Engaging Historical and Ancestral Peoples as a Praxis for Healthy Experiential Outcome in Higher Educational Environments

• In Event: T’aała’i Diidleeł (We Become One): Toward a Collective and Ceremonial Praxis of Indigenous Decolonizing Scholarship

Abstract

(1) The purpose of this paper is to examine how ancestors and historical individuals can be looked to for active and critical engagement, versus being examined as archival and static primary reference sources. (2) The author will use critical bi-culturalism and student development theories to engage the importance of indigenous student’s needs for retaining/maintaining connection to place and ancestors, as they enter institutions of higher education. (3) The methodology will be a mixed method of interpretive and indigenous epistemological use of Yavapai creation story of epic journey and struggle, to interpret modern student struggle and journey through institutions of education. (4) The author will examine personal journey and educational enlightenment in post experiences upon participating in American Indian Studies 490 (AIS 490), “Indigenous Learning and Decolonizing Methodologies” at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The impact of this course on the author, changed his initial methodology of historical interpretive examination of primary resources, to an approach that engaged the historical experiences of the Yavapai leader, Carlos Montezuma, through a Yavapai creation story lens; which yielded a critical praxis for understanding contemporary indigenous student development issues. (5) This examination frames a right for indigenous epistemologies to be allowed the same enlightenment propensity, as intended by Immanuel Kant for all within the modern university. The notion of an indigenous enlightenment is also paralleled in the philosophical views of Vine Deloria Jr., in his notions of a “modern indigenous metaphysics,” found in the work, Spirit and Reason (1999). (6) Educators, student development practitioners, and policy developers can benefit from a more complex student development understanding for how indigenous students and peoples, rely on their connectedness to place and community to inform their worldviews. The author suggests a theoretical extrapolation on the student development idea of in loco parentis (in lieu of parent), to one of in loco terra firmus (in lieu of earth place) where framed is a furthered responsibility beyond of that to a parent or guardian, to one of responsibility to assisting the healthy maintenance of a student’s retaining an “umbilical” connection to location and tribal community from which they are from.

Bibliography
Deloria, V., Deloria, B., Foehner, K., & Scinta, S. (1999). Spirit and Reason: The vine deloria, jr., reader. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing.

Author

• Jamie M. Singson, University of Illinois