Framed in Foucault's theorization of governmentality and drawing on Harvey's scholarship on neoliberalism and Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill's critical analysis of heteropatriarchal settler colonialism, we theorize a historical linkage between colonizing education and neoliberal schooling. Against that historical backdrop, Ernest and Amanda, two Native American students, articulate narratives of what Gerald Vizenor calls "survivance," which "confront the tragic closure of culture and engender a sense of Native presence instead of historical absence." In the context of their stories, we propose a praxis of refusal as an ethical stance of restive resistance to institutional practices and power relations inherent in the heteropatriarchal settler colonial academy and neoliberal schooling. As praxis, we conceptualize refusal as intentional action that subverts institutional power relations and practices by bringing Indigenous histories, wisdom, and knowledge to active presence; re-politicizing educational spaces, which neoliberal marketization has de-politicized; and disrupting impoverished "commonsense" curricula and pedagogies to reconfigure educational, social, and political institutions as more equitable, just, democratic, and culturally sustaining and revitalizing.