Indigenous Amazigh Curriculum: The Importance of Positionality and Relationality

Mounia Mnouer
Princeton University

Abstract: Amazigh curriculum epistemologies and pedagogies have traditionally been conceptualized under the umbrella of academic fields focused on Middle East and North Africa studies, not allowing for an Indigenous epistemology to occur. In terms of the curriculum, indigenizing means that we include Indigenous knowledge to deepen understanding of Tamazgha (Amazigh lands), and we transform teaching pedagogies and practices to account for Indigenous place, community, and experience. In the fall of 2022, I created and taught a course at Princeton University titled “Indigenous North Africa: Amazigh Communities." Through this course, I was able to explore with students the concepts of positionality and relationality. These two concepts allowed us to situate ourselves in the curricular inquiry and explore knowledge related to Tamazgha. In this article, I discuss the importance of positionality and relationality in the Amazigh Indigenous curriculum and the need for a Tamazgha-focused curriculum to foster respect and understanding of Indigenous Amazigh communities and strengthen relationships with them in Tamazgha and beyond.

Keywords: Indigeneity, Amazigh, positionality, methodology, Tamazgha

Problem Statement

Indigenous epistemologies in academia still face some challenges. “Colonialist ideologies become normalized within national discourses and internalized among minoritized peoples.” [1] With respect to Amazigh people, the Arabization project silenced our Amazigh history and language. Taking the example of Morocco, Arabization came as a weapon used against French colonization (1912-1956). This project, launched in the early 1960s, was championed by the Istiqlal party and Muslim fundamentalists who defied any modernist agendas for fronting the use of French language.[2] Morocco wasn’t the sole target of Arabization. So were Algeria, Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia. However, European languages still gained power and prominence as the languages of technology to ensure relationships with the West. As a result, Amazigh language, history, and culture were absent from educational spheres and from the national curriculum. This colonial tornado led to the difficulties that Amazigh peoples have encountered in their efforts to reclaim their history, language, and knowledge. Consequently, African education systems continued to perpetuate a colonial paradigm that was a residue from former colonial structures while disrupting Indigenous knowledge.[3]

Indigenous considerations in academia still face some challenges. Colonialism became embedded within the educational system itself, functioning to erase Indigenous cultures and exclude Indigenous systems of knowledge. [4] In this case, Indigenous history has become      marginalized for the sake of the powerful who worked to keep their power and dominance at the expense of the Indigenous people they had excluded.[5] To break this pattern, educators need to be actively engaged in a critical discourse that explores the ways colonial relations are and continue to be perpetuated and maintained.[6] One way to reclaim Indigenous place is through developing a curriculum where Indigenous voice is at the center while exploring and engaging in knowledge from an Indigenous perspective.

Indigenous Knowledge

Indigenous knowledge has become a buzzword that needs to not only be taken seriously but also not be used for the profit of non-Indigenous communities and capitalist gains. The African scholar Morolo defines Indigenous knowledge as “a body of knowledge that is built up through generations and is in most cases in the custody of elders of communities.”[7] However, there is a misconception that Indigenous knowledge is traditional knowledge that is only related to the past. Indigenous knowledge is viewed by its communities as continuous and in relation to their environment.[8] Nevertheless, many Indigenous peoples have argued that reclaiming history to understand the present of Indigenous peoples is an important project of decolonization.[9]

Many Amazigh scholars such as Brahim El Guabli have stated that the concept of being Amazigh Indigenous is grounded in three foundations: Akal (land), Awal (language) and Afgan (person/people).[10] In this sense, Indigenous knowledge needs to encompass the sense of place (Tamazgha), the sense of community (Indigenous people of Tamazgha), and the language (Tamazight) which bring different sets of knowledge systems that are important to Imazighen (Indigenous people of Tamazgha). It is important to note that in the case of a curriculum, Indigenous knowledge should not be presented as another set of Western knowledge to be analyzed and studied.[11] The centering of Tamazgha in the Indigenous Amazigh curriculum needs to be seriously considered. In claiming Tamazgha as a concept for Amazigh place, the curriculum centers Amazigh land-based, Indigenous ethnic, linguistic, and cross-cultural content      and de-centers the curricular research from academic fields focused on Middle East and North Africa Studies that tend to forefront an Arab narrative, erasing Indigenous Amazigh presence and history. Therefore, the Amazigh curriculum presents a sense of agency that centers Amazigh knowledge and experience. It is important to note that, as Nakata emphasizes, “People’s lived experience at the interface is the point of entry for investigation, not the case under investigation.” 11 This necessitates that the instructor and the student understand experience as it occurs rather than using predisposed theories and systems to analyze the lived experience of Indigenous peoples. Therefore, the curriculum related to concepts of indigeneity needs to be revised on a continuous basis and should include accounts of Indigenous experiences. Moreover, the Indigenous curriculum should not serve an institutional or a personal agenda but should rather be a holistic process that includes two important concepts: Positionality and relationality.

