Misrepresentations of Indigenous History and Science: Public broadcasting,the Internet,and education

This paper examines the role of history in power relations which suppress Indigenous knowledges. History is located as being about power and about how the powerful maintain their power. The paper further examines the Bering Strait theory/myth and ways that discourses in history combine with discourses in science to devalue Indigenous knowledges. The “truth” of science is challenged and examples of manipulation of scientific knowledge are provided, including discussions of a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation made for television production A people's history and an Internet website provided by the American government. These production activities supported by the Canadian and American governments are considered educational activities engaged in the practice of cultural representation in which dominant discourses about Indigenous peoples are presented. The paper challenges dominant misrepresentations of discourses about Indigenous peoples in a discussion of educational practices emphasizing the need of Indigenous peoples to control education and cultural representations. The paper concludes that it is a responsibility of society to educate all students to understand that any portrayal of history comes from a particular vantage point and to understand that dominant society privileges some representations and disadvantages others. If we teach in a critical way and challenge dominant discourses we can begin to create a society in which all persons in Canada and the USA, including Indigenous peoples, have a role to play.     

Building a space to dream: Supporting indigenous children's survivance through community-engaged social and emotional learning

Indigenous communities practice survivance and challenge social and political systems to support their children's identity and well-being. Grounded in transformative social-emotional learning (SEL) and tribal critical race theory, this 3-year community-based participatory research study (2019–2021) examined how a SEL program co-created with an Indigenous community in Flathead Nation in Montana supports anti-racism and anti-colonialism among Indigenous children. Critical reflexivity and thematic analyses of Community Advisory Board meetings and journals written by 60 students (M_age = 10.3, SD = 1.45; 47% girls; 60% Native American) during the SEL program revealed themes on Indigenous identity, belonging, wellness, and colonialism. These results shed light on challenging the racist and colonial roots of education to support Indigenous children's survivance and social-emotional well-being.     

Results of an assessment to identify potential barriers to sustainable agriculture on American Indian reservations in the Western United States

Purpose: This paper reports the results of survey research conducted with tribal producers between 2011 and 2012 on 19 of the largest American Indian reservations in Idaho, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, and Washington. The purpose of the research was to identify potential barriers to sustainable agriculture on reservation lands. This article reports the results of this research in an effort to promote Extension professionals' understanding of these barriers, which may help to improve outreach programs on American Indian reservations. Understanding the obstacles to sustaining agriculture that American Indian tribes face may inform international agricultural outreach efforts to increase food security targeting indigenous and tribal peoples worldwide.

Design/Methodology/Approach: American Indian agricultural producers comprised the study group. Study objectives included: (1) identify agricultural and natural resource issues of greatest concern to a self-selected sample of tribal agricultural producers on reservation lands; (2) evaluate access to Extension and other US Department of Agriculture outreach and assistance programs; and (3) evaluate the quality of these programs in terms of their relativity to tribal needs.

Findings: Study results indicate that tribal agricultural producers surveyed ranked 29 of 39 agricultural and natural resource issues as a concern. Similarly, they rated access to and quality of outreach programs as fair. Further, tribal producers operating on reservation trust land rated issues more severely than did tribal producers operating on fee simple lands.

Practical Implications: Results of this research will help Extension and other outreach professionals to understand the barriers indigenous and tribal peoples face in sustaining agricultural operations, particularly tribal groups living on federally reserved trust lands, such as American Indians. An increased understanding can inform agricultural policy-makers and outreach professionals in improving programs designed to increase agricultural sustainability, improve food security, enhance economic well-being and improve quality of life of indigenous and tribal peoples worldwide.

Originality/Value: This research provides important information to agricultural policy-makers and Extension professionals striving to sustain agricultural productivity and enhance food security with indigenous and tribal peoples.     

Learning from land and water: exploring mazinaabikiniganan as indigenous epistemology

Abstract

Indigenous peoples have long called for education that supports self-determination, counters colonial practices, and values our cultural identity and pride as Indigenous peoples. In recent years, Land education has emerged as a form of decolonial praxis that necessarily privileges Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies and engages in critiques of settler-colonialism. Informed by this theoretical framework and using Indigenous storywork methodology, this study focused on the perspectives of six Anishinaabe Elders on mazinaabikiniganan (commonly known as pictographs) at Agawa Rock, now part of Lake Superior Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. Revealing ways of knowing and being that are intimately connected to Land and place, the pedagogical potential of mazinaabikiniganan as a form of Land education is discussed.     

