Indigenous Education

• In Event: Whole Person Education: Mapping the Landscape

Abstract

Indigenous people have been displaced from their lands, and in most cases their cultures and languages have been marginalized or eradicated by colonialism. Education played a central role in these colonial projects (Lomawaima and McCarty, 2002; Oppelt, 1990). “One of the main avenues for subjugating Indigenous peoples to colonial culture and governance has been through the imposition of education...that denies the legitimacy of thought, lifestyles, religions, and languages of First Nations people” (Ball, 2004, p. 457). In response, Indigenous people have asserted control over their children’s education as a central component of their sovereignty and self-determination (Brayboy, Faircloth, Lee, Maaka & Richardson, 2015; Grant & Gillespie, 1993). “Native experiences and perspectives—both resistance to imposed education and the creation of alternative models—reveal the liberating power of choice and the importance of self-determination” (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006, p. 5). Indigenous education must be understood as a response to the history of colonialism that makes Indigenous children different than other “minority” groups (Brayboy, et.al., 2015). Indigenous education concerns the establishment of sovereignty for a people as well as the assertion of individual students’ rights.
Indigenous education is a means of “reinforcing Aboriginal identity, instilling the values, attitudes and behaviours that give expression to Aboriginal cultures” (Ball, 2004, p. 453). It enacts the right of Indigenous people to maintain their languages and cultural traditions, however they may envision these (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008). In some ways Indigenous education resembles multicultural education in celebrating students’ languages and cultures. But it also has distinctive characteristics. Brayboy and Maughan (2009) argue that “Indigenous epistemologies,” different fundamental beliefs about knowledge and learning, require different approaches to education. Hampton, for example, (1988) argues that Indigenous education should be collective, not individualist—it should focus on service to and respect for others and emphasize contributions to the community more than competition. Hampton also argues that Indigenous education should be spiritual, envisioning connections between the people, their land and the spiritual world. In order to help their children develop a sense of meaning and purpose in the contemporary world, Indigenous educators strive to build on their distinctive ways of knowing and help them appreciate their interconnectedness with others and the spiritual world (Singh & Reyhner, 2013). Thus Indigenous education helps young people place themselves within the history of their people and the meaningful universe as they envision it.

Author

• Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Arizona State University