Native Student Erasure in Education Data

• In Event: Contesting Racial, Ethnic, and Indigenous Categorization in Higher Education Research and Practice

Abstract

Most people in America do not know about Indigenous peoples. We have been erased from memory or cast in a fixed and distant past, romanticized, and dehumanized. Even in educational research, we are often relegated to a footnote under an “asterisk” that justifies exclusion from research studies because of low numbers, or we are completely ignored, pushed from the language of underrepresented to invisible (Shotton, Lowe & Waterman, 2010). These types of exclusionary measures signify “statistical extermination” which are formulas sanctioned by the federal government that quantifies the validation of the removal of Indigenous existence and presence (Jaimes, 1992, p. 137). A Teen Vogue article “Invisibility is the modern form of racism against Native Americans” highlighted this trend in 2018 (Nagle, 2018). Emphasized in that article was a national research study, Reclaiming Native Truth, that investigated how non-Natives perceive Native peoples (First Nations Development Institute & Echo Hawk Consulting, 2018). Findings revealed that a majority of respondents believe that the Native population is declining (which is empirically false, Native populations have been increasing steadily); and that they do not think about Native people (affirming the pervasiveness of erasure). The research confirms the logic of elimination (Wolfe, 2006) which speaks to the structure of settler colonialism in maintaining territory by misrepresenting and erasing Native peoples.

Neglecting Native peoples perpetuates multiple harms in education. First, disregarding Native peoples perpetuates the status quo; our perspectives will continue to be marginalized or erased, and discouraging trends will persist. Second, neglect maintains the pervasive deficit narratives about Native peoples, stigmatizing our place in society and in education. Third, Native peoples are combined with other minoritized populations, ignoring or erasing the sovereign status of Indigenous peoples of the United States (US) and diluting the nuances of distinctive cultural life ways. Fourth, those who seek to resolve inequities by enhancing the access and success of Native students in higher education are left with little to no guidance. Finally, this absence of representation limits the “possible selves” imagined by and for Native peoples (Fryberg & Stephens, 2010). Possible selves are the social representations (ideas, images) of how to be a person that people use to orient themselves in their social world (Fryberg & Stephens, 2010).
This symposium contribution will center on the challenges associated with Native student erasure in data in higher education, which is closely linked to the diverse ways that institutions of higher education count American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiians on their campuses as well as whether culturally relevant variables (Lopez & Marley, 2018) are utilized. There is not one way that colleges are counting Native presence which has long-term implications for Indigenous futures in higher education. Thusly, Indigenous data sovereignty is recommended whereby tribal nations use tribally driven data collection to inform institutions of higher education (Raine, et al., 2017; Lopez, 2020). A robust understanding of Indigenous data sovereignty will provide possibilities of Indigenous presence and provide opportunities to advance the field in practice, policy, and methodology.

Author

• Amanda R. Tachine, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author