Touching Place in Childhood Studies: Situated Encounters with a Community Garden
I situate this chapter alongside recent work in early childhood studies that has used more than human 1 epistemologies and ontologies to consider nature pedagogies in relation to Indigenous knowledges, human/more than human relationalities, natureculture entanglements, and anticolonial possibilities (Duhn, 2012; Pacini Ketchabaw, 2013; Ritchie, 2012; Somerville, 2006; Taylor, 2013) Inspired by this work, and its commitment to resisting simplistic and romantic couplings of children and nature, I seek to notice the practices; sociomaterialities; and colonial histories 2 and relations that come together to enact the production of a community garden that I visit with children and early childhood educators in the childcare centers where my research 3 is situated. My specific localities in the Greater Vancouver area are unceded Musqueam, Squamish, Sto;:lo, and Tsleil Waututh First Nations territories (Musqueam Band, 2011; Squamish Nation, 2008; Sto;:lo Nation, 2009; Tsleil Waututh Nation, 2013)