Ethical wayfinding in decolonizing child and youth care education

In response to the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015), post-secondary institutions across Canada are attempting to decolonize and Indigenize their pedagogies and curriculum, while also grappling with the ongoing colonial nature of education. This dissertation is motivated by my own experiences of being unsettled by my complicity in the reproduction of settler colonialism within Child and Youth Care (CYC) education. Utilizing wayfinding as methodology, I offer accounts of my attempts to navigate the material-discursive landscapes of decolonizing CYC education, my own ethical entanglements in my daily practice as a CYC educator, and my actions and intentions toward decolonizing my field of praxis. Reading posthumanist and Indigenous philosophies in conversation with each other, I examine the ways coloniality is deeply embedded in the CYC curriculum, and how posthumanist and Indigenous philosophies can work together in support of decolonizing CYC education. Through this process, I hope to invite readers into their own wayfinding journeys within decolonizing CYC education in ways that resist stability and certainty, and emphasize instead the urgency, possibility, and agency of our individual and collective responsibilities in decolonizing education.