Review of Decolonizing in Practice: Reflective Learning from Cross-Cultural Perspectives by Ranjan Datta (ed.)

Decolonization in Practice moves beyond mere theoretical discourse to offer deeply profound, embodied, and applied expressions of decolonization.This book is structured into five distinct parts, each focusing on different communities' reflections on decolonization.The book creates a space for Indigenous, feminist, racialized, immigrant, refugee, disabled and intersectional scholars and community practitioners living on Turtle Island to voice their efforts at decolonization in practice.While the decolonization efforts largely emerge from practitioners and scholars on Turtle Island, several authors contextualize their experiences and understanding of settler-colonialism both internationally and here on Turtle Island) bringing greater depth to this anthology.Privileging Indigenous voices, the first section provides a deeply nuanced exploration into the ongoing endeavours of Indigenous scholars and practitioners to reclaim, revitalize and recentre Indigenous epistemology and Indigenous sovereignty.The essays included in this section emphasize the importance of land, language, stories, ceremony, and community in the decolonization process.A highlight of Part One is the essay by Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane, who characterizes a lifetime of being at the intersection of Indigeneity and academia as a "soul wound".Beyond a pedagogical approach, she describes the shiibaashka/igan (jingle dress dance) as a dance of healing in the face of ongoing colonial violence.As one of the most tangible and courageous examples of decolonization in practice, Pheasant-Neganigwane's story of performing the shiibaashaka/igan in response to racist comments made by several students in an Aboriginal Education course is moving.A gifted storyteller, Pheasant-Neganigwane's words have the power to transport the reader to that room and its suffocating silence of racism and colonialism.And as Pheasant-Neganigwane rises to perform the shiibaashka/igan, the reader is metaphorically moved to rise and dance in solidarity as well.In the second part of the book, racialized immigrant women and children offer their experiences of navigating and resisting systemic oppression on Turtle Island.These stories are poignant and varied, reflecting the unique struggles at the intersection of race, gender, and immigration.The contributors discuss their respective journeys of learning to honour the Indigenous lands upon which they now live, while also maintaining their own cultural identities and knowledges.Part Two ends with a notable contribution from Prarthona and Prokriti Datta, Ranjan Datta's teenage daughters, who offer their honest perspectives on learning and community building through land-based education in a community garden.When discussing intergenerational knowledge, Western culture has long recognized the importance and contribution of elders to knowledge transmission.However, in many Indigenous cultures, the exchange of knowledge is not unilateral from elder to child but rather is a reciprocal process where both elders and children teach and learn with and from each other.There is no finer example of Datta's decolonization in practice than the inclusion of his daughters' reflections in the book.Resisting the Western adage