Experts and exiles: organic intellectuals,education, and the “Indian Problem” in postwar Ontario,Canada

Abstract

This article brings the Italian activist and thinker Antonio Gramsci’s theory of organic intellectualism and the Canadian historian Ian McKay’s theory of liberal state-formation to bear on the “Indian Question” – or how best to yoke Indigenous children and young people to the modern Canadian state. From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, often violent and disease-ridden “Residential Schools” were the primary means to this end. In the 1960s, a new approach was sought by the province of Ontario, culminating in the landmark education reform document, Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario (1968). Gentler forms of progressive educational “normalisation” informed by social science were pursued by the committee as a means of generating consent to a Canada now redefined as a postwar “Peaceable Kingdom”. This ostensibly kinder strategy nevertheless carried the colonial assumptions of the earlier period into the later one. This was made clear to the committee during the report’s preparation by Indigenous intellectuals advising them on Indigenous issues. They saw this liberal-technocratic approach for what it was – a novel form of neocolonial pedagogical violence. Though they were largely ignored by the committee, their dissent is instructive (as is the committee’s resistance to it) and allows us to put the darker corners of Canadian progressive education into historical perspective.     

The Indian and the researcher: Tales from the field

Conducting research in "native" communities is difficult. This article examines the tensions faced by an Indigenous researcher attempting to balance his identity as an Indian with his identity as an academic. Relying on field journals and personal experiences of change, the researcher explores how his attitudes toward the research participants and theories of authenticity changed over a period of time. Ultimately, there must be a way for Indigenous people to conduct rigorous research and maintain their Indigenous sense of self.     

Speaking back to the deficit discourses: a theoretical and methodological approach

The educational attainment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students is often presented within a deficit view. The need for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers to challenge the societal norms is necessary to contribute to the struggle for self-determination. This paper presents a theoretical and methodological approach that has enabled one researcher to speak back to the deficit discourses. Exemplification of how Indigenous Critical Discourse Analysis (in: Hogarth, Addressing the rights of Indigenous peoples’ in education: A critical analysis of Indigenous education policy, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 2016) identifies the power of language to maintain the inequitable positioning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples within Australian society is provided. Particular focus is placed on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Action Plan 2010–2014 (in: MCEECDYA, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Action Plan (2010–2014), 2011) and how policy discourses ignore the historical, political, cultural and social factors that influence the engagement and participation of Indigenous peoples in education today. The paper argues for the need to personalise methodological approaches to present the standpoint of the researcher and, in turn, deepens their advocacy for addressing the phenomenon. In turn, the paper presents the need to build on existing Indigenous research frameworks to continue advocating for the position of Indigenous research methodologies within the Western institution.     

American Indian and Taiwan Aboriginal education: Indigenous identity and career aspirations

This article investigates the interactions between identity and career aspirations among Taiwanese Aborigines and American Indians. While many similarities exist between the two indigenous groups, several differences remain as well. In comparing the identity issue between these two groups, this study shows that American Indians generally live in a more multicultural society than Taiwanese Aborigines. American Indian students do not experience the same degree of stereotype or racial discrimination from their teachers and peers as experienced by Taiwanese Aborigines. However, affirmative action policies are more favorable in Taiwan than they are in the United States. Drawing from a critical standpoint theory, we argue that families, tribes, and communities should play a more prominent role in the education of indigenous peoples.     

Situating decolonization: An Indigenous dilemma

Abstract

Being Indigenous and operating in an institution such as a university places us in a complex position. The premise of decolonizing history, literature, curriculum, and thought in general creates a tenuous space for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples to confront a shared colonial condition. What does decolonization mean for Indigenous peoples? Is decolonization an implied promise to squash the tropes of coloniality? Or is it a way for non-Indigenous people to create another paradigm or site for their own resistance or transgression of thinking? What are the roles of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in this space of educational potential, this curriculum called decolonization? This article presents a multi-vocal reflection on these and related questions.     

