Caelin Ross

White Fragility in Decolonial Spaces: When Inclusion Becomes Extraction

Reflections on facilitating difficult conversations about Indigenous knowledge and settler accountability in drama in education research.

The Moment

We were supposed to end the workshop with collaborative visioning and clear pathways forward. Instead, some participants felt confused and tense. Some thought they should avoid teaching Indigenous perspectives altogether. In contrast, others were uncertain about how to move forward in a responsible manner. I spent months getting ready for the international workshop “Honoring Indigenous Roots, Forging Inclusive Routes: Reimagining Drama in Education.” My colleague, Vina Begay, works as the Assistant Librarian and Archivist at ASU’s Labriola National American Indian Data Center. Working with Vina is a privilege and responsibility. I value her deep knowledge of Indigenous Knowledge Systems, cultural protocols, and decolonial librarianship. This expertise shaped our approach. There is simply no way the workshop could have happened without her expertise, and she deserves so much of the credit.

We carefully created frameworks to shift from extraction to relationality. We also made detailed guidance for educators based on their positions. Plus, we designed an activity to help participants map their ethical tensions. Vina’s leadership in centering Indigenous sovereignty and cultural protocols shaped every aspect of our presentation. Her vision of “Information is Sacred” and commitment to supporting Indigenous communities’ ownership of their knowledge guided our work. Vina had also spent precious time educating me about cultural protocols, dedicating countless hours to helping me in my anti-colonial work as a curator.

Somewhere along the way, we lost our message about building relationships before developing the curriculum. A participant asked how to show the Indigenous perspective in their play. I shared my thoughts on the key difference between real partnership and academic extraction. The conversation turned defensive. The participant argued that non-Indigenous playwrights should include Indigenous perspectives. They believed this should happen even without direct input from the communities involved.

This desire for empathy might seem harmless at first glance. But, as was the point of our workshop, empathy cannot be the sole driver or result of collaboration. Good intentions can often lead to more damage, especially when working with Indigenous communities.

The Vision vs. The Reality

Looking back at our presentation slides, I see how thoughtfully we designed the content. We’d outlined clear “Pathways to Repair” that contrasted extraction thinking with relational accountability. Vina shared frameworks based on Indigenous Knowledge Systems, focusing on six Rs: Respect, Relationship, Responsibility, Reverence, Relevance, and Reciprocity. She created guidance for “Metropolitan (Non-Indigenous) Educators.” It highlighted cultural protocols as “the driving force in your classroom lesson planning.””

Our slide on educator responsibilities was clear:

Avoid myths and legends.
Focus on modern Indigenous literature.
Center cultural protocols.
Acknowledge your limitations.

We understood that this work meant, as one slide said, “sitting with discomfort instead of seeking quick solutions.” It also meant “prioritizing Indigenous community needs over our teaching goals.””

However, we then designed a workshop that did precisely the opposite. We tried to compress complex, relational work into a single session. We asked participants to share personal tensions around colonialism and appropriation without adequate time for processing or relationship-building. We reproduced the very extractive dynamics we were critiquing—taking people’s emotional labor and vulnerability without providing sufficient care and follow-through.

The workshop format itself unintentionally demanded that participants engage with difficult personal and political questions within the constraints of an academic conference schedule, only to end abruptly when time ran out.

The Shock of “No”

What struck me most at that moment was the participant’s genuine surprise that their community work might be subject to critique. Here was someone doing what seemed like thoughtful, partnership-based work, and they appeared genuinely shocked to hear boundaries around Indigenous knowledge or questions about academic-community relationships.

This reaction illuminated something I’d been thinking about but hadn’t fully grasped: how rarely non-Indigenous people in academic settings hear “no” when it comes to knowledge. Librarians are trained to believe that if information exists, is published, and we can access it, then it’s ours to use. The idea that Indigenous communities might have sovereignty over how their knowledge is shared, taught, or represented often comes as a genuine surprise. And how uncomfortable it is for white folks who are allies to analyze their relationship to information critically. We cannot assume that there is always a “better” way to be more inclusive; sometimes, it’s better to stay in our lane.

In our presentation, I highlighted a key difference. Extraction thinking assumes that “if it’s published, it’s public.” In contrast, relational accountability values Indigenous leadership and respects protocols. Shifting from the first mindset to the second isn’t just about thinking. It means building emotional strength to accept “not for you” as the final answer, not just a starting point for negotiation.

