YOST5012

In this class, students are invited to investigate the world from varied historical perspectives, learn new ways of thinking, and grow as active citizens and lifelong learners for the 21st century. In particular, students will explore the concepts of indigeneity and colonialism within the context of youth and community work in Ireland. While many narrate Ireland as a site of political conflict and reconciliation, this course takes a more holistic, historic, and futuristic perspective. Over centuries, Ireland has experienced successive waves of colonization most notably, and recently, by the English. Hallinan (1977) wrote “if Ireland can claim any special place in the history of colonialism, it is that of a laboratory and testing ground for policies that would be applied at a later date, in different times and places.” Irish colonization served as the blueprint for settler colonialism around the globe and resulted in a paradox wherein the Irish diaspora transitioned to a privileged colonizer status. At the same time, the Irish in Ireland remained occupied, both experiencing and carrying the legacy of intergenerational trauma. Over the past few decades, Irish peoples in Ireland, often under the auspices of youth and community work in rural and Gaelic speaking areas, have engaged in a project of re-indigenization. Partnering with and hosting Indigenous peoples from around the globe, Ireland is reclaiming its indigeneity; revitalizing pre-colonial culture, governance structures, language, ecologies, and lifeways.

Students will engage this content using tested practices of experiential and place-based learning grounded in the traditions of youth and community work. We will learn, on the land and in community, about the ways that colonization changed both people and place. To best understand these experiences and impacts, students will learn alongside youth and community workers in gaeltacht (gaelic speaking) regions. They will walk the land, listen to its stories, and feel its revitalization. For example, students might visit the emigration museum to view ship manifests or walk the Bridge of Tears, take a wee dander to learn Irish traditional ecological knowledge, attend a nature-based healing in the local east (waterfall), work alongside community members to restore the ancient oak forest, learn from the hawthorn and hazel in the tradition of an Irish forest school, or explore ancient rites of passage and ceremony. Students will close their time in Ireland by revisiting common narrations of Ireland as a site of political conflict and reconciliation in comparison to the Indigenous Ireland movement: an ongoing movement to reclaim and revitalize Irish land, language, and lifeways and to build relationships with and responsibility to other international Indigenous communities.

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