ESJ Research Conversation 30 June 2021

Extraction education? Residential schooling of indigenous children: issues past and present

Speakers

• Professor Jacqueline Fear-Segal, University of East Anglia
• Malvika Gupta, D.Phil candidate, University of Oxford
• Dr Jo Woodman, Survival International

Extracting children from their indigenous communities to be educated in residential schools was common practice among settler colonial societies of North America and Australia in the 19th and 20th centuries as part of a mission to acquire land. Now, in the 21st century, thousands of residential schools educate indigenous children across Asia, Africa and South America, often with links to extractive industries that have commercial interests in the natural resources of environments inhabited by these communities. This interdisciplinary session will bring historical and anthropological analysis to understand this form of ‘extraction education’ across time and space and will consider impacts on indigenous communities: their cultures, languages, knowledge systems and ecosystems. Examples of alternatives to ‘extraction education’ will also be discussed that are rooted in indigenous communities and their landscapes.

Respondent

Dr. Kevin Myers, Domus Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Histories of Education and Childhood, University of Birmingham.

This an internal event and only open to staff and students from the School of Education.