Positionality

Positionality can refer to how one situates themselves within the content they research or teach, the communities with which one interacts, and how they are aware of the privileges and biases one can enter the subject matter with. Positionality can also be understood as “striving to better understand ourselves, our relationship with the communities with which we work, and our understanding of the problematic interactions that can arise between the two.”[12] Positionality is a practice that Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars need to assume in the curriculum. They need to reflect on their privileges and the identities that they come with to the classroom to be able to engage with how Indigenous knowledge and voices should be centered. This quest of centering Indigenous knowledge is not new, as Indigenous scholars throughout the world have been fighting for social justice. The Indigenous Studies discipline in North America in the 1970s was doomed, as the discipline did not gain autonomy but was instead marginalized, tokenized.[13] In the case of Amazigh Studies, El Guabli emphasizes that “practitioners of Amazigh Studies have an activist streak that is attuned to issues of hegemony, colonialism, and disempowerment.”[14] Therefore, the curriculum should address the marginalization of voices that have been historically de-centered. Moreover, the learners and instructors in the curriculum need to assume their positionality, where knowledge is not seen as universal or objective, but as politically and historically situated.[15]

Being aware of the biases that one enters the classroom with is in and of itself a praxis. Paulo Freire defined praxis as coming together and taking action in the concepts we learn in the curriculum.[16] Simply introducing content about Indigenous topics is not enough. The most important question is how we can all collaborate with Indigenous communities to strive to reach a just education and to make sure that Indigenous knowledge is at the heart of the curriculum. This requires challenging “normalized theories of objectivity and truth” imposed by Western epistemologies.[17] However, this is necessary practice for Indigenous history not to become marginalized, as LindaSmith states: “We have allowed our ‘histories’ to be told and have then become outsiders as we heard them being retold.’’[18]

In the Amazigh Communities course that I taught in the Fall of 2022 at Princeton University, the first assignment I asked my students to complete— and I included myself—      was to complete a positionality reflection activity where students and I wrote about our privileges, identities, social statuses, where and how we seek, access, and receive knowledge, and the spaces we occupy on campus and in society. This manifestation allowed us to set the stage for learning and checking in with ourselves and being aware of our situatedness in the Amazigh curriculum. This reflection is important, as it allows the unearthing of the colonial narratives that have been imposed on Imazighen from outside and from within Tamazgha. My first contact with the students was me doing a Land Acknowledgment. The very simple act of acknowledging the Indigenous lands upon which Princeton university sits is, as Indigenous scholar Linda Smith puts it, “the most simple and yet most profound act of humility and respect that humans can offer.”[19] Students and I took turns doing Indigenous Lenni-Lenape people Land Acknowledgment every week. This very verbal act served as a continuous reminder of colonial history and its effects on Indigenous peoples to this day. Land acknowledgment should not be performative. It should be accompanied by active involvement with Indigenous communities to affect change.[20] It is a genuine attempt to seek to understand knowledge and truth from an Indigenous perspective and to reflect on Indigenous knowledge and voices from within the institution. Students, through the process of positionality and Land Acknowledgment, were able to check in with themselves throughout the course and be aware of the places they occupied and their situatedness every time they entered class, read, watched a video, or started an assignment. This process also allowed them to explore the inequities that Amazigh people have experienced and draw parallels with Indigenous contexts in North America in terms of silencing Indigenous languages and lacking representation of Indigenous history in the curriculum.

Relationality

In addition to positionality, the concept of relationality was also important to emphasize in the Amazigh Communities’ curriculum. As an Indigenous Amazigh who is positioning herself as such in the Indigenous curriculum, I needed to make sure I established holistic relations with the elders, scholars, and Amazigh women in my community to ensure that there was respect and learning from them in this process. What I mean by holistic is the relationship I have as an Amazigh to my land, community, family members, and other Indigenous communities. Hence, including their knowledge and voice as a part of a relationalprocess in the curriculum was essential.

