Indigenous Self-Determination in Education in Alaska: How Do We Get There?

• In Event: Education in the North: Challenges in Formal Education for Indigenous Peoples in Circumpolar Regions

Abstract

Objectives
Many Alaska public schools fail to educate indigenous students. Native students drop out of school at rates triple the national average, and most who attend college need remedial work (Martin and Hill, 2009, McDiarmid and Hill, 2010).

A recent look at promising models of formal schooling for indigenous students concluded that self-determination and local control is key to successful schooling (Authors, 2011). Yet, in Alaska indigenous control over schools is almost non-existent. In this paper we examine the historical, social, legal and political factors behind this. We discuss changes needed to facilitate indigenous control of schooling, and ideas for how to begin.

Perspective(s)
Our work is grounded in decolonization theory (Smith, 1999; Iseke-Barnes, 2008), and informed by research on struggles for self-determination in indigenous education. Lomawaima (2000) contends the history of American Indian education is about indigenous parents battling for the power to define goals, policies, and practices of schooling for their children. Dinero (2004) describes formal education in indigenous Alaska as “a mode of post-colonial assimilation and encapsulation” (p. 401), arguing that a significant factor in school failure is its imposition by non-indigenous forces.

Methods
This qualitative policy analysis uses document analysis to identify the legal, institutional, social and political barriers to indigenous self-determination in schooling. Ozga (2000) argues for studying the history of education policy in order to understand the effects of political ideologies. To determine needed changes, we situate the current schooling structure in an understanding of its development, recognizing the role of revisiting history in decolonization (Smith, 1999).

Data
Documents include legislation, policy debate transcripts, newspaper articles and other archival material on current and historical educational institutions for Alaska Natives. We also review federal and state statutes, regulations and policies governing education in Alaska, and papers related to broader Alaska Native legal, institutional and social structures.

Results
Legal and institutional structures present significant barriers. With little ‘Indian Country’, most Alaska Native children are educated in the state’s public system, with no provision for tribal control. Also, there is broad political opposition to tribal sovereignty. (Cornell and Kalt, 2003). Further, the colonial legacy, including abuse, has left Native parents simultaneously deferential to credentialed teachers and administrators, and fundamentally distrustful of schools (Cottrell, 2010).

To take control over their children’s schooling, Alaska’s indigenous peoples need political and legal changes that could take years to enact. However, communities could immediately create locally-driven schools under the state’s charter school law, and could also strengthen rural district school boards so that board members - generally indigenous – and the parents they represent take back control of the districts from administrators, who are overwhelmingly non-Native.

Significance
This paper seeks to provoke and inform discussion, in both academia and Alaska’s indigenous communities, around the need for, and ways to attain greater indigenous control over schooling. It extends the literature on decolonization in education and links it to work that establishes the critical role of sovereignty for success in other areas of social policy (Cornell and Kalt, 2003).

Authors

• Diane B. Hirshberg, The University of Alaska - Anchorage

• Alexandra R. Hill, The University of Alaska - Anchorage

• Timothy Aqukkasuk Argetsinger, Harvard University