Native American Heritage Month

Capturing Education examines the founding of the first tribally controlled American Indian colleges in the late 1960s and early 1970s and follows their subsequent growth and development, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. Based on oral histories recorded over a twenty-year period, it documents the motivations of the movement's founders and the challenges they faced while establishing colleges on isolated and impoverished Indian reservations. Early leaders discuss the opposition they encountered from both Indians and non-Indians at a time when few people believed Indians could or should start their own colleges. The development of degree programs relevant to the practical needs of reservation communities, however, contributed to their eventual success despite such opposition. Continuing efforts to define and implement a culturally based philosophy of education are also discussed.              

American Indian Education/indigenous education is still faltering today and is not producing significant differences in results where school practices follow those for the dominant culture. Inroads have been made in some classrooms/schools where Culturally Responsive/Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) is practiced. However, the drop-out rates for American Indian/indigenous populations are still extremely high in comparison to other ethnically diverse groups of students. here are two factors that can make or break indigenous students' abilities to be resilient in the face of many educational negatives in their lives and enable them to continue on to graduate from high school and in many instances, go on to complete undergraduate and graduate degrees in institutions of higher learning. This book is intended to be used for undergraduate and graduate students in education, anthropology, sociology, and American Indian studies. It is also intended for use by educators working in areas with large concentrations of American Indian students, whether in rural, rural reservation, urban, or states with large Native populations, such as California and Oklahoma. It is a useful tool for policy makers and those involved in American Indian education at the national and state levels, as well as organizations such as the Nation Council on American Indians, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the National Indian Education Association.

I Am Where I Come From presents the autobiographies of thirteen Native American undergraduates and graduates of Dartmouth College, ten of them current and recent students. Twenty years ago, Cornell University Press published First Person, First Peoples: Native American College Graduates Tell Their Life Stories, also about the experiences of Native American students at Dartmouth College. I Am Where I Come From addresses similar themes and experiences, but it is very much a new book for a new generation of college students.Three of the essays from the earlier book are gathered into a section titled "Continuing Education," each followed by a shorter reflection from the author on his or her experience since writing the original essay. All three have changed jobs multiple times, returned to school for advanced degrees, started and increased their families, and, along the way, continuously revised and refined what it means to be Indian.The autobiographies contained in I Am Where I Come From explore issues of native identity, adjustment to the college environment, cultural and familial influences, and academic and career aspirations. The memoirs are notable for their eloquence and bravery.

Protecting the Promise is the first book in the Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Series edited by Django Paris. It features a collection of short stories told in collaboration with five Native families that speak to the everyday aspects of Indigenous educational resurgence rooted in the intergenerational learning that occurs between mothers and their children. The author defines "resurgence" as the ongoing actions that recenter Indigenous realities and knowledges, while simultaneously denouncing and healing from the damaging effects of settler colonial systems. By illuminating the potential of such educational resurgence, the book counters deficit paradigms too often placed on Indigenous communities. It also demonstrates the need to include Indigenous Knowledges within the curriculum for both in-school and out-of-school settings. These engaging narratives reframe Indigenous parents as critical and compassionate educators, cultural brokers, and storytellers who are central partners in the education of their children. Book Features: A window into how and why Indigenous resurgence through (and sometimes in resistance to) education can happen. A narrative style of writing that builds accessible stories that are both relatable and connected to larger social issues. An interdisciplinary approach that has implications for pre- and in-service teachers and school administrators, as well as for the communities from which these stories originated. A teacher-friendly Afterword that offers lesson ideas for the classroom and companion questions to the short stories.

Indigenous students learn and retain more when teachers value the language and culture of the students' community and incorporate them into the curriculum. This is a principle enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) and borne out both by the successes of Indigenous-language immersion schools and by the failures of past assimilationist practices and the recent English-only policies of the No Child Left Behind Act in the United States. Teaching Indigenous Students puts culturally based education squarely into practice. The volume, edited and with an introduction by leading American Indian education scholar Jon Reyhner, brings together new and dynamic research from established and emerging voices in the field of American Indian and Indigenous education. All of the contributions show how the quality of education for Indigenous students can be improved through the promotion of culturally and linguistically appropriate schooling. Grounded in place, community, and culture, the approaches set out in this volume reflect the firsthand experiences of teachers and students in interacting not just with texts and one another, but also with the local community and environment. The authors address the specifics of teaching the full range of subjects--from learning literacy using culturally meaningful texts to inquiry-based science curricula, and from math instruction that incorporates real-world experience to social studies that blend oral history and local culture with national and world history. Teaching Indigenous Students also emphasizes the importance of art, music, and physical education, both traditional and modern, in producing well-rounded human beings and helping students establish their identity as twenty-first-century Indigenous peoples. Surveying the work of Indigenous-language immersion schools around the world, this volume also holds out hope for the revitalization of Indigenous languages and traditional cultural values.

