Drawing from multiple courses, the authors explore the intersections and connections concerning the various ways students in mainstream programmes experience and express counter-resistances to decolonizing and anti-oppressive pedagogies. The authors focus on how aspects of curriculum can at once minimize, trigger and/or provoke various aspects of resistances. They also consider how the positionality of the instructor and purposeful and mindful choices in curriculum, course content and classroom practices assist students to reflect on their own positionality and the ways networks and relations of power and privilege are implicated in learning and teaching. From the perspectives of one Indigenous and one non-Indigenous instructor, the authors share practical examples related to decolonizing and anti-oppressive pedagogies within higher education contexts.