Entanglements for Sovereignty: A Non-Indigenous Teacher Educator Learns With University and Indigenous Education Leaders

• In Event: Sharing Responsibility for Reshaping Social Studies Education for Indigenous Studies: Examinations of Researcher-Organization Partnerships

Abstract

In 2018, Washington became the first state to require teacher education coursework on tribal history, culture, and sovereignty. Can non-Indigenous teachers – and teacher educators - accurately teach the Since Time Immemorial (STI) curriculum, when their own schooling, teaching practices and institutional contexts may contradict its content and Indigenous perspectives? This qualitative self-study examines a non-Indigenous teacher educator’s attempts to teach for Indigenous sovereignty with in-service teachers in public schools, through partnerships with a large university and regional Indigenous education leaders, seeking to clarify the relational work and commitments that support (and counteract) these aims.  

Implementing STI embodies “entangled sovereignty” in Dennison’s (2017) terms. With the 2015 mandate, all Washington schools must teach the online curriculum or consult with local tribes/nations to create regionally-specific versions - and consult with federally recognized tribes on curriculum adoption. However, consultation remains the most vexed aspect of STI (Rawlings, 2018) and those most influencing K-12 students’ lessons are the state’s predominantly White, non-Indigenous teachers and administrators. Such overlapping authorities suggest that Indigenous sovereignty requires entanglement, as Dennison argues: “ongoing negotiated compromises, which are both full of strain and mutually beneficial, often at the same time” (p. 686). Methods and tools of teaching history represent settler logics (Calderón, 2014) in these entanglements: in textbooks (Author, 2014), curriculum standards (Author, 2015), popular online curriculum (Author, 2019), and forts and monuments (Donald, 2009).

This study includes additional entanglements: a non-Indigenous researcher applying Indigenous research methodologies (e.g. Brayboy et al., 2012; Drawson, Coombs & Mushquash, 2017; Wilson, 2008; Windchief & San Pedro, 2019) in collaboration with six local Indigenous co-designers/advisors and university partners. Using research memos, journals and document analysis of curriculum and correspondence, I examine relationships and learning across these entanglements. State-level Indigenous education leaders suggested teachers’ circles (see Lynn, n.d.), which may promote outcomes meaningful for local Indigenous communities (Kennedy & Lees, 2014; Lomawaima, 2000). Co-designed by Indigenous advisors, the circles represent a hybrid of professional development, focus group, and sharing circles (see Tachine, Yellow Bird & Cabrera, 2016) which deepen teachers’ understanding of Indigenous knowledges and sovereignty, while discussing readings and analyzing problems of practice.

Deep intellectual commitments appear necessary and insufficient for Indigenous sovereignty education. Grafting Indigenous knowledges onto lives, ways of being and contexts understood only in Western/colonial terms will only uphold dominant ways of knowing as benevolent, Ahenakew (2016) cautions. Incorporating relational and felt knowledge (Million, 2009) of place and Indigenous peoples into everyday acts and relations of decolonization (Hunt & Holmes, 2015; Corntassel & Scow, 2017) may allow non-Indigenous teachers to present Indigenous knowledges more accurately (Author, in review; Madden, 2014). As a White and non-Indigenous person, critical analysis of colonizing logics (Dzidic & Bishop, 2017; Gaudry & Lorenz, 2018), and locating intentions, place and situated perspectives in this inquiry (Patel, 2015; Styres, 2018) are crucial. Anti-racist vigilance (Applebaum, 2010) and a vulnerable participant/observer stance (Behar, 1997) inform analysis of White woman settler anxieties (Slater, 2017) of non-Indigenous failures and successes in teaching for Indigenous sovereignty. 

Author

• Jenni Conrad, Temple University