White fragility

The frustration in that moment stemmed not from being wrong, but from the shock of encountering boundaries in a space that had felt open and morally correct. They thought about what happens when people dedicated to social justice realize their good intentions may not be enough. They also considered how their methods might need major changes.

White fragility appears in decolonial education spaces like this:

People think good intentions protect them from criticism.
They believe that doing “better” work means they do not have to hold themselves accountable.
They assume that being on the “right side” spares them from facing discomfort about their actions and beliefs.

Ethical mapping

We planned to conclude the workshop with an “Ethical Mapping” activity that would help participants navigate exactly these kinds of tensions. The framework was simple but powerful:

TENSION: What is the ethical dilemma or site of friction?
RESPONSE: How did you navigate it—and what frameworks informed your decisions?
SHIFT: What change is needed—in your system, methodology, or institution?
LESSON: What did you learn?

The participant’s reaction would have been perfect material for this kind of collective processing. We could use that moment to ask questions like: What do we do when our wish to do good work clashes with Indigenous community protocols? How do we sit with the discomfort of having our approaches questioned? What does it mean to center Indigenous sovereignty even when it limits our pedagogical options?

Instead, we ran out of time. The workshop ended with raw emotions and no framework for processing them. We’d activated all the tensions without creating space to work through them relationally.

If we had time for ethical mapping, that participant’s experience could have been a lesson for everyone. We could have modeled how to receive critique as information rather than an attack and how to use discomfort as a starting point for deeper inquiry rather than defensiveness.

However, the workshop format didn’t allow for that kind of collective meaning-making. I returned to extraction. I took advantage of people’s vulnerability, stirred up their defenses, and then sent them off to deal with it alone.

The Deeper Structural Issues

This experience made me realize how abbreviated workshop formats often reproduce the very dynamics they’re designed to address. We critiqued extractive academic practices during a workshop. It took emotional labor but didn’t offer enough support. We were advocating for relationship-building while operating in a format that emphasized content delivery over connection.

The real problem is that academic conferences and professional development focus on efficiency. They often overlook the importance of building relationships. We cannot deliver transformative insights in 60-90 minute sessions, changing people’s fundamental approaches to their work without the time needed for genuine relationship-building or ongoing accountability.

Decolonial work takes time. It requires lifelong work: giving up power, questioning assumptions, sitting with discomfort, and following Indigenous leadership. It involves the kind of ongoing relationship that can hold complexity, conflict, and growth over time.

One-shot workshops, no matter how well-designed, can’t create the conditions for this kind of transformation. At best, they can plant seeds. At worst, they can create the illusion of change while reinforcing existing dynamics.

Lessons for Facilitators

This experience taught me several crucial lessons about my position as a white librarian trying to do this work responsibly:

First, good intentions aren’t enough. I spent weeks getting ready. I worked with a co-facilitator, Vina, who is Diné. She has over ten years of experience as an archivist and librarian. We also used frameworks created by Indigenous scholars. I still recreated extractive dynamics. I didn’t take into account the emotional and relational aspects of this work.

Second, the format is the message. You can’t teach about relationality in a format that prioritizes efficiency over relationships. The container matters as much as the content.

Third, white fragility will show up. Some people will see boundary-setting as an attack. They may view criticism as unfair. Also, they might think their good intentions should protect them from feeling uncomfortable. Building capacity to work with these reactions—rather than avoiding them—is essential.

Fourth, unfinished conversations can be more harmful than no conversations at all. Starting tough talks without enough time to think can make people more defensive and resistant.

Fifth, my learning is ongoing. I learned from this experience that I still had assumptions about what participants could handle. I also found that I was attached to others seeing me as a “good” educator who did things “right.”

Designing for Difficulty

If I were to redesign this work, I’d start with different assumptions:

Assume resistance. Create activities that help people see “no” as just information. Don’t be surprised by defensive reactions to boundaries. This way, they won’t feel the need to attack it.

Assume complexity. Don’t try to resolve tensions—help people develop the capacity to sit with them in a productive way.

Assume time—design for multiple sessions over time, with space between for reflection and integration.

