In Episode 59 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Andrea Sterzuk a Professor of Education at the University of Regina which is part of Treaty 4 and resides on the traditional territories of the nēhiyawak, Anihšināpēk, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakoda Peoples, and homeland of the Michif/Métis Nation. She is a former French immersion and Core French teacher with classroom teaching experience in Saskatchewan and in the Northwest Territories. Dr. Andrea Sterzuk grew up in rural Saskatchewan. When she was a child, most adults in her town were white settlers, bilingual and either immigrants themselves or children of immigrants. Most of her generation spoke only English. Her early educational exposure to multilingualism, family language shift and the effects of language-in-education policy continue to influence her present-day research interests and teaching in language education, particularly as it relates to settler colonialism. As an adult, teacher educator, and educational researcher she has worked at learning French, Spanish, Cree and Ukrainian as additional languages. We discussed the following: some of her life history and educational journey, her use of story in research, teaching, and writing, philosophical dispositions toward learning Indigenous languages, community collaborations, Indigenous language revitalization research, programming, ethical relations, and so much more.

In Episode 58 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Lisa Korteweg and Tesa Fiddler. They work as educational researchers, teacher educators, colleagues, and friends in Thunder Bay, on the traditional territory of the Fort Williams First Nations-Anemki Wajiw (signatory to the 1850 Robinson-Superior treaty).  Tesa Fiddler is Anishinaabekwe from Kitchinuhmaykoosib Inninuwug and Onigaming First Nation in Northwestern Ontario. Tesa Fiddler is currently on secondment as an Education Officer for the Ontario Ministry of Education from her role as the Coordinator of Indigenous Education for Thunder Bay Catholic DSB. Dr. Lisa Korteweg is an associate professor at Lakehead University. Her community-based work focuses on questions of how schools grapple and teachers engage with the socially unjust realities of Indigenous youth who daily contend with anti-Indigenous racism and colonial inequities in education.  We discussed the following: The confluences of their different life histories, negotiating, resisting, and challenging settler colonialism, Treaty education, citizens, and relations, brave conversations, professional development and their research projects that seek to cultivate settler educator accountability to the TRC’s Calls to Action, our roles and responsibilities, and so much more.

In Episode 57 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Margaret Macintyre Latta, Dr. Bill Cohen, Terry Beaudry, & Dr. Jody Dlouhy-Nelson.  They work at UBC Okanagan and co-lead a SSHRC Partnership grant titled Co-Curricular-Making: Honoring Indigenous Connections to Land, Culture and the Relational Self.  We discussed the following: importance of storying the wisdom that sits in the places we live, unlearning and learning with Syilx Okanagan Elders, Knowledge Keepers, Residential School Survivors, community members, teachers, and students, food, water, land, mental health and wellness securities, (Re)Syilx(izing) educational knowledge, curriculum and pedagogies, co-creating knowledge, climate change, travels across Turtle Island along its rivers and tributaries, story of the Residential School Monster, human reconciliation with the more-than human-world, captikʷł story and knowledge system, impacts of experiencing openness, vulnerability, listening, and ceremony as professional (un)learning, troubling settler colonial systems of public schooling, what each has learned with, from, and alongside others through co-curriculum-making during the SSHRC Partnership Project, and so much more.

Fooknconversation talking about “Academicky” Stuff Description for Episode 56 (Dr. Melanie Janzen): In Episode 56 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Melanie Janzen a Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the University of Manitoba. Her research uses critical perspectives to explore the inter-related workings of power and discourses, particularly as they relate to the experiences of teachers and the marginalization of children. Dr. Melanie Janzen was a classroom teacher for 15 years. She is life-long Winnipegger, living and working on Treaty One Territory. We discussed the following: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, historical contexts of Winnipeg, impacts of electing Wab Kinew, Nahanni Fontaine, Bernadette Smith, and the teachings and scholarship of Niigaan Sinclair, the current political contexts of Manitoba, the Canadian Human Rights Museum, educational stigmatization of children in care, impacts of neoliberal educational policies,  learnification, the challenge of ethical obligations when caring for and teaching children and youth, solidarities in protesting Bill 64, restorying teachers’ stories, and so much more.