Caregiving as refusal in the academy*

Abstract

Literature on American Indian student support in postsecondary education illustrates the importance of relationality in creating a positive college experience for Native students. That said, much of the literature examining ‘care relationships’ in Indian education focuses on student outcomes, with less attention given to the experiences of practitioners. Thus, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the author examines where and how American Indian higher education practitioners learned principles of communal care for supporting Indigenous students in non-Native postsecondary institutions. Second, she explores how these principles act as homesteads of mutuality to love, transform, resist, and enact refusal within the academy. She draws upon the literature on American Indian student support in postsecondary education, which illustrates the importance of relationality in creating a positive college experience for Native students.     

Towards an Indigenist,Gaian pedagogy of food: Deimperializing foodScapes in the classroom

ABSTRACT

This study takes food as its scape to propose an Indigenist, Gaian pedagogy and asks what food studies might reveal ecopedagogically for approaches to teaching about Indigenous matters in the context of environmental education and its research. Drawing on empirical research about food and Indigenous-settler relations in Australia, and through analysis of data amassed from student assignments on food sources conducted over a six- year period, I find that there is resistance to taking an Indigenist approach to critical, place-based education (PBE) even as Indigenous scholarship argues for its urgent need. Even more muted is the recognition of Gaian understanding of the need to preserve the languages of “Scapes” to help with this work.     

Beautiful minds and unruly bodies: embodiment and academic identity in Still Alice and The Theory of Everything

ABSTRACT

This article explores the representation of disability and academic identity in two award-winning films: Still Alice and The Theory of Everything. Drawing on scholarship about embodiment and the ‘normal professor body’, I demonstrate how the complex images of disabled academics in these films take up and replicate (to differing extents) dominant discourses of disembodied intellectualism that shape conceptions of the professoriate. As examples of public pedagogy, these representations have significant ramifications for popular understandings of disability and higher education.     

‘Truth before reconciliation’: the difficulties of transforming higher education in settler colonial contexts*

ABSTRACT

In response to the contemporary context of reconciliation in Canada, colleges and universities have made efforts to ‘Indigenise’ their campuses, extending earlier, Indigenous-led efforts to create more space for Indigenous peoples and knowledges. While many welcome these efforts, others express concern that they fail to go beyond conditional inclusion to fundamentally shift relationships between settlers and Indigenous peoples. In this article, I examine these developments and suggest that most institutions and individuals have yet to face the full extent of their complicity in colonisation. I argue that perhaps it is only by doing so, and thus, arriving at the impossibility of reconciliation, that a transformation of settler–Indigenous relationships might be possible.     

Preparing teachers as allies in Indigenous education: benefits of an American Indian content and pedagogy course

The study explores relationship building and improvements in knowledge, skills, and dispositions of pre-service teachers enrolled in an Indigenous education content and pedagogy methods course. The Teaching American Indian Students in the Elementary Classroom course stands alone from other diversity education offerings at the University of Minnesota Duluth and is a required learning experience. Pre-service teachers are provided with essential knowledge and learning opportunities that facilitate success in working with Indigenous students, and helping mainstream students learn about Native history, peoples, and communities. The evaluation study was conducted by an Indigenous faculty member interested in learning how non-Native teacher education students felt they were achieving target knowledge, skills, and dispositional goals. Three separate groups of teacher education students completed both pre and post online surveys as a part of a three-year mixed methods evaluation study. The study shows significant gains made by pre-service teachers in each of the target areas, and affirms that methods coursework in American Indian education can lead to more interculturally competent teacher candidates. Helping teacher education students develop the requisite abilities and dispositions to fulfill Native American education objectives is contributory to developing future teachers as competent professionals and allies in Indigenous and diversity education.     