Assume a relationship. Prioritize connection and trust-building over content delivery.

Assume accountability. Create structures for ongoing engagement rather than one-time events.

This might mean designing a 3-session series rather than single workshops. It may mean starting with relationship-building activities before delving into more challenging content. It might mean ending with commitments to ongoing learning rather than neat conclusions.

Most importantly, it means being honest about what can and can’t be accomplished in academic workshop formats and refusing to promise a transformation that the container can’t deliver.

The Work Continues

I’ve thought a lot about the participants who left quickly. Did they feel attacked for wanting to do good work? I wonder if our workshop caused more harm than good. I’ve drafted several follow-up emails, trying to find language that acknowledges the limitations of our format while still holding space for the critical questions we were trying to raise.

But I’ve also been thinking about what it means to center Indigenous sovereignty in these conversations, even when—especially when—it’s uncomfortable for those of us who aren’t Indigenous. The resistance at that moment might have been necessary. The discomfort might have been productive. The unresolved tension might be precisely what is needed to motivate a deeper inquiry.

This work isn’t supposed to be comfortable. It’s supposed to unsettle us, prompting us to question our assumptions about knowledge, ownership, and academic freedom. The goal isn’t to make white educators feel good about their diversity and inclusion efforts; it’s to support Indigenous communities’ sovereignty over their own knowledge and cultural practices.

Perhaps the challenge wasn’t that someone got upset but that we didn’t have adequate structures in place to help them—and all of us—work with that upset productively. Perhaps the lesson isn’t to avoid difficult conversations but to create more effective containers for them.

The ethical tensions we were trying to address through our mapping activity don’t disappear when workshops end. They live in our daily practices as educators, researchers, and practitioners. The question isn’t about fixing these issues forever. It’s about building our ability to engage with them thoughtfully and responsibly. We must also be accountable to Indigenous communities.

Work happens through ongoing relationships, and the complex journey of learning to accept “not for you” as a full sentence. It continues in designing educational experiences that honor the principles they’re trying to teach rather than reproducing the dynamics they’re trying to transform.

Decolonial work isn’t just a workshop topic. It’s a lifelong commitment. It involves building relationships, being accountable, and learning to unlearn.

Special thanks to Vina Begay for making the journey abroad for the conference and for patiently teaching so much. Your fierce protection and vulnerability inspires me.

Reconciliation Pole, Vancouver, BC.

Community-Centered Information Literacy for a New Era

Reflections on the power of collaboration at the LOEX Information Literacy Conference in Pasadena amid institutional uncertainty

The world shifts instantly in the opening episode of HBO’s The Last of Us. Infrastructure fails, panic erupts, and people must decide who to trust, what knowledge matters, and how to preserve what’s essential when systems collapse. But another phrase, “Look for the light,” is more than a slogan graffiti on walls. A rallying cry to the public to remember resistance against fascist rule, it also stands for a group mantra–that even in the most oppressive times, there is always hope. It is not a passive act; hope is a commitment through actions, and promise to the future. When existing structures are destroyed, the only choice is transform. So why not?

As I prepared to present at LOEX 2025: Crafting a Future for Information Literacy Conference with my colleague and mentor, Alliston Salisbury, the Undergraduate Instruction & Outreach Librarian, in Pasadena, California, I found myself drawing on apocalyptic narratives for insights on preparing for systemic disruptions. This isn’t just escapism; it reflects that our higher education mission may soon operate under radically different conditions.

LOEX’s intimate scale offered a refreshing contrast to larger gatherings like ACRL. The conference’s tight focus on information literacy created meaningful spaces for connection, reflection, and deep engagement. One session that stood out was Robin M. Katz’s workshop on primary source literacy. More than a toolkit of learning outcomes, planning templates, and assessment strategies, the session demonstrated collaborative pedagogy in action. Katz fostered active dialogue, turning the room into a temporary knowledge commons—an example of the kind of participatory learning space we’ll need more of as institutions face mounting instability.

I paid close attention not only to the content but also to how it was delivered. The distinction between passive lecture and active exchange felt more consequential than ever. It highlighted a key aspect of resilience: it’s not just about preserving access to content but cultivating networks of people who can use and adapt that knowledge in real time.

