Journal of American Indian Education
Abstracts — 1999
#537
NAVAJO CULTURE AND FAMILY INFLUENCES ON ACADEMIC SUCCESS: TRADITIONALISM IS NOT A SIGNIFICANT PREDICTOR OF ACHIEVEMENT AMONG NAVAJO YOUTH
Angela A. A. Willeto Vol. 38, #2, pp. 1-24, Winter 1999
Navajo youths fare poorly in formal schooling and a key explanation has been sought in their cultural investment in the Navajo way of life. A common assumption asserts that the greater this investment, the more these young people are at risk of educational failure. Results from this field study favor a very different view of the relationship. Using data from 451 young Navajos, it was found that there may be no relationship between the academic achievement and behavior of these young people and their multifaceted involvement in Navajo culture. Data were obtained from these youths during their attendance at 112 schools in the Navajo nation. Youth participation in ritual activities, cultural conventions, and language use was not predictive of their educational failure or disengagement from school. Yet, the family affects academic performance and goals, as does gender. The role of tribal cultures in the education of American Indian youths deserves more thoughtful study.
#538
LEAD AND THE ENVIRONMENT: AN APPROACH TO EDUCATING ADULTS
Leonard J. S. Tsuji; Evert Nieboer; Jim D. Karagatzides Vol. 38, #2, pp. 25-38, Winter 1999
This study examined the effectiveness of a lead shot environmental education program directed towards adult Cree of the Mushkegowuk Territory. The outcome that was measured was a change in attitude to the lead shot issue, that is, a change of scored state from 0 (participants stating that lead shot was detrimental to the environment, wildlife, and/or people of the region). Forty participants randomly selected at the beginning of the study were scored as 0. On follow-up, all people who were available for interview (Elders 6 of 7; males, 8 of 13, females, 14 of 19) were not scored as 1, illustrating a major change in attitude. Educational strategies (e.g., hands-on activities) developed for adults in the present study have been appropriately modified for school children.
SPECIAL ISSUE 1
PREFACE
The Journal of American Indian Education is dedicating this and two other forthcoming special issues to the wisdom and perspectives of recognized Native and non-Native elder leaders and scholars in the field of American Indian Education. As we enter the gateways of a new century and millennium, the JAIE has asked them to reflect on the issues and insights that might be associated with this temporal intersection with Native education. In response, each in his/her own unique way, shares with us perspectives on the paths taken in the past, the paths that we are now following, and where they are likely to lead us.
As Native people, we recognize that the concept of time embodied in the Roman Calendar was brought to us by a race of people who colonized and ultimately assumed domination of our continent. As part of our adaptation to colonization, we have learned to define time and its measurement in a way similar to the manner in which we have had to define our outer sovereignty and nationhoods based on concept of boundaries, property, and treaties alien to us. However, we have also maintained our own time-honored ways of measuring the beat of our existence and acknowledging those events and circumstances that we, in our hearts and spirit, hold sacred. While the contributors to the special editions pause in acknowledgement of the dominant concept of time as measured in yeas and centuries, their writings also celebrate inextinguishable tenacity, our inner sovereignty, and the will of Native people on this continent that cannot be measured in such a way. In this spirit, their writings are not a series of analytic summations. Rather, they are personal reflections of elders and leaders who have been vital intellectual and spiritual forerunners in an evolving, dynamic, and resilient community of people. While they reflect on Native education, we collectively acknowledge and voice our own evolving role and influence within the framework of coexistence with our colonizers, regardless of time.
While our colonization is an irreversible fact, the contributors underscore the resilience of our identity and cultures. Our pride as Native peoples lies in the truth that we have managed to remain distinct and culturally vital in a society that has made many attempts to exterminate, homogenize, and assimilate us. We still manage our lives and measure time in cadence with our mother earth and in honor of and respect for our elders and ancestors. Now, as the dominant society realizes how it has exploited and despoiled mother earth, it increasingly looks toward us to guide a process of healing and living in greater harmony with her.
Constant and accelerating change has become the norm for all peoples on the North American continent. We know that the dominant culture imposed its form of education as a way to “civilize” and assimilate us. However, we have learned to adapt education in our own ways as an essential response to change. Native people have always had systems and ways to educate. We now enjoy unprecedented opportunities to incorporate useful aspects of the dominant society's style of education with our own time-honored purposes and ways of educating.
