Toward Decolonizing the Black and White A’nger cloth

Culture, Praxis and Hyphenated Spaces

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14288/tci.v17i1.192428

Abstract

This paper uses the a’nger cloth, a traditional cloth belonging to the Tiv tribe of Benue, Nigeria as a metaphor for framing autoethnographical narratives and undertakings. Through storying and poetizing about lived experiences, culture, migration tales, identity, gender, marginalization, race and silence, stories emerge as praxis for decolonizing the curriculum. As a non-Western feminist, diasporic academic living in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Algonquin territory, how might I navigate the changing and uncertain spaces of belonging? Through the a'nger cloth, I find ways of sharing generational family stories through poetry. These stories invite alternative and inclusive spaces into the classroom that welcome “other” ways of being and knowing. Key-words: decolonising the curriculum; narratives; spaces.

Author Biography

Hembadoon Oguanobi, University of Carleton, Ottawa

Hembadoon Iyortyer Oguanobi holds a doctorate in Law from the University of Durham, England, an LLB from the University of Cardiff, an LLM from the University of Hull, England, and an MA in Education from the University of Ottawa. She is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, and a National Committee on Accreditation (NCA) assessed candidate of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. She is working on her second doctorate within the field of curriculum studies at the University of Ottawa. Hembadoon is the recipient of the 2019 CACS Cynthia Chambers award. She teaches at the Department of Law and Legal Studies, University of Carleton, Ottawa. She has published in the Journal of World Intellectual Property, and Education Journal- Revue de l’education.

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Published

2020-08-11