In claiming Tamazgha as a concept for Amazigh place, the curriculum centers Amazigh land-based, ethnic, linguistic, and cross-cultural content where Indigenous relationality is integral, as it presents a collaborative practice that consistently involves work of Amazigh scholars and activists, and narratives of members of the community in both Tamazgha and the diaspora.Relationality is an important aspect of Indigenous ways of knowing because it honors the community.[21] Moreover, relationality has been highlighted by Indigenous researchers as a transformational process that better serves Indigenous communities.[22] This concept should be practiced by non-Indigenous scholars and educators entering any curriculum that pertains to Indigenous content. Indigenous scholars need to also engage in this concept in order not to essentialize their very own communities.

In preparation for the Amazigh Communities course, I traveled to different locations to meet with Amazigh people in Morocco and I communicated with different artists and activists in the diaspora through social media networks, mainly Facebook, which were used as a means for Imazighen to revitalize their Indigenous languages and cultures and communicate with other Imazighen.[23] We had conversations about their work with indigeneity on language, education, identity, social and environmental activism, and on art and orality. There is no one way to state the realities of Indigenous people. It is rather a holistic approach that demands that the curriculum researcher be always checking with the community to make sure it is a collaborative process. In the video conversations I recorded with Amazigh communities in rural and urban areas in Morocco, I was transparent about my curriculum process and purpose, and I explained how I needed to check in with the community members consistently to think about the realities of Amazigh people and to reflect together on the future and most importantly, to make sure I captured their voices exactly how they intended them to be transferred and expressed. I was very humbled by the flow of support I received from the elders, activists, scholars, and my family in this process. Therefore, in an Indigenous curriculum based on this relationality, I needed to make sure that I was not working from a “modernist and individualistic understanding of objectivity.”[24] In an Indigenous inquiry, this idea of “Western objectivism” is not the goal to be sought. Harris states that “In the view of many Indigenous people the notion of objectivity is preposterous; the observer is interacting with the observed and, therefore, logically cannot be divorced from it.”[25]

These videos were embedded in the course, and students were asked to watch them and answer some key concept questions about positionality, relationality, and the themes of the videos. They were also asked to comment on at least two classmates’ posts. These discussion boards were not only assigned to foster interaction with the material and collaboration between students in class, but also to make sure that I explained to the students the lengthy process of generating Indigenous knowledge and making it available to them, and the amount of effort and collaboration that occur in this endeavor. It was important that the students understand the importance of Indigenous agency in matters pertaining to Amazigh people voiced by Amazigh people themselves.

These interactions included conversations with my own father in our Indigenous land of Ait Belkacem, where he discussed his upbringing and relationship with the land and how he passed his Amazigh heritage and culture onto his children. The videos also included conversations with Amazigh activist Hassan Eid Belkacem, one of the first activists who co-created the Amazigh World Congress in the late 1990s, and Hadda Khiraoui, who is an Amazigh woman, an employee in the parliament’s Board of Advisors and the President of “Tazgannagh”, a regional association in the Beni Mellal-Khenifra region. “Tazgannagh” built a school in Itissimour in the Ait Mazigh community, in the Wawizeght district of the Azilal province in the Beni Mellal-Khenifra region. The association is working to make sure the children of the community stay in school. It is also connected with another association that helps preserve water for the people of the community. I also had a conversation with Fatima Agnaou, an Amazigh woman from the town of Tafraout in the Souss region in Morocco. She is a researcher at the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture, a government institute founded in 2001 to promote Amazigh issues and works at the center for didactic research and pedagogical programs. She is also an Amazigh language pedagogical teacher trainer. Our conversation highlighted the role played by different Indigenous scholars in preserving the Amazigh language and making sure there is a creation of necessary pedagogical resources not just in Morocco, but across Tamazgha that speak to the need of the community, making Tamazight an integral part of the overall experience of being Moroccan. This is what Indigenous curriculum and studies are supposed to do: “provide texture by centering community stories, particularly from Indigenous peoples to speak to their particular contexts of colonialism.”[26] The centering of Indigenous voices also allows for a holistic approach where there is a deeper understanding of the tenants of Amazigheity: Akal, Awal, and Afgan. This relationality “allows critics to better understand how communities wage opposition to otherwise naturalized structures of colonialism and problems of erasure.”[27] Therefore, in centering Amazigh voice and agency in the curriculum, one can start engaging with indigeneity.