A resource for all who teach and study history, this book illuminates the unmistakable centrality of American Indian history to the full sweep of American history. The nineteen essays gathered in this collaboratively produced volume, written by leading scholars in the field of Native American history, reflect the newest directions of the field and are organized to follow the chronological arc of the standard American history survey. Contributors reassess major events, themes, groups of historical actors, and approaches--social, cultural, military, and political--consistently demonstrating how Native American people, and questions of Native American sovereignty, have animated all the ways we consider the nation's past. The uniqueness of Indigenous history, as interwoven more fully in the American story, will challenge students to think in new ways about larger themes in U.S. history, such as settlement and colonization, economic and political power, citizenship and movements for equality, and the fundamental question of what it means to be an American.

This book presents the Transformational Indigenous Praxis Model (TIPM), an innovative framework for promoting critical consciousness toward decolonization efforts among educators. The TIPM challenges readers to examine how even the most well-intentioned educators are complicit in reproducing ethnic stereotypes, racist actions, deficit-based ideology, and recolonization. Drawing from decades of collaboration with teachers and school leaders serving Indigenous children and communities, this volume will help educators better support the development of their students' critical thinking skills. Representing a holistic balance, the text is organized in four sections: Birth-Grade 12 and Community Education, Teacher Education, Higher Education, and Educational Leadership. Unsettling Settler-Colonial Education centers the needs of teachers, children, families, and communities that are currently engaged in public education and who deserve an improved experience today, while also committing to more positive Indigenous futurities. Book Features: Introduces the TIPM as a structure that supports educators in decolonizing and indigenizing their practices. Provides examples of how pathway-making across a variety of settings takes shape on the TIPM continuum. Highlights a diverse group of authors who are making major contributions to the transformation agendas of Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing. Includes a brief summary of the TIPM dimensions with examples of the challenges that educators face as they expand their critical consciousness toward decolonization. Follows Native oral traditions by sharing lessons, research, and personal lived experience. Identifies the deficit-based ideological underpinnings that frame Indigenous students' school experiences. Employs a metaphor of wave jumping to illustrate how educators working to decolonize their practice can gain forward momentum with time and energy even while facing resistance. Provides a methodology to promote healing and cultural restoration of Indigenous peoples.

Joel Spring's history of school policies imposed on dominated groups in the United States examines the concept of deculturalization--the use of schools to strip away family languages and cultures and replace them with those of the dominant group. The focus is on the education of dominated groups forced to become citizens in territories conquered by the United States, including Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and Hawaiians. In seven concise, thought-provoking chapters, this analysis and documentation of how education is used to change or eliminate linguistic and cultural traditions in the United States looks at the educational, legal, and social construction of race and racism in the United States, emphasizing the various meanings of "equality" that have existed from colonial America to the present. Providing a broader perspective for understanding the denial of cultural and linguistic rights in the United States, issues of language, culture, and deculturalization are placed in a global context. Extensively revised throughout to reflect the dramatic national events since the prior edition, the Ninth Edition discusses the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, increased educational inequality related to the pandemic, concerns about institutional racism and White nationalism, disputes about the interpretation of U.S. history, and debates over cultural and racial identity.

This book argues that two principal factors are inhibiting Native students from transitioning from school to college and from succeeding in their post-secondary studies. It presents models and examples of pathways to success that align with Native American students' aspirations and cultural values. Many attend schools that are poorly resourced where they are often discouraged from aspiring to college. Many are alienated from the educational system by a lack of culturally appropriate and meaningful environment or support systems that reflect Indigenous values of community, sharing, honoring extended family, giving-back to one's community, and respect for creation. The contributors to this book highlight Indigenized college access programs--meaning programs developed by, not just for--the Indigenous community, and are adapted, or developed, for the unique Indigenous populations they serve. Individual chapters cover a K-12 program to develop a Native college-going culture through community engagement; a "crash course" offered by a higher education institution to compensate for the lack of college counseling and academic advising at students' schools; the role of tribal colleges and universities; the recruitment and retention of Native American students in STEM and nursing programs; financial aid; educational leadership programs to prepare Native principals, superintendents, and other school leaders; and, finally, data regarding Native American college students with disabilities. The chapters are interspersed with narratives from current Indigenous graduate students. This is an invaluable resource for student affairs practitioners and higher education administrators wanting to understand and serve their Indigenous students.