In acknowledgement of the vitality of information technology in education as a 21st century issue, it is fitting that the inaugural entry in this first special education is reprinted from a website located on the Rosebud Reservation, http:www.tcsdk12.org/cmc/Lakota/perspective.htm. As parent and Native educator, Lydia Whirlwind Solder (Sicanju Lakota) aptly sets the theme for the special editions through her personal reflections upon the dawning of a new century.
William Demmert (Tlingit/Sioux) follows with reflections of his own schooling as well as on changes in style, form, and policies in Indian Education to which he has born witness during his illustrious career as an educator.
Based on many years of work on the Navajo Nation, Robert Roessel, founder of the Center for Indian Education at Arizona State University, Rough Rock Demonstration School and Navajo Community College details problem areas in Indian Education and provides some uplifting predictions for the future.
Octaviana Trujillo (Yaqui), a successor of Robert Roessel as Director of the Center for Indian Education at Arizona State University, and Jeffrey Shepherd, a doctoral candidate in history, briefly outline the history of the Center for Indian Education and its role in Indian Education since its inception forty years ago.
Historian Peter Iverson, recently named Regents Scholar at Arizona State University, then recollects the early years of Dine' College where he worked as a young history instructor. He provides insights on the birth of self-determination in higher education as the first tribal college struggled to its feet.
The final reflection, contributed by Margaret Connell Szasz, probes the history of Indian education, focusing on the education connection as a cross-cultural phenomenon that moved in both directions among Natives and non-Native.
In spite of Native strength and tenacity, there are still liabilities and pitfalls associated with change and adaptation in a context of colonization. In all things, there must be a balance between what is lost and what is gained. As this theme is threaded throughout the writings of our contributors, each guides us toward this balance with his/her unique metaphors, stories, philosophies, predictions, and entreaties.
#539
LAKOTA PERSPECTIVE
Lydia Whirlwind Soldier Vol. 38, #3, pp. 3-4, Spring 1999
#540
INDIAN EDUCATION REVISITED: A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
William G. Demmert, Jr. Vol. 38, #3, pp. 4-13, Spring 1999
#541
NAVAJO EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE
Robert A. Roessel, Jr. Vol. 38, #3, pp. 14-18, Spring 1999
#542
AN ENDURING VOICE IN AMERICAN INDIAN EDUCATION: THE ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR INDIAN EDUCATION, 1959-1999
Octaviana V. Trujillo; Jeffrey Shepherd Vol. 38, #3, pp. 19-33, Spring 1999
#543
THE EARLY YEARS OF DINE' COLLEGE
Peter Iverson Vol. 38, #3, pp. 34-43, Spring 1999
#544
THE EDUCATION CONNECTION: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS TO SHERMAN ALEXIE
Margaret Connell-Szasz Vol. 38, #3, pp. 44-56, Spring 1999
SPECIAL ISSUE 2
PREFACE
This second special edition of the Journal of American Indian Education acknowledges the commonalities of our worldwide struggle as Indigenous Peoples to mitigate the destructive effects of colonization on Native thought and lifeways. Two significant themes are threaded throughout the writings of this issue, both consistent with and reflective of major themes associated with the tri-annual World Indigenous People's Conference: Education (WIPC:E). The first is expressed as a basic tenet of the 1993 Coolangatta Statement on Indigenous Rights in Education. It simply asserts, “The right to be Indigenous is the most fundamental and important of all Human Rights.” The second is represented in the theme – “The Answers Lie Within Us” – from the most recent 1999 WIPC:E at Hilo, Hawaii.
While the contributors to this edition speak to specific regions and nations in the Northern Hemisphere, they also speak to conditions that are shared by most Indigenous Peoples in our world today. In their reflections on the conditions of Native education at the cusp of a new millennium, they clearly celebrate the ability of Native people to have withstood the onslaught of colonialism during the past several hundred years. However, they caution that this resilience is not enough and that we must regard our condition, as Verna Kirkness observes, as still “mired in the effects of colonialism.”
All of the contributors point out that, in order to advance indigenous education, we must invest ourselves less in content and focus on the processes that affirm Native lifeways, languages and cultural epistemology. These processes must be affirmed, supported, and implemented by Native People on their own terms. While self-determination has allowed significant progress, there remains a great impediment that Oscar Kawagley describes as “Cognitive Imperialism.” If not overcome, history may just repeat itself, only now, at the hands of Native People under the rubric of self-determination.