LOEX’s unique approach to conference feedback, which involves participants evaluating each session individually, is a powerful model of how resilience is built. This built-in, iterative assessment loop mirrors the adaptive learning culture we need in our institutions—responsive, granular, and continuous. LOEX reminded me that adaptation is not just an institutional process, but a profoundly personal one. While observing other sessions, I found myself questioning which presentation methods genuinely engage participants and foster active learning rather than passive consumption.

These reflections continued after my session on ASU’s collaborative tutorial project. I left with a clearer vision of how to make future presentations more participatory–how to model the very principles we aim to teach. The foundational skills of information literacy–critical thinking, flexibility, and synthesis–are not just concepts we convey to students. They are strategies we, as professionals, must adopt in how we teach, share, and evolve within shifting institutional landscapes.

The Persistence of Community

LOEX also reminded me that professional relationships are an enduring source of resilience. In the hallways between sessions, I reconnected with Hailley Fargo, a mentor from graduate school whose path I’ve long followed. That brief check-in underscored how small moments of connection strengthen our collective fabric.

Later, I was surprised and honored to see my former professor, Melissa Wong, attend. Our conversation afterward—reflecting on how the library landscape continues to shift—felt like a full-circle moment. These enduring relationships, rooted in shared experience, persist through career transitions and institutional change. In times of uncertainty, these informal networks often provide the most reliable forms of continuity. Mentors, colleagues, and peers offer grounded support that no organizational chart can fully capture. They exemplify a form of professional resilience that transcends any one institution.

Recent developments—the dismissal of Dr. Carla Hayden from the Library of Congress leadership, legislative attacks on DEI, the ongoing defunding of public information resources—are more than troubling headlines. They’re signals of a shifting foundation beneath our work.

These questions—what endures, what is preserved, and who decides—loomed quietly behind many LOEX conversations. As we presented Arizona State University (ASU’s) work developing cross-departmental, platform-agnostic tutorials for more than 145,000 students, I realized that this work isn’t only about scalability. It’s a blueprint for resilience under pressure.

Lessons from the Survivalists

Oddly enough, we may have something to learn from communities often dismissed as fringe. Survivalists ask vital questions about continuity: What skills matter when infrastructure fails? How do you pass on knowledge without institutional channels? What is truly essential to preserve?

Our work at ASU reflects this ethos. Our collaboration across departments isn’t just efficient—it’s distributed resilience. In a context without dedicated instruction departments, we’ve built cross-disciplinary partnerships to create modular, shareable, and persistent tutorials. These learning objects function across platforms and locations, embedding redundancy into the system.

In essence, our model mimics a decentralized network that can endure disruption. It offers a pathway forward, not just for scaling instruction but also for preserving knowledge when traditional structures falter.

Beyond Institutional Walls

This moment of institutional vulnerability invites us to reimagine education itself. The traditional academic model often guards access behind credentials, paywalls, and physical infrastructures. However, our work at ASU suggests another possibility: knowledge that is created once but shared widely, open, adaptable, and resilient.

If traditional degrees become less accessible or less valued, we may shift toward certifying demonstrable skills through micro-credentials. Information literacy instruction could evolve from generalized support to modular, competency-based frameworks that allow learners to build and prove expertise more flexibly.

Collaboration as a Survival Strategy

Our LOEX session on ASU’s tutorial development revealed something deeper than efficiency. When departments pool their knowledge and resources, the result is scale and structural resilience. These modular, shareable systems parallel what survivalists and game designers understand: centralized systems fail hard. Decentralized collaboration bends, adapts, and persists.

There’s unique power in bringing together professionals from different disciplines to focus on a specific project or goal. When subject librarians, instructional designers, technical specialists, and disciplinary faculty converge around information literacy, the resulting work transcends what any single perspective could produce. This cross-pollination of expertise doesn’t just create better pedagogical tools—it builds the conceptual adaptability and creative problem-solving capacity that becomes essential during institutional change. The focused inquiry that emerges from these collaborations generates solutions that are simultaneously more robust and more flexible than what siloed departments typically develop.

Higher education has long promised to prepare students for the unknown. Today, that preparation must be more literal. In a world where misinformation can destabilize democracies, information literacy becomes a civic survival skill. Teaching people how to evaluate, synthesize, and act on information becomes core to rebuilding and resilience.

