AlterNative Schooling Realities on the U.S.-Mexico Border: A Kumeyaay Story

• In Event: 28.021 - alterNative Perspectives: Indigenous and Settler Relational Borders

Abstract

Situated on the U.S.-Mexico border, this paper examines how imagining and accessing alterNative educational practices in public schools is a tool used by Native students to navigate the educational pipeline. AlterNative education is grounded in land-based knowledges connected and informed by decolonization, Indigenous cosmologies, ethnobotany, language, culture, traditions and embodied knowledges. AlterNative educational practices are Native spaces carved out by Native students for Native students attending public schooling centering embodied knowledges, storytelling, and autonomy. As a result of incorporating alterNative education in a border school a significant increase in graduation rates and access to higher education is occurring. This paper seeks to interconnect Indigenous peoples affected by the U.S.-Mexico border and provide an alterNative lens by and for Native students.

Author

• Cynthia Vazquez, University of California - San Diego