On March 20, 2025, the Tarot for Decolonization Project hosted a pilot workshop at UBC, co-led by Dr. Biz Nijdam (UBC) and Christopher Marmolejo (Indigenous Two-Spirit tarot practitioner and author of Red Tarot). This event was the first opportunity to test the project’s methods for teaching tarot as a means of decolonial education.
Christopher Marmolejo presenting at the Tarot for Decolonization Event on March 20. 2025 Indigenous Two-Spirit tarot practitioner and author of Red Tarot (2024).
The workshop explored how tarot’s unique capacity for relational storytelling can foster critical dialogue about settler colonialism, Indigenous sovereignty, and our shared relationships to land. Participants engaged with reimagined tarot practices that positioned cards not as tools for divination, but as prompts for storytelling, reflection, and accountability. This pilot emphasized how storytelling through tarot can help shift settler audiences from learning about Indigenous histories to learning from and alongside Indigenous experience.
Insights from the workshop are directly informing the next stage of the project. The trial run allowed the team to refine strategies for guiding participants through the process of reimagining tarot archetypes, particularly those that will shape the deck’s Minor Arcana.
While the Major Arcana will be commissioned and designed in partnership with Indigenous artists to reimagine the core concepts of the Tarot deck through an Indigenous lens, the Minor Arcana will be adapted to embody non-Indigenous relationships to land according to the Minor Arcana’s 4 reimagined suites, integrating myriad perspectives within the context of settler colonialism. For example, Wands will represent Newcomer archetypes (refugees, immigrants, asylum seekers) and their journeys to Turtle Island; Cups will represent the Land itself, perhaps embodying the natural elements as archetypes and their roles in these discourses. Swords will present archetypes that connect with the role of the government and other authoritarian institutions in discourses of settler colonialism. Lastly, Pentacles will present Settler archetypes. So, for example, a Newcomer to Canada might contemplate their journey to Turtle Island and develop an archetype of that experience as an International Student or Climate Migrant. Alternatively, a settler participant could represent the story of their family’s arrival in Canada, representing that experience by developing an archetype for the European Settler, the Migrant Mother, or the Holocaust Survivor.
By piloting these methods now, the project team has been able to revise and strengthen its approach, ensuring that the co-created Tarot for Decolonization Deck will serve as a meaningful tool for reflection, dialogue, and truth and reconciliation in both academic and community contexts.