An American Indian Epistolary Method for Curriculum Resistance and Higher Education

• In Event: 65.080 - Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: 65.080-10 - Inheriting Colonial Silences: Pedagogies of Intimacy, Ethical Responsibilities, and Public Resistances

Abstract

For the last two centuries, higher education for Native Americans has been a White-Supremacist-Capitalist- Patriarchy (hooks, 2001) serving institution, involving compulsory Western methods of learning and attempts to eradicate tribal cultures. In direct response to this history, California’s American Indian leaders continue to draw upon the Indigenous Knowledges to rethink access and the role of higher education. This paper provides a glimpse of how California’s curriculum on American Indians can be interrogated by letters from boarding school students. I provide examples of how I engage my students in this process of analyzing these letters as well as creating their own letters as ways for them to further engage their own tribal identities as they prepare for higher education.

Author

• Nora Cisneros, UCLA