The contributions of this special edition are thought-provoking and spoken from the heart. They represent an honest appraisal of the condition of Native education and suggest paths for the future.
In the first selection, our Native Hawaiian contributors, David Kekaulike Sing, Alapa Hunter and Manu Aluli Meyer offer us a fourth chair in a “talking story” session, thus involving us in the how of Hawaiian cultural epistemology. Through our participation in this group mana, they demonstrate and underscore a fundamental belief that they feel must be prioritized back into the process and product of what education is for Native Hawaiian People. In this way they offer us both wisdom and insight about Native epistemology and the political nature of “doing things the Native Hawaiian way.”
In the second selection, Verna Kirkness combines and annotates two of her recent writings that offer a forthright appraisal of First Nations education. She posits a continuing struggle to identify a meaningful education for Canadian Aboriginal People based on the policy of Indian Control of Indian Education. In order to claim Native “independence” in education, she exhorts us to “cut the shackles, cut the crap and cut the mustard.” Effective and meaningful education for Native people will be based on a marriage of the past and the present. It will honor Native cultures, including our values and our languages, as well as Native Peoples' contributions to the development and progress of society.
In writing about Yupiaq education in Alaska, Oscar Kawagley poses the question: Why should someone from the outside come in with foreign values and forms of consciousness and impose them upon another? He notes that, so far, education has made Yupiaq people, as well as other Alaska Natives, consumers instead of producers in charge of their own livelihood. In planning and working for their own destiny, Yupiaq and other Alaska Natives need to affirm and retain their unique Native identities. In Kawagley's view, this is best accomplished through the use of the Native language because it thrusts them into the thought world of their ancestors and their ways of apprehending and comprehending their world.
Finally, the Coolangatta Statement is reprinted in full. This eloquent declaration has universal application regarding the fundamental right of access of any colonized peoples to education without having to forsake their special connectedness and belong to Mother Earth. The basic human right to be Indigenous involves the freedom of Indigenous people themselves to determine who is Indigenous, what it means to be Indigenous, and how education relates to Indigenous cultures. This Statement readily embodies and supports the wisdom and insights provided by the contributors to this edition.
#545
NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION: TALKING STORY WITH THREE HAWAIIAN EDUCATORS
David Kekaulike Sing; Alapa Hunter; Manu Aluli Meyer Vol. 39, #1, pp. 4-13, Fall 1999
#546
ABORIGINAL EDUCATION IN CANADA: A RETROSPECTIVE AND A PROSPECTIVE
Verna K. Kirkness Vol. 39, #1, pp. 14-30, Fall 1999
#547
ALASKAN NATIVE EDUCATION: HISTORY AND ADAPTATION IN THE NEW MILLENIUM
Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley Vol. 39, #1, pp. 31-51, Fall 1999
#548
THE COOLANGATTA STATEMENT ON INDIGENOUS RIGHTS IN EDUCATION
World Indigenous Peoples' Conference on Education Vol. 39, #1, pp. 52-64, Fall 1999
SPECIAL ISSUE 3
PREFACE
This edition of the Journal of American Indian Education brings to a close a special three-part series featuring perspectives and commentaries about the condition and future of Native education as we move into a new century and millennium. In the previous two editions, our contributors asserted the necessity of Native authority and control in education but cautioned that there are formidable pitfalls associated with change and adaptation in a context of colonization. In order to properly frame the issues, the authors – elders, leaders, and academics – also provided historical overviews, experiential reflections, as well as their own vision of the future.
The contributors to this final edition lead us into an examination of policy and national trends in education and their implications in practice. While the previous contributors warned of the lingering effects of colonization, the present contributors warn us further that what is sought for the nation's educational progress in terms of policy, standards, and accountability may be inappropriate and could weaken the responsive potential of education in Native communities. In their respective analyses, the authors also provide considerable contextual detail in support of their views. As such, their writings represent a veritable “snapshot of the present,” rendering to the reader the most salient issues and perspectives about the state of American Indian/Alaska Native education in the year 2000.
The perspectives offered in this edition suggest further that there are major social and systemic obstacles barring achievement of equality of the results and benefits of education for Native youth and communities. As the authors reveal the multiple dimensions and interactions of those obstacles, they further reinforce a significant theme threaded through the two previous special editions – the critical need for connecting education to language and culture and linking the school to the community's purposes.
