Toward an Indigenous Holistic Pedagogy in Service of Urban Native, Xicanx, and Underrepresented Youth

• In Event: Global Pedagogies of Self-Determination: Indigeneity as a Response to Structural Violence Within Schools

Abstract

The process of colonization has produced an unprecedented loss of Indigenous knowledge, especially with regards to language (Hinton 2002, Grenoble & Whaley 2006), embodied knowledges (Mendoza 2000, Taylor 2003), innate emotional knowledge (Grande 2004, Mihesua & Wilson 2004), environmental knowledge (Black 2010, Nelson 2008), and knowledge regarding Indigenous conceptions of gender (Gunn-Allen 1992, Mihesuah 2003) and sexuality (Driskill, Finley, Gilley, & Morgensen, 2011; Rifkin 2011). This loss of knowledge has gone hand-in-hand with a process of socialization that has positioned heteropatriarchy, capitalism, and xenophobia as the norm (Smith 2016) while subsequently invisibilizing Indigenous knowledges that offer alternative worldviews (Mander & Tauli-Corpuz 2006).

U.S. public education has played a central role in the socialization of Native, Xicanx, and other underserved communities through institutions such as "Indian" Boarding Schools (Trafzer & Keller 2006), English-only programs (Krashen 1997), and dilapidated urban schools (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008). In the present issues involving the reclamation of Indigenous knowledges remain invisibilized within the context of public education in the United States and by extension public education offered to Native students in urban environments (Ramirez 2007). The invisibilization of urban Native populations in educational discourse presents a tremendous gap in knowledge that needs to be addressed.

This paper presents findings from a case study that centered radical, decolonial schooling for Indigenous high school students. The paper follows a year-long educational trajectory of Native students who engage with a critical pedagogy that is informed by Indigenous holistic models of education (Grande 2004, Mihesua & Wilson 2004; Mander & Tauli-Corpuz 2006;). These hubs engage pedagogies of community building and engage mosaic methodologies (Miranda 2013), for the purpose of cultivating and celebrating Indigenous pursuits of knowledge within the classroom. This Native educational hub functions as a Native American Literature course implemented for 9th – 12th grade urban Indigenous students. Overall, the paper illuminates the pedagogical practices needed to support urban Indigenous students in applying an intersectional lens to examine Indigenous understandings of oral history, land, epistemology, language, colonization, education, race, gender, and sexuality. Throughout this critical praxis, students examined their own experiences as Indigenous students from particular nations, in relation to other Indigenous students within the classroom and abroad for the purpose of cultivating immersed understandings of solidarity. Overall, the paper findings offer new visions and opportunities for literacy development, critical scholarship and ultimately community-based healing and social transformation within schools.

Author

• Dani Ahuicapahtzin Cornejo-Warner, Diablo Valley College