In Episode 55 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr.  Heather Stone an Associate Professor who holds the Nalley E.P./LEQSF Endowed Professorship in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She has over fifteen years of experience in education and has developed curricula for K-12, college, and community projects. The curriculum is derived from the oral histories she collects with and alongside different coastal communities who are losing their land due to climate change. We discussed the following: oral history methodologies, the lived experiences of rural communities during the desegregation of K-12 public schooling system, developing a global perspective with teacher candidates, collaborative interdisciplinary projects, bringing community oral history education via virtual reality to the K-12 science classroom, her documentary film Isle of Memories, and so much more.

In Episode 54 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Krista McCracken an award winning public historian and archivist. They work as a Researcher/Curator at Algoma University’s Arthur A. Wishart Library and Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre, in Baawating (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario) on the Robinson-Huron Treaty territory, the traditional territories of the Anishnaabeg, specifically the Garden River and Batchewana First Nations.  Krista’s research and podcast focus on community archives, residential schooling system, access, and outreach. We discussed the following: history of the residential and day schooling systems, the creation and evolution of the Shingwauk Residential School, decolonial archival futures, educational programs and services provided at and through the Centre, role of the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association, the original Shingwauk Project of 1979 and the visionary impact of 1981 Shingwauk Reunion, the award winning exhibitions, and so much more.

Fooknconversation talking about “Academicky” Stuff Description for Episode 53 (Dr. Maria Luiza Süssekind): In Episode 53 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Maria Luiza Süssekind a Professor, mother and grandmother, feminist and activist, and writer from the Global South. She currently does research and teaches at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro State. She is a member of the council for Human Rights policies of the Ministry of Education. We discussed the following: lived experiences as a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia and University of Ottawa, studying autobiographical research, International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, navigating and negotiating her undergraduate and graduate studies in Brazil, Deleuze and Guattari, Michel de Certeau, Marx, poststructuralism, plurilingualism, emergence and impact of Brazilian everyday life studies, nets of knowledge, epistemicide, settler colonialism, her documentary Keep Me Away from this Father, and so much more.

In Episode 52 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Bryan Smith a Lecturer in Humanities and Social Sciences education at James Cook University. His research looks at anti-racist and decolonising readings of humanities and social sciences education. Specifically, his work critically interrogates place, colonial and racialized logics in curriculum practice, and the convergence of history, geography, and citizenship education in re-imagining local and global places. His current line of work looks at the making of settler place and how everyday features of the urban landscape writes settler possession into the material and symbolic spaces of communities. We discussed the following: troubling his lived experiences as a white newcomer settler immigrant to Thul Garrie Waja (Townsville, Australia), memorial geographies of invasion, curriculum as invader, walking the stories of colonial ghosts, normalizing place renaming practices of settler communities, settler anxieties, critical toponomy, social studies, ethical responsibilities, and so much more.

In Episode 51 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Shirley & Dr. Hargreaves. Both are Research Professors at Boston College. Dr. Dennis Shirley is a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Dr. Hargreaves is Visiting Professor at UOttawa and Co-Director of a Canadian Playful Schools Network.  They have collaborated as writers, teachers, speakers, and advisers for almost 20 years. We discussed some of the following issues: lived experiences as transnational migrants and academics, collaborations with ministries of education, school board leaders and teachers in Alberta, Ontario, England, and United States,  life transitions, the failure to engage white working class communities, intersectionality, rethinking sympathy versus empathy, researching intergenerational macro and micro educational, historical, philosophical, political, and religious contexts during what they have titled  The Age of Identity, their fifth co-authored book, and so much more.

In Episode 50 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Stephen Hurley the Founder and Chief Catalyst at voicEd Radio. Combining a life-long love of radio and an intense 30-year career in public education, Stephen Hurley is passionate about finding ways to enliven the public square with vibrant conversations about learning, teaching, schooling, and education in its broadest sense. We discussed some of the following issues: his lived experiences in relation to lunchtime radio stations, makerspaces, creating an online live radio and podcasting ecosystem as a public square, trial and tribulations of being a host, experimenting, negotiating, and adapting to different educational, historical, political, technological contexts as a classroom teacher and teacher educator, open concept classrooms, team teaching, creating conversations among podcasters, researchers, and teachers, life transitions, theology, philosophy, his relationship with music, being a life-long learner, and so much more.