Schools in Canada are colonial institutions—built on Indigenous lands, emerging from colonial purposes, structured around colonial knowledge systems. Decolonizing school spaces involves examining and transforming how this colonial character manifests in physical environments, symbols, practices, and relationships. This work extends beyond curriculum to the places where education happens, the names and images they bear, and the relationships they embody. Decolonizing space is one dimension of the larger project of transforming education's relationship with Indigenous peoples.
Colonial Spaces
Schools occupy Indigenous territories. The land beneath every school in Canada is Indigenous land—in many cases, unceded territory. Acknowledging this basic fact situates schools within colonial relationships that their existence embodies. The land schools stand on was taken or acquired through treaties that remain contested or unfulfilled.
School names and imagery often celebrate colonial figures. Schools named for colonial administrators, military figures, or settlers whose legacies include Indigenous harm carry those legacies into present educational spaces. Statues, portraits, and symbols may honour people whose actions would be condemned today. These namings and images communicate whose history is celebrated.
Spatial organization reflects colonial assumptions. Classroom layouts, building designs, and landscape treatments often assume Euro-Canadian educational models. Designs that work for certain pedagogies may not work for others; environments built for colonial purposes may resist decolonized practices.
Whose knowledge is displayed shapes whose knowledge is valued. What's on walls, in libraries, and throughout school environments reflects whose knowledge matters. Environments saturated with Euro-Canadian content while Indigenous content is absent or marginalized communicate hierarchy.
What Decolonizing Space Involves
Land acknowledgments are starting points, not endpoints. Acknowledging the Indigenous territory where schools are located has become common practice. But acknowledgments without deeper engagement risk becoming empty ritual. Meaningful acknowledgment connects to ongoing relationship with Indigenous peoples, not just historical recognition.
Renaming can remove colonial celebration. When schools are named for figures whose legacies include Indigenous harm, renaming removes ongoing commemoration of that harm. Renaming processes involve community engagement, historical education, and selection of names that don't perpetuate problematic honouring. Resistance to renaming often reveals attachment to colonial legacies.
Physical environment transformation creates spaces that welcome Indigenous presence. This might include Indigenous art, plants, designs, and symbols throughout schools. It might involve creating spaces suitable for Indigenous pedagogies—circles, land-based learning areas, ceremonial spaces. Physical changes communicate that Indigenous presence belongs.
Land-based learning connects education to specific places. Rather than abstracted classroom content, land-based approaches ground learning in local territories, ecosystems, and Indigenous relationships with land. This requires physical access to land and pedagogical approaches that use land as teacher.
Relationship-building with local Indigenous nations grounds decolonization in specific contexts. What decolonizing space means depends on whose territory a school occupies, what relationships exist with that nation, and what that nation seeks from educational institutions. Generic decolonization that doesn't engage specific nations and territories misses the relational character of what decolonization requires.
Tensions and Resistance
Attachment to colonial symbols produces resistance. People may have emotional connections to school names, alumni associations may resist changes, and communities may prefer continuity over confrontation with colonial history. This resistance reflects investment in existing arrangements that decolonization challenges.
Resource constraints limit physical transformation. Creating decolonized spaces—new facilities, modified environments, land access—requires resources that schools may lack. Decolonization can become another unfunded mandate if resources don't accompany expectations.
Superficial changes may substitute for substantive transformation. Adding Indigenous art without changing practices, renaming without relationship-building, or creating Indigenous spaces that aren't used may satisfy symbolic requirements while leaving colonial dynamics intact. The risk of tokenistic space changes parallels risks of tokenistic curriculum changes.
Who leads decolonization matters. If non-Indigenous administrators lead decolonization without Indigenous community direction, results may not serve Indigenous interests. Decolonization requires Indigenous leadership; non-Indigenous actors should support rather than direct.
Beyond Physical Space
Relational space involves how people relate within schools. Power dynamics, communication patterns, and whose voice matters all constitute relational space that may need decolonizing. Physical changes without relational changes leave colonial relationships intact in new surroundings.
Temporal space involves how time is structured. Colonial education imposes particular time structures—rigid schedules, calendar-based organization, time as scarce resource. Indigenous temporalities may differ. Decolonizing temporal space might involve different relationships with time, pace, and rhythm.
Epistemic space involves what knowledge is present and valued. Decolonizing epistemic space means including Indigenous knowledge not as addition to colonial knowledge but as legitimate knowledge system. This inclusion affects not just what's taught but how knowing is understood.
Questions for Reflection
What colonial elements exist in school spaces you're familiar with? Names, symbols, designs, absences?
What would decolonized school spaces look like in your context? What changes would be needed?
What resistance to decolonizing space have you observed or would you anticipate? What produces this resistance?
How should non-Indigenous schools and communities engage Indigenous nations in decolonizing efforts?
Beyond physical space, what relational, temporal, and epistemic spaces need decolonizing in education?