The curriculum of Amazigh Communities also included a reading list of peer reviewed articles and reports written mostly by Amazigh scholars, live interactions in class and on Zoom with Amazigh scholars, educators, and artists in Tamazgha and the diaspora to discuss their work and share their experiences of their own indigeneity. The Amazigh guests included: scholar Brahim El Guabli, who works on issues pertaining to Amazigh language, literature, and identity; Silya Mazigh, who started a Tamazight teaching YouTube channel called “All Things Amazigh”; Asma Khalifa, an Amazigh activist who, through a collaboration with her Indigenous community, issued the first cookbook in Tamazight; Raisa Lei (her stage name), an Instagram influencer who raises awareness about colonialism, creates Amazigh art and dance content, and critiques the cultural appropriation that non-Amazigh people practice against Amazigh art, artists, and heritage.

The Amazigh guests were an integral part of the curriculum, and they added an important layer to the course, bringing their voices as Amazigh living outside of Tamazgha and in different Western contexts. The role of the Amazigh diaspora is indispensable. In the early 1990s, a group of students at INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilizations Orientales) “formed the association Tamazgha which in 1994–5 was pivotal to the establishment of the World Amazigh Congress (CMA).”[28] The efforts arising from the diaspora put the Amazigh cause on an international platform and drew attention to it. To this date, many Amazigh people living in the diaspora are making concerted efforts to preserve our cultural and linguistic heritage in different forms and mediums.

Students through theselive interactions were able to engage with Indigenous people in real time and converse with them about these matters, which demonstrated the relationality of generating knowledge. Moreover, students were able to apply their learning in class to their learning about their own environments and draw parallels. This class is only one example of how we can center Amazigheity in the syllabus. However, Amazigh and non-Amazigh scholars need to engage positionality and relationality in their practice not only to decolonize Amazigheity from linguistic, ethnic, and cultural erasure, but also to challenge dominant Western paradigms that privilege non-Indigenous notions of objectivity. Therefore, more improvements need to be made in higher education contexts in Tamazhga and in the diaspora to make sure Amazigh curriculum and studies are visible and thriving.

Future Curriculum Improvements

The Amazigh Communities course focused on positionality and relationalityas important aspects of Indigeneity. Amazigh Studies' growth over the past forty years has been eclipsed by Arabic and Francophone Studies, which still rule the discipline in the US and the UK.[29] Moreover, “colonial schooling led to the loss of Indigenous voices, self-identities and self-confidence.”[30] To make sure the Fall 2022 course was centered in an Indigenous praxis, there was a lot of effort put into going to different locations and conversing with different members of the Amazigh community and translating the material to English, checking back with the community to make sure I was capturing the knowledge as they intended it to make it accessible to Amazigh and non-Amazigh learners. However, this effort was rewarding; it allowed me to center Amazigh knowledge in my course. The success of this initial course demonstrates the need for Amazigh curriculum to gain its own agency and for additional courses that center land, language, and community. The concepts of positionality and relationality need to guide our praxis, as we need to position ourselves when we approach Indigenous content, and we need to involve Amazigh communities, scholars, and artists to improve our practice with Indigeneity.

In this regard, Amazigh curricula need to encompass more voices in different formats. “Amazigh people are producing film, art, literature, and critical theory in their own language, creating a parallel academic scene that remains inaccessible to the larger academic community.”[31] The Amazigh curriculum therefore needs to foreground and engage these contributions by Imazighen. Tamazgha is a vast geographical place and a fuller understanding of Amazigh histories and contemporary realities from an Indigenous perspective requires the inclusion of diverse voices and meaningful collaborations with Amazigh communities. Although this course attempted to involve different Amazigh voices, there are still more Amazigh locations and narratives that need in-depth understanding while paying strict attention to ethical considerations related to these communities. Therefore, the second version of this course will include more Amazigh narratives from other parts of Tamazgha that I was not able to include. It is important to note that students’ reports about this course were positive. While I cannot share direct quotes from their evaluations, I can confidently say that their access to material produced by Imazighen and interacting live with Amazigh speakers in the classroom was well received. Many of them mentioned that they have learned from these interactions and histories and were able to reflect on their own communities, demonstrating their reflection on their own positionality and relationality. As of now, I am in the process of communicating with different activists, artists, and scholars in Tamazgha to continue to improve the Amazigh curriculum. This course represents a beginning of centering Amazigheity in the curriculum. However, there needs to be more Amazigh courses that include an intersection of knowledge on language, education, art, and environment to capture the holistic nature of Amazigh curriculum. Moreover, there needs to be research conducted on students’ perceptions and learning within the Amazigh curriculum that pays close attention to positionality and relationality. This paper seeks to help guide Indigenous practice as it continues to claim its agency.

