Emergent Lessons of Indigeneity: Stories of Intergenerational Learning Between Native American Mothers and Their Children

• In Event: 31.041 - Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Intergenerational Sustenance and Solidarities From Turtle Island to //Hui !Gaeb

Abstract

In seeking to better understand the lessons learned and taught in the home between
Native American parents and their children, this study actively challenges deficit
scholarship focused upon parental involvement. Much of this work misses the multiple
ways Indigenous (and marginalized) parents are active participants in their child’s
education because such participation does not correspond with the hegemonic
ideologies as forwarded in schools. In addition, much of the blame for “at-risk” youth has
centered upon deficit-based frameworks that link racial, cultural, and ethnic
backgrounds to the low achievement of students in schools. Parental involvement bears
the brunt of such blame since scholarship continues to evaluate parental practices
based on societal norms often associated with white, middle-class, nuclear families
(Cooper, 2009). Because of this painful history, there has been much distrust of
educational institutions in Indigenous communities, which have historically (and
currently), stripped students of their cultures and languages while attempting to replace
them with a new “civilized” American identity (i.e. kill the Indian, save the man). This
study offers extensions to critical Indigenous frameworks in order to examine “parental
involvement” in ways that forward cultural processes, while re-conceptualizing parents
as educators, cultural brokers, and storytellers and children as capable learners and
sharers of their home, community and tribal knowledges. To counter and decolonize
education, a reconceptualizing of the term “education” is needed, one that moves away
from focusing solely on in- school learning and toward broader definitions that center
teachings and learnings that occur within the household. Such a reconceptualization of
education positions parents as teachers and transmitters of cultural knowledges. In
forwarding a broader definition of education that includes cultural transmission of
knowledges, research is needed to understand better how Indigenous sovereignty is
revitalized and sustained through the teaching of languages, knowledges, and cultures
in the home. To share lessons learned, this presentation focuses upon the emergent
intergenerational lessons shared in the homes and communities of five Native American
families, particularly between mothers and their children. The movement into the homes
and lives of these families provides stories of the ways culture and languages are
sustained and/or revitalized (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014; McCarty & Lee, 2014).

Author

• Timothy J. San Pedro, The Ohio State University