This reframing elevates our work. What we shared at LOEX wasn’t just a case study—it was a distributed, durable learning design model for a world in flux. Returning from LOEX, I saw our ASU project anew. It’s more than a solution for instructional demand—it’s a knowledge preservation system, a digital campfire, a place where future learners might still gather.

In this light, collaboration is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a survival mechanism. We weave networks not just to extend our reach but to endure. In uncertain times, our ability to creatively adapt and connect may be our most essential professional asset.

You’ll Never Walk Alone: The Power of Showing Up

& remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world.

–Ocean Vuong, Night Sky With Exit Wounds¹

Editor’s note: We are pleased to welcome Caelin Ross to the ACRLog team. Caelin is the Performing Arts Librarian at Arizona State University Library. She earned her Master of Science in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With fifteen years of experience in academic libraries and non-profit organizations, Caelin’s interests include collection management, community engagement, and exploring emotional labor, grief work, and performance in libraries and archives. As the curator for the Theatre for Youth and Community Collection, her projects aim to create meaningful ways for students to engage with performing arts resources while supporting the documentation of historically marginalized perspectives.

People often ask what made me want to be a librarian. The answer might surprise fellow academic librarians: I discovered the career pathway after nearly dropping out of college.

It took me over 15 years–starting as a college library assistant in undergraduate school—to reach this point in my career. I think if they had attended a conference like ACRL Annual 2025 in Minneapolis, they would understand why I chose this path. Being an academic librarian offers an opportunity to work alongside curious, disruptive, and thoughtful people. The work shared at this past conference demonstrates this beautifully.

Attending my first ACRL was both bittersweet and profoundly validating. The programming was incredible. It was rewarding to have been on three separate planning committees to select presentations and to see folks proudly share their work. I learned so much from evaluating submissions, and encourage folks who are also early career to volunteer on an ACRL conference committee. It is an excellent way to know what makes specific presentations stand apart and better understand the research process. Some submissions would have been better as a paper, while others may have been better as a panel.

Lightning talk

My talk was scheduled on Friday, which I imagined would be a reasonably quiet event. However, I was shocked to attend fellow participants’ lightning talks and see the room packed with over a hundred attendees. While I waited outside the conference room, several Arizona State University Library colleagues who were also presenting at the conference stopped by to stay with me. One colleague, Anali, said, “You’re on our team. Of course we’re here for you.”

As I headed up onstage, the nerves kicked in full throttle. I met two excellent presenters who were also presenting for the first time! We gave each other encouragement and high fives and shared how nervous and excited we were.I saw a former colleague from my previous institution and waved–I was so glad to see a familiar face. I looked out in the crowd and saw nine of my colleagues from ASU all seated together, waving and smiling.

I could have lit up the entire city.

The talk went by quickly, but that feeling of being truly seen and listened to was everything. I created a tight five-minute presentation focused on developing partnerships with community organizations to document youth experiences, supported by concrete examples from my experience. I prepared thoroughly, timing myself to ensure I wouldn’t run over, but approached the process with the calm assurance that comes from knowing your material and your worth.

The Year Was 2010…

I have wanted to be a librarian since I was 21. As an undergraduate at an R1, major public research university, I struggled to find a sense of belonging on campus. College Library became a sanctuary for me, and to this day, is the best job I have ever had. I stumbled through my early 20s in various non-profit employment and continued to find part-time library jobs, then made the life-saving choice to move to Chicago. I didn’t have a job, but had an opportunity to live with a cousin, so at least I had housing. A few weeks later, a temp job opened at Northwestern University Library, and I took it– even though it meant getting home at 1am. That job led to a promotion, which led to me enrolling in the iSchool at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

After graduating with my MSLIS in 2020, landing my first academic librarian role took nearly two years. I was 34. Despite working full-time in academic libraries for almost a decade, completing my graduate degree, and interning while keeping my 40-hour-a-week library job, I was rejected countless times.

The call arrived on a Friday afternoon. After hundreds of applications and dozens of interviews, I was offered the academic librarian position as a Performing Arts Librarian I had hoped for. I should have felt nothing but elation—this was my career goal. Yet alongside the excitement came a sudden weight: accepting meant leaving behind the community I had built over the years. Little did I know that this bittersweet moment would be the first step in an unexpected journey through grief, loneliness, and, ultimately, rebuilding.

