Disrupting the Colonizing Gaze and Mobilizing for Systemic Decolonization

Watershed events of 2020 have uncovered an urgency to disrupt the colonizing gaze and use liberatory and revolutionary practices to move towards tangible action for systemic decolonization and social change. While institutions have historically been resistant to transformative work, the same institutions are pressured in the current context to acknowledge and address their complicity in upholding systems of oppression, inequality, political disconnection, and voter ambivalence. Written from the perspective of racialized scholars, aspects of critical race theory, queering, and feminist lenses are weaved and intertwined to examine ways in which educators can center major events, locally and internationally, as part of enacting decolonial pedagogy and curriculum. The COVID-19 pandemic, murder of George Floyd, and the rise of Black Lives Matter movement are examined as teachable moments on how they collectively symbolize ongoing systemic inequities within educational institutions. We argue for a divestment from the curriculum of denial towards a curriculum of critical consciousness, where the colonizing gaze is disrupted with intentionality, opening possibilities to advance equity and social justice. The curriculum of critical consciousness is defined using three pillars which include grassroots activism, revolutionary pedagogies, and Indigenization and decolonization. Each pillar includes strategies for implementation as a starting point to work towards systemic decolonization.