Gathering ourselves for the impossible: ‘measuring’ indigenization and decolonization in syllabi

This article explores the challenges we encountered in our attempts to measure efforts towards decolonization and indigenization in our political science syllabi. Specifically, we reflect on two questions: How can we conceptualize decolonization and indigenization? And what counts as measurable evidence of either? The lessons we learned from grappling with these questions lead us to argue that teaching with a commitment to indigenization and decolonization must minimally involve ‘gathering ourselves’ [Beausoleil, E. 2022. Calling in to Cut back: settlers learning to listen for a decolonial future. Ethnicities 22, no. 5: 705–20.] – taking account of who we are as thinkers/scholars/educators to understand where we stand and who walks with us in the classroom. Maintaining a vulnerable orientation to this work and our teaching renders the classroom, at best, ‘an encounter’ (Inayatullah, N. 2022. Pupils dilated: towards a pedagogy of emergence. In Subversive pedagogies: radical possibility in the academy, eds. K. Schick, and C. Timperley, 81–91. New York: Routledge; Schick, K. 2022. Uncertain pedagogies: cultivating micro-communities of learning. In Subversive pedagogies: radical possibility in the academy, eds. K. Schick, and C. Timperley, 92–107. New York: Routledge] whose outcome cannot be known beforehand. In other words, we must learn to do decolonization and indigenization work, even when we are not certain we are doing it right or where it will take us.