Tensions Non-Indigenous Faculty Experience in Their Efforts to Support Tribal Nation-Building With Indigenous Students

• In Event: 21st Century Teaching and Learning to Foster Tribal Nation-Building in Predominantly White Institutions

Abstract

In our current educational systems, both k-12 and higher education, there are not many Indigenous instructors; across the US about 0.4% of elementary and secondary teachers are American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) and less than 1% of college/university professors are AI/AN (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2019). While this is an issue that demands to be remedied by having more Indigenous folx as teachers and professors, we also need to find other ways of decolonizing and indigenizing curriculum, pedagogies, and practices. By doing this work we support Indigenous students in centering their cultural knowledges and identities in their schooling experiences, and advance tribal nation building. It is urgently necessary to give non-Indigenous teachers and faculty members ways of doing the work of decolonization and indigenization in their classes, to provide them with examples of respectful practices that promote and honor Indigenous knowledges, and to support them in upholding nation building in their communities.

This paper examines and explores the responses given by two non-Indigenous faculty members working closely with Indigenous students at a small university in the pacific northwest of the US. The research question I focus on in this study is: What are the primary tensions for non-Indigenous instructors teaching Indigenous students science? I believe that by asking this question, we can begin to understand the challenges non-Indigenous instructors face as they attempt to support their Indigenous students and tribal nation building practices.

These faculty talk about the tensions they experience around educating in culturally responsive, sustaining, and revitalizing ways (Gay, 2013; Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014; McCarty & Lee, 2014) while also teaching western science that the students will be expected to know once they earn their degree, how to advise on Traditional Ecological Knowledges (TEK) that they themselves do not hold, balancing their personal lives and giving of themselves to and for their students, and academic security. These two faculty members provide excellent examples of facilitating intergenerational learning, creating and maintaining community and connections, and attempting to do decolonizing work through the structure of an academic institution. They show how white male middle class values define science education which create barriers for faculty to employ culturally inherent (Simpson, 2002) teaching practices. They expressed the importance of unlearning and relearning, promoting Indigenous voices in the academy, and of job security and supporting other faculty. Each faculty member highlighted how they have been highly trained as scientists but have received little to no training as educators. Much of what they conveyed emphasizes a critique of the structure of higher education, and demonstrates the tensions educators who want to support, reach, and advocate for their students, as well as do decolonizing and nation building work, face in the academy. Their care and concern for their students, as well as their desire to do good work for and with them and their communities, is easily apparent. What is less immediately obvious is how they should do that good work within the confines of current educational institutions and systems.

Author

• Stephany RunningHawk Johnson, Local Contexts