines how their experiences have contributed to the development of Sāmoa as a ‘nation’ “Folauga” is a common Sāmoan term for a “journey” and can be used in different contexts. The most common context for folauga is the literal journey where people travel from and arrive at a particular destination. There are many and diverse motivation ns leading to the decision of the 18 research participants to migrate. However, no decision was made independently. With the support and assistance of their respective āiga (family), they were never alone. From birth they were taught the value of the āiga and fa’a Sāmoa (the Sāmoan way) and when they studied abroad their āiga were at the forefront of their minds, but so too was fa’a Sāmoa. These 18 research participants excelled in both the western and Sāmoan worlds. They gained qualifications and experience that supported their āiga, and ultimately benefited Sāmoa as a ‘nation’. The 18 participants did not all return to Sāmoa to live permanently. Some moved to Fiji and others to New Zealand. This should not be viewed negatively because through transnationalism, Sāmoan migrants are very much connected to their homelands through money, goods of many different kinds, artefacts, ideas and symbols. Their migration often involves individuals, families, groups and institutions. It is important however to define ‘Sāmoa’ in the context of this argument. Sāmoa has two constructions of place and of people: the first is Sāmoa as a land-mass and geo-political-legal jurisdiction that is centred on the land and sea and is vital in acknowledging roots and a place of identity. The second construct acknowledges, due to globalisation and migration facilitated by technology, Sāmoan people are no longer confined to the geographical location of Sāmoa. This research employed talanoa as a method to explore the experiences, attitudes, and reflections of the participants. The interview process involved not only long and wide-ranging conversations, but also a process of relationship building. Records of the discussions were written, checked and negotiated so that the 18 participants and the researcher produced a series of scripts – ‘mini biographies’ – that provided a rich body of data for analysis. The contribution of the stories of the 18 research participants to development as a discourse is significant. The participants have navigated their folauga confidently in a western setting as well as within fa’a Sāmoa. Many other Sāmoans have done the same. I therefore argue that not all earlier conventions of development such as modernisation were wasted on Sāmoa. While there is a place for newer development theories such as post development and indigenous epistemologies, for the 18 research participants, they were able to excel in a world of development much of which was externally defined but some of which could be shaped and adapted. The participants saw the good in modernisation and, coupling it with fa’a Sāmoa, they found a recipe to survive and thrive in both worlds.</p>

Challenges Faced by Student Affairs Practitioners in Embedding Indigenous Knowledge into Student Leadership Development Pedagogy. A Case for Zimbabwe

The drive to mainstream indigenous knowledge into student leadership development in Zimbabwean higher education has recently gained currency. Student leadership development has a Eurocentric historical background and it has continued on this paradigm in the post-independence era. Framed on decolonial theoretical framework this study interrogates the challenges that are faced by student affairs practitioners in their efforts to include indigenous epistemologies into student leadership development programmes. The research was designed as a case study that employed qualitative methods of data collection and analysis focussing on student development practice at three state universities in Zimbabwe namely Bindura University of Science Education, Chinhoyi University of Science Education and Great Zimbabwe University. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with student Affairs practitioners and analysed through NVivo qualitative data analysis software. Research findings indicate that student affairs practitioners face a myriad of problems which hinder the mainstreaming of the knowledge of the local indigenous people into leadership development. These problems include lack of training to empower them with skills to include indigenous epistemologies into student leadership training, lack of funding and policy guidelines. Theorising on this complexity the research recommends the designing of leadership programmes that imbue indigenous epistemologies of the local people in student development such as hunhu/ubuntu values.

Mainstreaming African Indigenous Epistemologies into Student Development in Higher Education: A Case of Zimbabwe

Framed in the context of decoloniality, this study advocates for the embedding of African indigenous epistemologies into student development in university education in order to emancipate it from the pervasive Eurocentric hegemony. The thesis of this paper contends that student development in higher education has remained firmly anchored on Eurocentric ways of knowing at the expense of other epistemologies especially those from the Global South. Indigenous epistemologies are interiorized and marginalized. Efforts to Africanize the curriculum have largely been piecemeal and student development theory has continued to be underpinned by Eurocentric epistemology with a devastating impact on student identity and character development. This study employed the qualitative research paradigm in which three state universities in Zimbabwe were purposively selected as research sites. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with student affairs practitioners and were analysed qualitatively through coding of emerging themes and this was complimented by the use of the NVivo qualitative data analysis software. Results revealed that Eurocentrism is largely the dominant epistemology in student development while African indigenous epistemologies are marginalized, invisibilized and interiorized. The findings also exposed several challenges that are faced by student affairs practitioners with the major ones being; inadequate institutional funding, unavailability of Afrocentric literature on Student Development as well as well as lack of space on the timetable. The study recommended the inclusion of African indigenous epistemologies into student development through the adoption models that imbue cultural values and ways of knowing of indigenous people.

Seeing and inviting participation in autistic interactions

What does it take to see how autistic people participate in social interactions? And what does it take to support and invite more participation? Western medicine and cognitive science tend to think of autism mainly in terms of social and communicative deficits. But research shows that autistic people can interact with a skill and sophistication that are hard to see when starting from a deficit idea. Research also shows that not only autistic people, but also their non-autistic interaction partners, can have difficulties interacting with each other. To do justice to these findings, we need a different approach to autistic interactions—one that helps everyone see, invite, and support better participation. I introduce such an approach, based on the enactive theory of participatory sense-making and supported by insights from indigenous epistemologies. This approach helps counteract the homogenizing tendencies of the “global mental health” movement, which attempts to erase rather than recognize difference, and often precludes respectful engagements. Based in the lived experiences of people in their socio-cultural-material and interactive contexts, I put forward an engaged—even engag ing—epistemology for understanding how we interact across difference. From this perspective, we see participatory sense-making at work across the scientific, diagnostic, therapeutic, and everyday interactions of autistic and non-autistic people, and how everyone can invite and support more of it.

Decolonising Climate Change: A Call for Beyond-Human Imaginaries and Knowledge Generation

This article calls for transdisciplinary, experimental, and decolonial imaginations of climate change and Pacific futures in an age of great planetary undoing. Drawing from our personal and academic knowledge of the Pacific from West Papua to Samoa, we highlight the need for radical forms of imagination that are grounded in an ethos of inclusivity, participation, and humility. Such imaginations must account for the perspectives, interests, and storied existences of both human and beyond-human communities of life across their multiple and situated contexts, along with their co-constitutive relations. We invite respectful cross-pollination across Indigenous epistemologies, secular scientific paradigms, and transdisciplinary methodologies in putting such an imagination into practice. In doing so, we seek to destabilise the prevailing hegemony of secular science over other ways of knowing and being in the world. We draw attention to the consequential agency of beyond-human lifeforms in shaping local and global worlds and to the power of experimental, emplaced storytelling in conveying the lively and lethal becoming-withs that animate an unevenly shared and increasingly vulnerable planet. The wisdom of our kindred plants, animals, elements, mountains, forests, oceans, rivers, skies, and ancestors are part of this story. Finally, we reflect on the structural challenges in decolonising climate change and associated forms of knowledge production in light of past and ongoing thefts of sovereignty over lands, bodies, and ecosystems across the tropics.