Indigenous Education Speakers' Series: Noah Romero

Date: March 23rd
Introduction By: Nancy Kendall
This talk introduces decolonial underground pedagogy, a framework that shows how minority-led subcultures can foster critical consciousness and decolonial action through informal learning, community engagement, and nonhierarchical relationships. Through decolonizing methodologies, autoethnography, close reading, and the Indigenous Philippine methodology of pakapa-kapa, this talk examines the emancipatory experiences found in three minority-led subcultures: punk rock, skateboarding, and unschooling. These analyses then inform a discussion of how subcultural learning can enrich efforts to Indigenize and decolonize education in other contexts, including in schools.
Noah Romero is a decolonial theorist and critical Indigenous studies scholar-educator. Bridging Ethnic Studies and Education, his research examines how dispossessed and deterritorialized people redefine learning and identity in subcultural contexts, with a focus on Indigenous and immigrant communities in the U.S., Aotearoa (New Zealand), the Philippines, and the Philippine diaspora. Dr. Romero is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar of Educator Preparation at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.