Academic Senate

Decolonizing the Academy Committee

 

Scope

The committee serves the Senate’s and the College’s commitment to continual reflection by giving deep consideration to  the structures, policies, and culture of the institution. By working toward a decolonized academy, the committee will review and respond to campus-wide matters and give recommendations that aim to alleviate the cycle of colonization.

Function

  • Begin a process of acknowledgment, reconciliation, and healing.
  • Identify the structures, policies, and regulations that may perpetuate a colonized hierarchy and discuss ways to reduce their harm.
  • Respond to state- and college-wide undertakings and propositions.
  • Examine inherited constructs and culture and their effects on the campus and its people.

Committee Members

  • Jean Paik, English department
  • Clay Barham, English department
  • Shannon Herbert, English department
  • Kristin Lui-Martinez, Math department
  • Christyanne Melendez, Physical Sciences department
  • Sequoyah Marie Thiessen, Indigenous Scholars
  • Yamissette Westerband, Philosophy and Social Sciences department

Meeting information -- All are welcome

  • We meet every other Thursday from 1-2pm in HSS261. 
  • For the Fall 2025, the dates are as follows:
    • September 4
    • September 18
    • October 16
    • November 6
    • November 20
    • December 4

Agendas & Minutes

Events, announcements, news

Dr. Shannon Speed at SMC on October 21 at 11:15 a.m. in HSS104.

Dr. Shannon Speed, 10/2025

 

Land Acknowledgment and Action Practice

The Decolonizing the Academy Committee is motivated by a deeply-felt and shared belief that in order to shape a more interdependent, collaborative, and sustainable world we need to recognize and redress the colonial structures that currently shape and define our inequitable and unsustainable reality.

The principle guiding the Decolonizing Committee is the desire for more imaginative control over our shared reality - this includes our relationship to the land.

In 2021, Tongva elder Julia Bogany visited with us to discuss the process of renewing our connection to the land. Shortly after her visit, Julia died of a stroke (read the L.A. Times article on Julia Bogany here), but her work continues.

Watch the recording of Julia Bogany's visit and read her website, To Be Visible, for more information about the enduring relation between Native peoples and the land.

Julia Bogany
"I never say that the land was stolen. It wasn't stolen. It never belonged to us. We were entrusted by our land acknowledgment to take care of it and to teach all those that come."

 

Community Read

Every semester, the Decolonizing Committee convenes conversations around a shared text to create a collaborative campus-wide space to clarify our goals and values as an institution. 

Fall 2021: adrienne maree brown

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

If you missed the visit, check out the adrienne maree brown zoom recording

Spring 2021: Prof. Gina A. Garcia

Hispanic-Serving Institutions in Practice: Defining Servingness at HSIs.

It's one thing to be an HSI; it's another to serve our Latinx students. Watch a recording of Professor Garcia's 2021 discussion at SMC.

Fall 2020: Prof. Robin Wall Kimmerer

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Resources & Readings

Decolonization unsettles settler-colonialism and the systems and cultures that support and perpetuate it. In an academic setting this means critically examining how settler-colonial epistemologies continue to shape what we consider knowledge and what we teach. The resources below center non-white, non-Western perspectives and ways of knowing.