Issue Editors’ Notes

ACPA President Donna Lee launched the Association’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice. In response to critical feedback from Indigenous members of the Association, the strategic imperative evolved to become the Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization (SIRJD) under ACPA President Stephen John Quaye. This evolution was necessary as a focus on racial justice is inadequate without recognition that (a) despite being racialized, Indigenous Peoples are citizens of sovereign nations not racial groups, and (b) a discussion of racism without settler colonialism is incomplete, particularly for colonized territories such as North America.

Further presentations and discussions on the SIRJD’s development continued with the SIRJD syllabus in use at the 2018 ACPA Convention in Houston, Texas, the home to three federally recognized nations: the Alabama–Coushatta, Kickapoo Traditional, and Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo. The Apache and Karankawa also live in relationship with these lands. Recognizing the need to promote scholarship that also engages racial justice and decolonization, Editor Deb Liddell and the JCSD Editorial Board announced a call for proposals for guest editors for a special issue that would engage the Strategic Imperative at the 2019 ACPA Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, the original homeland of the Mashpee Wampanoag, Aquinnah Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Massachusett tribal nations.

A special issue on the theme of racial justice and decolonization could not be timelier and yet not soon enough. Diverse scholars have centered their scholarship in and through critical race theories, decolonization, Indigenous methods, and other critical lenses for some time now. Embracing the call from an international organization of educators in colleges and universities, we the editors and authors acknowledge this extant literature and the importance of furthering such scholarship to reframe the field of student affairs to be deliberately racially just and decolonized on a foundation of scholarship and practice.

As we considered exactly how to situate this issue within the SIRJD, we realized that relationship conceptually and relationships in practice were key to (re)building a racially just and decolonized practice in student affairs. To be in right relationship, as discussed by Indigenous scholars such as Sandy Grande (2004) and Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012), requires deep knowledge of and respect for the sovereignty of other people and the natural world. To pursue such a relationship is not just anti-Anthropocentric (la paperson, 2017) but also aligns with a love ethic through which we “utilize all dimensions of love—care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge—in our everyday lives,” (hooks, 2000, p. 94). Thus, this Special Issue on Race, Indigeneity, and Relationship in Student Affairs and Higher Education was conceived.

We encounter multiple relationships and aspects of relationships in our work as scholars and practitioners of student affairs and higher education. These manuscripts illuminate those relations to some of our academic kin—students, professionals, faculty—and how the tacit assumptions with which we approach our kin can either damage or repair relationship. Many of these manuscripts elevate the voices of racially minoritized and Indigenous people, as students and scholars, through methodologies such as autoethnography and duoethnography, endarkened feminist methodologies, QuantCrit, and Indigenous quantitative methods.

The special issue is organized into four areas: (a) empirical articles which spotlight institutional features or factors that affect the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC; Alejandro, Fong, & De La Rosa, p. 679; Garibay, West, & Mathis, p. 697); (b) conceptual papers that expose the afterlife of white supremacy and coloniality (Okello, p. 717; Jourian & McCloud, p. 733); (c) methodological discussions wherein the use of more appropriate analytical devices are considered (Lopez, p. 750; Morton, p. 765); and (d) practice-centered pieces that demonstrate how a racially just and decolonial lens can lead to a racially just and decolonial profession (Galvez & Muñoz, p. 781; Ward, p. 797; Castro & Magana, p. 814).

The forwarding of epistemologies rooted in Blackness and Indigenous worldviews and methods that unabashedly make the research personal makes the manuscripts in this issue stand out from those which typically appear in academic journals. We question the sequestering of the work we offer here as “alternative,” “emerging,” or “contemporary.” Rather, these scholars have excavated the knowledges held...