The Invisible Loss of Relocation

When we talk about grief, we usually associate it with losing someone or something. Rarely do we acknowledge the profound grief that comes with voluntarily choosing to leave a place. Yet that grief is real—a complex tapestry of emotions that doesn’t always make rational sense when you’ve made what appears to be a positive career move.

In those first weeks after relocating, I found myself experiencing the most intense loneliness of my life. I had never lived alone and was over 1800 miles from friends or family. I mourned routines I had taken for granted: the barista who knew my order before I spoke, taking my dog, Pasha, on his morning walk, since he stayed behind in Chicago with my partner.

The Academic Bubble Challenge

Academia presents a unique paradox when it comes to community building. You’re surrounded by people devoted to knowledge and sharing ideas, yet the structures can feel impenetrable to newcomers. Faculty established relationships, students focused on their studies, and I felt like an imposter.

As an academic librarian who works with archives and special collections, I occupy an interesting intersection. My role involves supporting everyone’s research and learning needs, yet initially, these interactions remained largely transactional. I helped locate resources, organized archival collections, and assisted with reference, but these initial encounters made me feel more isolated. When the spring semester ended, the campus community disappeared, leaving for cooler weather in the brutal desert summer.

Small Steps Across the Grief Threshold

It has taken more than two years to begin to accept this change. I lost family, relationships, and pets. I stopped expecting my new city to replace what I had left behind. Instead of seeking exact substitutes for what I had lost, I began approaching community-building as creating something entirely new.

Some strategies that helped me cross this threshold:

1. Embracing the “beginner” status: I started asking for recommendations rather than trying to discover everything independently. This vulnerability opened conversations and positioned me to receive rather than always provide help.

2. Leveraging library connections: My role gave me a unique vantage point. I created recurring opportunities to develop relationships beyond one-off interactions by developing training programs and student employment opportunities.

3. Acknowledging the grief: Rather than dismissing my feelings of loss as self-indulgent, I allowed myself to miss my former community while building a new one.

The irony that I struggled to navigate my new social terrain as a librarian—someone who helps others navigate information landscapes—wasn’t lost on me. Yet, slowly, the scattered connections began to form patterns.

Over time, I discovered that building community in a new city isn’t about replacing what was lost but creating space for what might emerge. The grief doesn’t completely disappear but becomes integrated into a more complex story that honors what was left behind and what has been discovered.

For Fellow Academic Nomads

If you’re an academic librarian (or anyone) who has relocated for a position, know that your experience of grief amid professional advancement is valid. Community doesn’t happen overnight, and the particular structure of academic institutions can make the process even more challenging.

Some practical takeaways from my experience:

Give yourself at least a year before making judgments about belonging.
Create small, sustainable routines that put you in the same places consistently.
Look for interdepartmental committees or university-wide initiatives that connect people across silos.
Remember that your expertise as a librarian—finding connections between seemingly disparate elements—can serve you in community building, too.

The stacks that once felt like barriers between me and potential connections have become the architecture supporting my new community. Between the books, across database training sessions, and through research consultations, I’ve found my people—different from those I left behind but no less meaningful.

The grief hasn’t vanished. Some days, a song or memory will bring a sharp pang of loss. But now those moments coexist with the warmth of new connections—proof that our capacity for community isn’t limited, but expansive, growing with each chapter of our lives.

With Gratitude

For now, I want to thank my ASU Library community. Your spirit of collaboration, empathy, and curiosity shines through in everything you do. Thank you for sharing meals, celebrating with drinks, and for bringing your absolute best to this conference. Working together with colleagues like you is all I have ever wanted.

This solidarity is my hope for our field. When we come together as a community we remember our collective power. Never underestimate the power of just showing up.

Notes:

Vuong, O. (2016). Night Sky with Exit Wounds. Copper Canyon Press. ↩︎

Special Thanks: Anali Perry, Matt Harp, Rachel Fernandez, Cami Garland, Vina Begay, Eric Prosser, Cat Dinh, Karalyn Osser, Olivia Sparks, Eric Hardy, Nataani Hanley-Moraga, Alex Soto, Yitazba Largo-Anderson, and Gina Peterson. Special shout out to Jamie Diermier and Neah Ingram-Monteiro.