Continuance: Diné Teachings of K’é

• In Event: Reclaiming the Possibilities of Connectivity: Relationality in Education Research and Action

Abstract

Purpose: Ten Navajo teenagers know that they will go to college. They are the top academic students in their class, connected to family and home, and full of hope to rise above daily struggles. These students see college as an opening to better circumstances for themselves, their family, and Native community. As they confront college enrollment and navigate their first year, they face hurdles that are entrenched in historical and current-day policies and racism in a world where many do not understand Indigenous ways of life. Courage and connection to their peoples and culture helps sustain them as they fight to complete a college degree. This paper answers the question, how do Navajo students persist in college despite the struggles that surround them?

Theoretical Framework: Using cultural resilience (Heavyrunner & Marshall, 2003) and Tribal Critical Race Theory (Brayboy, 2005), this analysis employed story rug (Tachine, 2018), an Indigenous methodological approach that weaves stories into research. In Indigenous storywork, Archibald (2008) utilized a metaphorical basket to conceptualize and analyze research. In this research, a Navajo rug is applied that analyzes and weaves individual and collective stories into a story rug.

Data Sources: For this study, four open-ended, semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted during the first-year of college with ten Navajo students. Purposeful sampling was used to select ten full-time, first-time Navajo freshman students. The Native student support service office assisted in recruiting students.

Findings: This study revealed how Navajo students activated the Indigenous weapon of continuance, the ability to push forward when armed with k’é and ancestral pedagogies (story sharing) passed down by family. K’é is the Navajo term for kinship relationships and relationality (the idea that we are related to each other), a foundational philosophy of Navajo culture and a belief system centered upon a matrilineal society in which the mother is the matriarch and the core of the family and home (Parsons Yazzie & Speas, 2007). Along with this understanding, there is a deeply valued reverence for women including mothers, aunties, and grandmothers. All 10 students echoed this cultural value by identifying how vital their mothers and grandmothers were in guiding them through various challenges. Grandmothers and mothers guided students to see and believe that they had a purpose and future by telling historical stories of hardships and miracles, referred to in related research as grandmothers’ pedagogy (Tachine, 2017). In the significance of story sharing, vulnerability and trust opened up, which helped to transform doubt into purpose. These compelling kinship relationships of k’é affirmed that the students had the freedom to learn and live enacting continuance, Navajo ways of knowing, and a purpose sensibility.

Significance: This work weaves relationality through multiple turns—theoretically, methodologically, and empirically. Relationality is emphasized because a collective “we” concept is what centers Indigenous knowledge systems. If we are to meet the challenges of education in being “structurally disconnected” from the people we write about, this research has much to offer us in seeking insightful ways to strengthen deliberate connection in methodologies, scholarship, and practice.

Author

• Amanda R. Tachine, Arizona State University