Conclusion

This course brought a holistic approach to the curriculum and helped raise awareness about Tamazgha as a region. It highlighted the centrality of Indigenous Amazigh histories. This was done through relationality, where one appreciates and understands the in-depth knowledge that Imazighen contributed through video content and real time discussions. The course also engaged in concepts of positionality where everyone situated themselves in the curriculum and explored the idea of knowledge and how it was not viewed as universal or objective, but rather politically and historically situated.[32] The course also opened doors to new ways of theorizing while breaking free from viewing knowledge from a prescribed standpoint. The role of the instructor, as Paulo Freire stated, is not to give solutions to the problems, but to assist students in seeking different ways of knowledge and engaging in critical thinking about the history and conditions of marginalized and minoritized communities.[33] This course paved the way for building more curricular programs that allow for centering Amazigh Indigenous knowledge and voice. As more people become aware of their positions within the Academy and recognize the importance of Indigenous agency, this could lead to the emergence of Tamazgha Studies beyond traditionally defined regional and/or departmental structures.

Bibliography

Abu Moghli, Mai, and Laila Kadiwal. “Decolonising the curriculum beyond the surge: Conceptualisation, positionality and conduct.” London Review of Education 19, no. 1 (2021): 1-16.

Bennett, Catherine, Kate Fitzpatrick-Harnish, and Brent Talbot. “Collaborative untangling of positionality, ownership, and answerability as white researchers in indigenous spaces.” International Journal of Music Education 40, no. 4 (2022): 628-641

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El Guabli, Brahim. “My Amazigh Indigeneity (The Bifurcated Roots of a Native Moroccan).” The Markaz Review (2021).

El Guabli, Brahim. “Where is Amazigh Studies?.” The Journal of North African Studies 27, no. 6 (2022): 1093-1100.

Freire, P. “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” New York: Herder and Herder, 1970.

Harris, Heather. “Coyote goes to school: The paradox of Indigenous higher education.” Canadian journal of native education 26, no. 2 (2002). p188.

Harris, Jonathan Anthony. “Tamazgha in France: Indigeneity and Citizenship in the diasporic Amazigh movement.” PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2019.

Kovach, Margaret. “Indigenous methodologies: Characteristics, conversations, and contexts.” University of Toronto press, 2021.

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Morolo, Tselane. “African indigenous knowledge in development: perspectives to indigenous knowledge systems.” South Africa Rural Development Quarterly 2, no. 4 (2004):

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Nakata, Martin, Alex Byrne, Vicky Nakata, and Gabrielle Gardiner. “Indigenous knowledge, the library and information service sector, and protocols.” Australian Academic & Research Libraries 36, no. 2 (2005): 7-21.

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Patel, Lisa. “Countering coloniality in educational research: From ownership to answerability.” Educational Studies 50, no. 4 (2014): 357-377.

Shizha, E. “Reclaiming our indigenous voices: The problem with postcolonial Sub-Saharan African school curriculum.” Journal of Indigenous Social Development 2, no 1 (2013):1-18.

Smith Tuhiwai, Linda. "Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples." London: Zed books Ltd (1999).

Smith, Graham Hingangaroa, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith. "Doing indigenous work: decolonizing and transforming the academy." Handbook of Indigenous education (2018): 1-27.

Footnotes

[1] Smith, Graham Hingangaroa, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith. "Doing indigenous work: decolonizing and transforming the academy." Handbook of Indigenous education (2018): 1-27.

[2] Moha Ennaji, “Language Contact, Arabization Policy and Education in Morocco,” in Language Contact and Language Conflict in Arabic (London: Routledge, 2013), 88–106.

[3] Shizha, E. “Reclaiming our indigenous voices: The problem with postcolonial Sub-Saharan African school curriculum.” Journal of Indigenous Social Development 2, no 1 (2013): 1–18.

[4] Linda Tuhiwai Smith, “Imperialism, History, Writing and Theory,” in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2021), 21–46, https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350225282.

[5] Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. “Researching in the margins issues for Māori researchers a discussion paper.” AlterNative: An international journal of Indigenous peoples 2, no. 1 (2006): 4-27.

[6] Smith, Graham Hingangaroa, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith. “Doing indigenous work: decolonizing and transforming the academy.” Handbook of Indigenous education (2018): 1-27.

