Declaring "Chahta Sia Hoke" (I Am Choctaw): Choctaw Political Ascendancy and Neoliberal Education Policy in Oklahoma

• In Event: Neoliberal Effects on Indigenous Education: Community Response and Decolonial Possibility

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how educational policy within Oklahoma has become neoliberal in its turn away from funding education, creating a void that Indian nations to fill and gain increased political power and legitimacy within state politics. Indian nations in a way benefit from neoliberal cuts to education which allow them to provide and/or fund education that centers and affirms Indigenous lifeways. Examining neoliberalism through the analytic of settler colonialism, this paper highlights the multifaceted effects of neoliberalism in a specific community. Using an ethnography of Chahta Anumpa Aiikhvna (School of Choctaw Language), we can see the tensions of two sovereigns challenging each other through educational policy: the state of Oklahoma and Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. The ways in which state and national politics configure to undermine Choctaw sovereignty further demonstrates the challenges that the Choctaw Nation must face in using education as a decolonial tool for changing how settlers and Native people interact with one another.

Author

• Megan Baker, University of California - Los Angeles