Nohwiltag: Academic Raiding as Apache Student Agency and Praxis

• In Event: 66.032 - Challenging Colonial Legacies in Education: Reclaiming Indigenous Culture, Language, and Heritage in the Americas

Abstract

Current indigenous education has not benefited students who wish to retain and develop their cultural identity. Historical efforts to provide education for indigenous students have relied heavily upon assimilationist tactics (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006; Smith, 2006; Adams, 1995). As such student identity within their home community is often compromised if they accept the “lessons from school” or are labeled deficient in intellect if they do not accept the lessons from school. Students, often without any guidance, are forced to assess what will be most beneficial to them in the long run. Current educational models have returned once again to an assimilationist model that calls for nationwide standards (McCarty, 2009; Kozol, 2005). Students are once again given only one viable option; the primacy of the culture of the school over their own culture. However, in this circumstance, students have disregarded the wholesale acceptance of school for a more practical stance on education that both validates their home culture and utilizes the tools accessible through schools. Indigenous students often engage in the systematic assessment of offered lessons in school and their applicability within their own culture. This is conceptualized as academic raiding. Often times raiding means to appropriate lessons in order to fulfill obligations to the knowledge and culture of the home community that are missing in the original format presented in school. Effective academic raiding does not rely upon the formal educational model of the school but rather positions the student as an active raider of knowledge. Students are able to create a hybridized understanding of lessons that are applicable to both cultures of the school and of the students’ home community. The (appropriation on the part of the student) of the school lessons by the students can be understood by the school as an acceptance of the lesson and their subsequent underlying values which often serves as an indicator of the assimilation of the student. Students under the guise of assimilation then are free to determine the viability of the lessons to their own community. Through this assessment students enact a fairly comprehensive understanding of the lesson in order determine some of the essential concepts and if they are valid to their own community. As such school lessons are understood at a deeper level than what is required by the schools because of the students’ own desire to understand the lesson and its place in their community.

Author

• Philip Stevens, The University of Arizona