Mainstream teacher education provides little insight into the forces that shape teacher identity and consciousness. Becoming educated, becoming a postcolonial teacher-scholar-researcher necessitates personal transformation based on an understanding and critique of these forces. In this context this chapter develops a notion of critical ontology (ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies what it means to be in the world, to be human) and its relationship to being a teacher in light of indigenous knowledges and ontologies. As teachers from the dominant culture explore issues of indigeneity, they highlight both their differences with cultural others and the social construction of their own subjectivities. In this context they come to understand themselves, the ways they develop curriculum, and their pedagogy in a postcolonial world. Such issues become even more important at a time where new forms of economic, political, and military colonialism are reshaping both colonizing and colonized societies. This chapter makes three basic points:


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Philosophy/CritOntologyIndi.doc