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Aimee de Ney Ed.D., is a 2026 graduate of the Ed.D. program in Educational and Professional Practice at Antioch University.

Headshot of Aimee de Nay.

Dissertation Committee:

Richard Kahn, Ph.D., Committee Chair 

Lesley Jackson, Ph.D., Committee Member

Joaquin Muñoz, Ph.D., Committee Member

Keywords

Land education, Land-and-water education, decolonial, unsettle, healing education, settler colonialism, climate collapse, transformative framework, teacher education

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Date

2026

Abstract

Settler colonialism is based in the separation of peoples from Lands and from one another, producing ongoing harm to human and more-than-human communities as evidenced in climate collapse, racialized violence, war, and widening social inequities. These conditions are sustained by ideologies of human supremacy-specifically white, male, Christian human supremacy-that deny personhood to most humans and to all more-than-humans, while enabling the attempted erasure of Indigenous peoples and the nation-state enforcement of anti-Black and anti-Brown racism. Situated on the Lands of the Coast Salish Peoples in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, this multiparadigmatic innovation dissertation develops a Land-centered framework for supporting settler teachers in transforming toward relational worldviews that re-situate humans as part of Land. Grounded in decolonial Land-and-water education (Bruce et al., 2023; Calderon, 2014; Calderon et al., 2021; Lees et al., 2023; Lees & Nelly, 2024; Tuck et al., 2014), this framework is designed to unsettle settler epistemologies while centering Land. Organized through a seasonal, circular structure, the framework engages three primary interrelated spheres: turning to Indigenous leadership, Land as first teacher, and unsettling the settler. These spheres inform the disruption of settler colonial values and the reclamation of Land-based values, resulting in four seasonal themes: unsettling/(re)stor(y)ing; trauma-informed ceremony; embodying lifeways; and service/activism. The framework emerged through its enactment as research methodology and is presented as praxis for bringing settlers into relational accountability (Wilson, 2008) with Lands and their peoples in service of their liberation, including Indigenous resurgence, Indigenous futurities, and the rematriation of Indigenous Lands to their peoples. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

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Photograph of a line of brightly dressed children from behind, as they cross a wooden bridge in a forest on a sunny day.

ORCID No. 0009-0004-1589-7620

Bio:
Aimee de Ney, EdD is a researcher, educator, and advocate whose work sits at the intersection of land-centered education, Waldorf pedagogy, and Land & climate justice. Her doctoral research centers on decolonial land education as a pathway for teacher transformation, examining how educators can remember their interrelationships with Land in service of climate justice and future generations. She founded and ran a community-based, land-centered early childhood school for ever a decade, and continues to lead the summer camp she founded more than twenty years ago, cultivating learning environments rooted in deep relationship with the natural world for learners from early childhood through adulthood. Drawing on extensive experience in school administration and teacher education, Aimee brings both scholarly rigor and grounded, practical wisdom to her work of transforming how we teach, learn, and belong to and with the earth.


Publications:
Books
‘Decolonizing our Pedagogy Through Critical Self Reflection,’ chapter in Toward a Kinder, More Compassionate Society: Working together for change (2022). Susan Howard (ed.)

Journal Publications
Gateways, WECAN Journal, 2016, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025

Curriculum Publications
Guest Editor, Plant Teachings for Social-Emotional Learning ECE Tribal curriculum, GRUB, 2023

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