Moving Away from Settler Colonialism in the Classroom: Arguments for Mobility in Teacher Education

This article advocates for Indigenous-led mobile experiences in teacher education as an effective strategy for preparing teachers to disrupt settler colonialism. Using qualitative methods, we analyze a summer institute that took 25 in-service teachers on a journey led by Indigenous educators along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. The teachers’ embodied movement across diverse urban, rural, and reservation landscapes connected past and present settler-colonialisms and revealed the endurance, complexity, and creativity of Indigenous life. The institute exposed teachers to Indigenous traditions of mobile learning that they drew upon to redesign their curriculum and pedagogy after the institute: Teachers guided students in recognizing colonial bias in textbooks; created new lessons on contemporary Indigenous art, culture, and political resistance; designed mobile experiences for their own students, such as field trips and games; and began to challenge settler colonialism and anti-Indigenous racism in their school districts and professional associations.