[7] Morolo, Tselane. “African indigenous knowledge in development: perspectives to indigenous knowledge systems.” South Africa Rural Development Quarterly 2, no. 4 (2004): 26.

[8] Nakata, Martin, Alex Byrne, Vicky Nakata, and Gabrielle Gardiner. “Indigenous knowledge, the library and information service sector, and protocols.” Australian Academic & Research Libraries 36, no. 2 (2005): 7-21.

[9] Smith Tuhiwai, Linda. "Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples." London: Zed books Ltd (1999).

[10] El Guabli, Brahim. “My Amazigh Indigeneity (The Bifurcated Roots of a Native Moroccan).” The Markaz Review (2021).

[11] Nakata, Martin. “The cultural interface.” The Australian journal of Indigenous education 36, no. S1 (2007): 7-14.

[12] Bennett, Catherine, Kate Fitzpatrick-Harnish, and Brent Talbot. “Collaborative untangling of positionality, ownership, and answerability as white researchers in indigenous spaces.” International Journal of Music Education 40, no. 4 (2022): 628-641.

[13] Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth. “Who stole native American studies?.” Wicazo Sa Review 12, no. 1 (1997): 9-28.

[14] El Guabli, Brahim. “Where is Amazigh Studies?” The Journal of North African Studies 27, no. 6 (2022): 1093-1100.

[15] Abu Moghli, Mai, and Laila Kadiwal. “Decolonising the curriculum beyond the surge: Conceptualisation, positionality and conduct.” London Review of Education 19, no. 1 (2021): 1-16.

[16] Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder, 1970.

[17] Rigney, Lester-Irabinna. “A first perspective of Indigenous Australian participation in science: Framing Indigenous research towards Indigenous Australian intellectual sovereignty.” (2001).

[18] Smith Tuhiwai, Linda. “Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples.” London: Zed books Ltd (1999). p. 34.

[19] Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. “The Significance of Land Acknowledgements as a Commentary on Indigenous Pedagogies.” Occasional Paper Series 2023, no. 49 (2023): 6.

[20] Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. “The Significance of Land Acknowledgements as a Commentary on Indigenous Pedagogies.” Occasional Paper Series 2023, no. 49 (2023): 6.

[21] Kovach, Margaret. “Indigenous methodologies: Characteristics, conversations, and contexts.” University of Toronto press, 2021.

[22] Cajete, Gregory A., and Santa Clara Pueblo. “Contemporary Indigenous education: A nature-centered American Indian philosophy for a 21st century world.” Futures 42, no. 10 (2010): 1126-1132.

[23] Mnouer, Mounia. “The Imazighen of Morocco and the Diaspora on Facebook.” Indigenous Peoples Rise Up: The Global Ascendency of Social Media Activism (2021): 80-92.

[24] Patel, Lisa. “Countering coloniality in educational research: From ownership to answerability.” Educational Studies 50, no. 4 (2014): 357-377.

[25] Harris, Heather. “Coyote goes to school: The paradox of Indigenous higher education.” Canadian journal of native education 26, no. 2 (2002). p188.

[26] Na’puti, Tiara R., and Joëlle M. Cruz. “Mapping interventions: Toward a decolonial and indigenous praxis across communication subfields.” Communication, Culture and Critique 15, no. 1 (2022): 1-20.

[27] Na’puti, Tiara R., and Joëlle M. Cruz. “Mapping interventions: Toward a decolonial and indigenous praxis across communication subfields.” Communication, Culture and Critique 15, no. 1 (2022): 1-20.

[28] Harris, Jonathan Anthony. “Tamazgha in France: Indigeneity and Citizenship in the diasporic Amazigh movement.” PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2019. p.1268.

[29] El Guabli, Brahim. “Where is Amazigh Studies?.” The Journal of North African Studies 27, no. 6 (2022): 1093-1100.

[30] Shizha, E. “Reclaiming our indigenous voices: The problem with postcolonial Sub-Saharan African school curriculum.” Journal of Indigenous Social Development 2, no 1 (2013): p. 8.

[31] El Guabli, Brahim. “Where is Amazigh Studies?.” The Journal of North African Studies 27, no. 6 (2022): 1098.

[32] Abu Moghli, Mai, and Laila Kadiwal. “Decolonising the curriculum beyond the surge: Conceptualisation, positionality and conduct.” London Review of Education 19, no. 1 (2021): 1-16.

[33] Freire, P. “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” New York: Herder and Herder, 1970.