Multimodal meaning-making during play in two Northern Canadian Indigenous kindergarten classrooms

Abstract

This research explores young Indigenous children’s multimodal meaning-making to carry out social intentions in dramatic and construction/materials play settings. The participants are two teachers and 21 children from two Northern Canadian Indigenous communities. Underpinned by social semiotic theory, the research involves inductive analyses of six videos of children’s play. Our findings show a richness in Indigenous children’s meaning-making, as they used verbal and non-verbal modes to carry out 26 specific social intentions that we grouped into four broad social intention categories: Getting Along, Expressing Emotion/Interest, Satisfying Own Needs and Directing. The social intention carried out most frequently was showing interest in an activity. Participating children were more likely to use non-verbal modes, particularly in construction/materials play contexts. They also combined verbal and non-verbal modes to achieve their social intentions, but did not use verbal modes exclusively. When children used verbal modes to any great extent, it was primarily in a dramatic play context where the teacher took a role in children’s dramatic play. Our research indicates a need for greater attention by educators, curriculum developers and researchers to multimodal meaning-making in Indigenous children’s play, given the cultural importance of non-verbal communication and participating Indigenous children’s remarkable multimodal meaning-making during play.     

Lummi identity and white racism: When location is a real place

Native students experience prejudice at the university in a fashion that is unique and apart from the experiences of all other ethnic minorities. Because the reality of Indian students is not understood, they are heedlessly placed in with other ethnic minority students in discussions about policy. But if the stories of these students could be heard and understood, and if the local political context of their encounter with higher education could be shown, it would unmask a number of presuppositions about ethnicity and education. This paper brings forth some stories about a tribal community, a regional university, and their recent history of cultural power relations. It shows how Indian students experience Identity and Ideology in ways that are in conflict with the dominant society. The way stories can unmask the historic hidden dimensions of local power in educational institutions is shown.     

Aging,precarity, and the struggle for Indigenous elsewheres

Abstract

Through the structures and logics of the settler/capitalist state, the aging body can only be viewed as a crisis of decreased labor power and increased social expenditure; an amortization that has only worsened under neoliberalism. As such, this article calls attention to the conspicuous absence of a counter discourse and politics of aging within Native American and Indigenous studies. Within Indigenous communities, elders have always held places of distinction, which not only renders the dearth of theories of aging within Native studies problematic but also deeply limiting to the project of articulating the “decolonial option”. As discussed in the article, Indigenous theories of aging are a critical component of securing alter-Native existences, defined by relations of mutuality, responsibility and reciprocity.     

The limits of cultural competence: an Indigenous Studies perspective

Taking the Universities Australia report, National best practice framework for Indigenous cultural competency in Australian universities (2011) as the starting point for its discussion, this paper examines the applicability of cultural competence in the design and delivery of Australian Indigenous Studies. It argues that both the conceptual underpinnings and the operationalisation of cultural competence necessitate an over-reliance on essentialised notions of Indigeneity, cast in radical opposition to non-Indigeneity, which negate multiple and diverse expressions of Indigenous identity and lived experience. Thus, this approach perpetuates the very colonialist logics Indigenous Studies should endeavour to overcome. Secondly, it argues that cultural competency's emphasis on non-Indigenous self-reflexivity, broadly consistent as it is with both scholarship and praxis in Indigenous Studies, is represented in some of the literature as uncritical deference to an always-unified Indigeneity, thereby exacerbating the original essentialising impulse evident in the cultural competence paradigm. Therefore, this paper proposes that Indigenous Studies should explore the limits of self-reflexivity, with a view to establishing a genuinely anti-colonial/decolonising praxis that incorporates the capacity to negotiate Indigenous intracultural diversity along with other markers for identity.     

‘I am exhausted:’ everyday occurrences of being Native American

Abstract

In this study, I used small stories narrative and Indigenous methodology to understand the everyday occurrences of Native American students and to highlight the complex relationship between their identity, their sense of belonging in graduate school, and their view of education. The experiences of the participants were marked by two things: the experience of ongoing colonization and the experience of defending Native identity. By focusing on the small narrative stories of their everyday experiences, my research illustrates how ongoing colonialization creates situations where students need to defend their identities. Not only is small stories research one way to avoid some of the more essentialist problems of grand narratives, it provides one possible way to move forward and to demonstrate and deconstruct the problematic power structures in higher education that prevent Native American students from accessing equity.