Teaching K-12 Indigenous History & Culture Critically

The Carlisle Indian School (1879-1918) was an audacious educational experiment. Capt. Richard Henry Pratt, the school's founder and first superintendent, persuaded the federal government that training Native children to accept the white man's ways and values would be more efficient than fighting deadly battles. The result was that the last Indian war would be waged against Native children in the classroom. More than 10,500 children from virtually every Native nation in the United States were taken from their homes and transported to Pennsylvania. Carlisle provided a blueprint for the federal Indian school system that was established across the United States and served as a model for many residential schools in Canada. The Carlisle experiment initiated patterns of dislocation and rupture far deeper and more profound and enduring than its initiators ever grasped. Carlisle Indian Industrial School offers varied perspectives on the school by interweaving the voices of students' descendants, poets, and activists with cutting-edge research by Native and non-Native scholars.

Recovering Native American Writings in the Boarding School Press is the first comprehensive collection of writings by students and well-known Native American authors who published in boarding school newspapers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Students used their acquired literacy in English along with more concrete tools that the boarding schools made available, such as printing technology, to create identities for themselves as editors and writers. In these roles they sought to challenge Native American stereotypes and share issues of importance to their communities.  Writings by Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa), Charles Eastman, and Luther Standing Bear are paired with the works of lesser-known writers to reveal parallels and points of contrast between students and generations. Drawing works primarily from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (Pennsylvania), the Hampton Institute (Virginia), and the Seneca Indian School (Oklahoma), Jacqueline Emery illustrates how the boarding school presses were used for numerous and competing purposes.  This collection of Native-authored letters, editorials, essays, short fiction, and retold tales published in boarding school newspapers illuminates the boarding school legacy and how it has shaped, and continues to shape, Native American literary production.   

In 1889, Sitting Bull addressed the formal, Western-style education of his people. "When you find something good in the white man's road, pick it up," he intoned. "When you find something that is bad... leave it alone. We shall master his machinery, and his inventions, his skills, his medicine, his planning, but we will retain our beauty and still be Indians." Sitting Bull's vision -- that cultural survival and personal perseverance derive from tribal resilience -- lies at the heart of Tribal Strengths and Native Education. Basing his account on the insights of six veteran American Indian educators who serve in three reservation schools on the Northern Plains, Terry Huffman explores how Native educators perceive pedagogical strengths rooted in their tribal heritage and personal ethnicity. He recounts their views on the issues facing students and shows how tribal identity can be a source of resilience in academic and personal success. Throughout, Huffman and the educators emphasize the importance of anchoring the formal education of Indian children in Native values and worldviews -- in "tribal strengths."

This edited volume is the result of a collaborative project of Indigenous graduate education training and higher education-tribal institution partnerships in the southwestern United States. We feature the work of interdisciplinary scholars writing about local peoples, issues, and knowledges that demonstrate rich linkages between universities and Indigenous communities. Collectively, as Indigenous peoples writing, this work takes the opportunity to explore why and how Indigenous peoples are working to reframe dominant limits of our power and to shift educational efforts from the colonial back to an Indigenous center. These efforts reflect a conscientious practice to maintain Indigenous worldviews through diverse yet unified approaches aimed at serving Indigenous peoples and places. Cover photo: Gia Khun (Mother Corn) with Gia (Mother) and Uncle Manual, c. 1918. This is a family photo provided by Dr. Tessie Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo). Imaging assistance provided by Tewa artist, Jason Garcia (Okuu Pin).

In recent years, events such as the siege at Standing Rock and the Dakota Accesspipeline have thrust Native Americans into the public consciousness. Taking us beyond the headlines,American Apartheid offers the mostcomprehensive and compelling account of the issues and threats that NativeAmericans face today, as well as their heroic battle to overcome them.Author Stephanie Woodard details the ways in which the federal government,states and counties curtail Native voting rights, which, in turn, keepstribal members from participating in policy-makingsurrounding education,employment, rural transportation, infrastructure projects and other critical issuesaffecting their communities. This system of apartheid has staggering consequences,as Natives are, per capita, the population group that is most likelyto be shot by police, suffer violent victimization by outsiders, be incarcerated,and have their children taken away. On top of this, indigenous people must alsofight constantly to protect the sacred sites and landscapes that hold their culturalmemories and connect their spirituality to the nation's mountains, plains,waterways and coastlines. Despite these many obstacles, American Apartheid offersvivid pictures of diverse Native American communities that embody resilience,integrity, and the survival of ancient cultures. Includes many photographs of Native American life by Joseph Zummo.

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.

Resurgence is an inspiring collection of contemporary Indigenous poetry, art, and narratives that guides teachers in bridging existing K-12 curricula with Indigenous voices and pedagogies. In this first book in The Footbridge Series, we invite you to walk with us as we seek to: connect peoples and places link truth and reconciliation as ongoing processes symbolize the risk and urgency of this work for both Indigenous and settler educators engage tensions highlight the importance of balance, both of ideas and within ourselves Through critical engagement with the texts, experienced educators Christine M'Lot and Katya Adamov Ferguson support readers in connecting with Indigenous narratives and perspectives, bringing Indigenous works in their classrooms, and creating more equitable and sustainable teaching practices. In this resource, you will find diverse Indigenous voices, perspectives, and art forms from a variety of Nations and locations valuable concepts and methods that can be applied to the classroom and beyond practical action steps and resources for educators, parents, librarians, and administrators Use this book as a springboard for your own learning journey or as a lively prompt for dialogue within your professional learning community.

How do you help young children learn more about Native Americans than the cultural stereotypes found in children's books and in the media? Lessons from Turtle Island is the first complete guide to exploring Native American issues with children. The authors--one Native, one white, both educators--show ways to incorporate authentic learning experiences about Native Americans into your curriculum. This book is organized around five cross-cultural themes--Children, Home, Families, Community, and the Environment. The authors present activities, from children's books they recommend, to develop skills in reading and writing, science, math, make-believe, art, and more. The book provides helpful guidelines and resource lists for selecting appropriate toys, children's books, music, and art, and also includes a family heritage project. "[A] marvelous tool that should be in every American school."--Joseph Bruchac, author of Heart of a Chief and The Winter People Guy W. Jones, Hunkpapa Lakota, is a full-blood member of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. He is a co-founder of the Miami Valley Council for Native Americans in Dayton, Ohio. Sally Moomaw teaches at the University of Cincinnati. She is the co-author of the More Than . . . curriculum series published by Redleaf Press.

Seale and Slapin are with Oyate, a community-based Native organization located in Berkeley, California, dedicated to the honest portrayal of the lives, traditional arts and literature, and histories of Native Americans. Their unique guide brings attention to some of the gifted Native writers and illustrators published by Native and small presses.

In this succinct, yet comprehensive book, leading authority James A. Banks gives readers a forward-reaching look toward increasing their understanding of what multicultural education means for classroom teaching in contemporary classrooms. Here he explores the concepts, principles, theories, and practices of multicultural education in such key areas as: the goals and misconceptions of multicultural education; citizenship education and diversity in a global age; curriculum transformation; curriculum reform; and, school reform and intergroup education. Included are checklists for evaluating informational materials and evaluating multicultural education. An Introduction to Multicultural Education is ideal for pre-service and practicing educators who require a concrete approach but have little time to devote to the topic.

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.