Attaining Horses: Indigenous Metaphors for Educational Success

• In Event: 52.084 - Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: 52.084-2 - Teaching and Learning in STEAM Fields: Bridging STEM and Art in the Borderlands

Abstract

This manuscript is an investigation of how metaphors are being used in higher education to promote student retention, graduation, and a more meaningful experience as Indigenous scholars and professionals. Culturally related metaphors revealed by North American Indigenous students serve to promote academic success by allowing students to reframe their experiences in a culturally attuned way in contradiction to the traditionally assimilative way of experiencing higher education. This manuscript borrows from tribal critical race theory (Tribal Crit), Decolonizing Methodologies, and Red Pedagogy. The Indigenous experience in graduate education is centered to examine metaphors that students use to make meaning of their experiences as they prepare to become educational leaders in schools with high populations of American Indian and Alaska Native students.

Author

• Sweeney Windchief, Montana State University