Kevin Gover, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, opens and sets the theme for this issue with a rare and moving statement, presented on the Occasion of the Ceremony Acknowledging the 175th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. While apologizing for years of disservice to American Indians, he asserts the agency's moral responsibility “of putting things right.” He proposes that a healing process begin and that the BIA, with the year 2000 as a temporal benchmark, work to reinvent itself as an instrument of Native prosperity.
In a provocative and forthright analysis of the 1998 Standards of the California State Board of Education, Jack Forbes confronts the assimilationist, melting pot ideology embedded in the push for standards and accountability in American education. At the heart of the issue is what he refers to as the “theft of America,” they way that such standards define “America” and “Americans.” Forbes argues that much of the reaction against multiculturalism and bilingualism is helping to fuel the rapid push for so-called “standards” in the schools. Such standards underlie a collectivized approach to education, leading to a process of nationalization, which has a denigrating and exclusionary effect not only on American Indians but all other racial and ethnic groups, and women, as well.
David Beaulieu and John Tippeconnic respectively the current and former directors of the Office of Indian Education follow with their reflections on matters related to Federal Indian policy and the changing face of American education. Beaulieu takes the position that our national concentration on school improvement and the relationship of schooling to improved employment opportunities for all learners may be too narrow a policy focus for American Indian and Alaska Native education. Rather, in keeping with the original purpose of The American Indian Education Act, school reform strategies must focus on objectives and approaches that recognize and address the linguistic and socio-cultural uniqueness of American Indian and Alaska Native learners.
Beaulieu also says that Indian parents, communities, and tribes must define their purposes and goals, providing clear direction to guide education and assert the criteria for evaluating success from a tribal and community perspective. Native communities and tribes must partner with schools, creating a holistic and community-owned approach to educating their young.
In addition to rendering some personal reflections about his own experience in education, John Tippeconnic outlines the issues and progress in four areas he deems critical to American Indian Education: Tribal Control, Focus and Priority, Language and Culture, and Research. All of these areas are rendered particularly complex because of the roles and responsibilities of Indian education at the various levels of responsibility – state, federal, and tribal. The complexity of Indian education is further compounded by the importance and often-misunderstood legal concepts of treaty rights, sovereignty, and government-to-government relationships that exist among Indian tribes and the federal government. The greatest challenge, he emphasizes, is to sustain a strong presence in Indian education – to make the education of American Indians and Alaska Natives a priority at all levels. Since Indian Education is so political, unity among Indian educators and tribal leadership is essential. Tribal leadership is needed that talks, promotes, and acts on Indian Education issues constantly and persistently.
In the final selection of this volume, Dean Chavers links the past failure in Indian Education to 125 years of damage wrought by “enforced segregation” between school and community. The expectations of Indian parents, he says, are not synchronous with the realities enacted in many schools serving Native youth. Many Indian schools continue to use curriculum belonging to a past era. A key to improvement is changing the culture of the schools and substantially increasing the numbers of well-trained Indian teachers and administrators.
As we present this final volume of our special issue, we pause to reflect on the original purpose, which was to share the wisdom and insight of recognized Native and non-Native elder leaders and scholars in the field of Native education as a commemorative of our entry into a new century and millennium.
When considered as a collective statement, the insights presented in these volumes both inspire and caution us. We are told that the present juncture in time represents both great opportunity as well as potential for irreversible loss of those elements of Native life and being that we hold most sacred. Since colonization of the American continent, Native people have withstood threats of annihilation and the constant pressure of assimilation. In spite of this, we continue to survive for the purposes our creator meant for us. However, in adapting many of the colonizers' forms of institutions as our own under the rubric of self-determination – including formal schooling – we run the risk of reinforcing rather than deconstructing the very processes of assimilation set upon us.
Education has become a critical element in our journey. Although the formal aspects of it have served as the colonizers' primary instrument of oppression and assimilation, we now have the unprecedented opportunity to adapt and blend this form of education with our own time-honored ways of teaching and learning. However, this must be accomplished with the greatest care and vigilance to honor and integrate our languages, cultures, values, and traditions with the learning and opportunities necessary for full participation in the larger society.
We honor and thank those who have spoken to us on the pages of these special editions. Each in his/her own unique way has provided a pathway for the future. It is now our task to relay this collective wisdom forward while adapting it to our intentions and actions now. A postcolonial era for Native people is dawning in the morning sky of this new millennium. As we exercise our sacred trust, acknowledging and applying the wisdom our elders and leaders have shared with us here, we and the generations that follow us will live with integrity, beauty, and enlightenment.