Voices of Indigenous Resistance: Indigeneity and Schooling in Rural California

• In Event: Creating Equitable Learning Contexts for Indigenous Mexican Communities: Cultural Knowledge, Networks, Practices, and Empowerment

Abstract

Objective
This study views the experience of second generation Indigenous Triqui students in a rural California middle school as they create a place of belonging inside the school. The creation of a club through a youth participatory action research allowed them to address the racial discrimination they felt because their teachers don’t understand their culture and language.
Introduction
Indigenous Latinx students are a significantly growing population that are often invisible in the school setting (Author, 2016b; Author, 2019b; Barillas-Chón, 2010). Indigenous Latinx immigrants students’ visibility comes from the racial discrimination they face because of their Indigenous background (Author, 2010; Author, 2012; Gonzalez, 2018; Equipo de Cronistas Oaxaqueños, 2013; Author, 2018). Discrimination and bullying have pushed immigrant Latinx Indigenous students to hide their indigenous culture and language (Author, 2018), and has created isolation and hostile environments inside and outside the classroom. This research views the schooling experience of seven second-generation Indigenous Triqui, an indigenous group from the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, in a rural California middle school.
Method
Using Critical Latinx Indigeneities (CLI) and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), this research made Triqui students' knowledge holders inside the school. CLI provides a framework to view second-generation Indigenous Triqui experience from the multiple colonialities of power they confront in school (Blackwell, Lopez & Urrieta, 2017). YPAR supported students' agency, made them knowledge holders inside the school, and allowed them to create the space to tell their schooling experience.
For half of the 2018-2019 and the 2019-2020 school year, Indigenous Triqui students meet weekly during lunch to talk about culture and school experience. Through the research, students identified that teachers lack knowledge of their culture and decided to do a presentation about their culture to their teachers. This presentation was based on students' rich culture that school educators dismiss most of the time. My data analysis included a diverse data source, such as students' work, reflective memos, student interviews, and key activities in the project. I used Grounded theory and first and second cycle coding as this approach helped me ground my data in the students' voices.
Result
The research findings tell us that second-generation Indigenous Triqui students come with a strong Indigenous identity to school that is contested because of the school structures. The lack of knowledge from teachers about their culture and linguistic knowledge, language placement policies, and the racism they encounter from their classmates impact students’ schooling experience. Indigenous Triqui students are being isolated in the school because of their Indigenous background, but it is their same identity that supports them to navigate school.
Significance
As we rebuild our world after the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to radically reconstruct schools. Schools cannot continue to push out and oppress our diverse Latinx Indigenous students. This research provides a space to discuss diversity among the Latinx community and the anti-native/Indigenous racism that exist within our communities that schools perpetuate, and address the school policies that are excluding Indigenous Latinx students.

Author

• Sarait Martinez Ortega