Indigenous facilitators raising awareness about colonialism within settler colonies: tensions and ambivalence

Despite the wide interest toward the impact of antiracism or anticolonial trainings on White and settler peoples, there is a lack of consideration of the experience of racialized or Indigenous trainers. Yet, the few existing studies suggest major negative impacts: stress, emotional labor, burnout. This study explores the experience of 12 Indigenous facilitators raising awareness about colonialism in “Quebec” and the risk of negative effects on them, through participatory research, using qualitative methods and thematic analysis. The results show that the main difficulties are dealing with the participants, namely their questions, comments, emotions, and the ambivalence in navigating the power dynamic between settlers and First Peoples, expressed through various contradicting injunctions. This seems tolerable to the trainers as facing White settlers is worse in their daily lives. The workshops appear as an interpersonal reflection of settler-colonialism and White supremacy, through White and settler fragility and normalization of colonial violence.