Reclaiming and Revitalizing Space for Tribal Language and Culture Through Dual Language

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Examinations of the Everyday: Case Studies of Embodied Sociocultural and Sociolinguistic Spaces in School

Abstract

Indigenous languages in the United States are endangered, and the constraints of testing regimes that privilege English have worked against language revitalization efforts in schools (Aguilera & LeCompte, 2007). Western schooling has been instrumental in separating Indigenous students’ “identities from the languages, lands, and worldviews” of their tribes (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103). Indigenous learners’ experiences of school are thus undergirded by complicated interrelationships among linguistic, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic issues juxtaposed with tribal and education sovereignty (McCarty and Lee, 2014).

Paris’s (2012) “culturally sustaining pedagogy” (CSP) “seeks to perpetuate and foster--to sustain--linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (p. 95). McCarty and Lee (2014) assert that culturally sustaining pedagogy is not enough for Indigenous learners; responding to the sociohistorical and contemporary contexts of Native American schooling also requires “culturally revitalizing pedagogy” (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103). Culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy (CSRP) aims to decolonize extant power relations in schools and to “reclaim and revitalize what has been disrupted and displaced by colonization” (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103). Further, CSRP includes “community-based accountability” built on “respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and relationships” (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103).

Language revitalization work is critical in revitalizing the “heritage” of Indigenous ways of knowing and being. This work has largely fallen to Indigenous groups who implement these programs outside of school and without consistent funding or legislative action supporting Indigenous language rights (Aguilera & LeCompte, 2007). Dual language programs have been an attempt to foster academic achievement through bilingualism and biliteracy for multilingual learners (Torres-Guzmán, 2007), however, these programs tend to privilege English and regard language as disconnected from culture (Aguilera & LeCompte, 2007). As Hornberger (2005) notes, heritage language programs like dual language provide an “implementational space” in which social actors can create “ideological spaces” that support language revitalization efforts.

The HoChunk Renaissance is an organized effort of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska to revitalize HoChunk language and culture through independent programming and integrated relationships with the public school district. This paper describes the efforts of the organization to design a dual language (English-HoChunk) curriculum for a program to be implemented in the fall of 2020, looping with the same students Kindergarten through second grade and housed in the community public school. Drawing on qualitative case study data, including autoethnographic notes and documents, we discuss sensitivity to tribal expectations (i.e., being accountable to the tribe, but aligning to K-2 state standards), and we problematize the programmatic constraints to end after second grade because state testing starts in third grade. We describe the collaborative relationship between HoChunk Renaissance and the local school that carved the “implementational and ideological spaces” (Hornberger, 2005) to reclaim HoChunk language and culture.We offer implications of our work for teacher preparation and for partnerships between tribal organizations, public school administration, and university scholars. We advocate for programs like this that focus revitalization efforts on children who will be the next leaders of their communities (McCarty & Lee, 2014).

Authors

• Michelle Free-LeMere, Winnebago Public Schools

• Jessica Mitchell-McCollough, University of Nebraska - Lincoln