Practicing Freedom by Narrating Community and Self: Burmese Students Consider Home

• In Event: Engaging Refugee Children and Youth in Informal Learning Environments Toward Transformative Learning

Abstract

The decades long war in Burma has resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities. Most reside in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border or in temporary settlement areas in Malaysia. Regarding refugee camps, Isik-Ercan (2011) reports “the scarcity of schooling in camps, even in children’s native language, leads to a lack of knowledge among families concerning schooling contexts” (p. 27). Upon resettlement, lack of knowledge and experience with schooling often results in anxiety around matters like “making an appointment; complex schooling policies that can vary by classroom, building and district; and procedures that require written communication or parent involvement” (p. 28). More broadly, the nature of refugee camp experiences “makes it even harder for children and families to negotiate cultural norms and relationships in educational and public settings in the U.S.” (p. 28).

Isik-Ercan further suggests the challenges are exacerbated for refugees entering U.S. schools in the Midwest where “all Burmese children are often perceived as similar by mainstream peers and teachers” (p. 28). We do not argue that anxiety and misrecognition reflected above are insignificant issues; rather, we decenter this particular narrative that advances discourses representing “refugees” as only ever helpless and deprived.

One among a number of youth and leadership programs offered through a grassroots community-based organization, the BCCE Youth St(W)arriors of Indianapolis formed in 2013. The group is guided by two university faculty members and is comprised of high school and college students. As articulated by the organization’s founding president M. Mutraw, “At BCCE, we believe that education should raise the awareness of the students so that they become subjects, rather than objects, of the world. This awareness can be achieved by teaching students to think democratically and to continually question and make meaning.” To encourage this ethic, the BCCE Youth St(W)arriors of Indianapolis interrogated the notion of “home” and what it means to live as exiles in a third country.

Through qualitative interviews of elders, young adults, and youth in the recently resettled refugee community from Burma, as well as their own reflections on home, the Youth St(W)arriors considered how they and their communities are positioned in the United States and what this means for how the community makes sense of their “home.” To explore these ideas, we took up the use of documentary filmmaking as the primary mode through which to narrate these ideas and to advocate with and for families. Consistent with the aims of BCCE to foster students’ understanding of themselves—as subjects, rather than objects, of the world—the Youth St(W)arriors emphasize the importance of self- and community-understanding and the power of stories to transform the world. Freire champions the freedom of individuals and communities to shape their own destinies – to narrate themselves rather than being narrated by others. In this tradition, the BCCE Youth St(W)arriors of Indianapolis seek to tell their own stories, the stories of their elders, and to envision the stories they hope to materialize for themselves and their community.

Authors

• Thu Suong Thi Nguyen, Indiana University - IUPUI

• Brendan D. Maxcy, Indiana University - IUPUI