Cultivating a Xinachtli Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning With the Land for Youth in Central Texas

• In Event: (Re)Centering Our Collective Knowledge in a Tlahtocan Community Dialogue Circle: Indigenous Pedagogies From Central Texas

Abstract

Purpose
This project examines the experiences of P-20 teachers who participated in the Indigenous Cultures Institutes’s (ICI) Tānko Institute: Xinachtli Pedagogy for Educators and now form a learning community. The Tānko Institute, established by elders of the Miakan-Garza band of Coahuiltecans, introduces educators working Latinx Indigenous youth in Central Texas, to a pedagogy based in Coahuiltecan, Mayan, and Mexica philosophies and knowledge. Through the institute, participants learn to draw on students’ cultural heritage and existing knowledge base from their families, communities, ancestors, and environment. The purpose of the paper is to share preliminary findings from an empirical study that asks: How does the Tānko Institute transform the thinking of educators in Central Texas? How do participants engage the Xinachtli pedagogy in their teaching practice?

Perspectives
The perspectives shaping our project are rooted in relationality and reciprocity (Wilson, 2008) with the Land on which we live and the community with whom we’ve worked for years. Guided by Brayboy (2005), this research attends to what Indigenous communities desire and deem useful. Our analysis draws on Land education (Tuck et al., 2014) to demonstrate how the Tānko Institute disrupts settler colonial erasure in Texas by offering a pedagogy that centers on relationships with the Land where we teach, builds on the contributions of local Indigenous peoples, and encourages participants to co-construct knowledge with our youth and communities.

Modes of Inquiry
To address our research questions deriving from dialogue with ICI over the last year and a half, we organized pláticas (Fierros & Bernal, 2016) and talking circles (Wilson, 2008) to document what participants have learned during the institute and how they/we are applying this knowledge in our practice. During these meetings we also examine artifacts such as curriculum, lesson plans, journal reflections, and photographs depicting our pedagogy in practice.

Evidence
Our analysis and discussion examine the transcripts from our pláticas and talking circles, shared artifacts, as well as ethnographic notes, memos, and journal reflections of the authors. In this paper, we focus on the experiences of four participants, including one of the authors.

Warrants for Point of View
By sharing the journeys of four participants, this paper highlights how an Indigenous-community led professional development shapes the thinking and praxis of local educators towards better serving the needs of Latinx Indigenous youth and communities. This paper offers stories of teacher education and practices that decenter settler colonial institutions and recenter on the Land and Indigenous epistemologies of what is now Texas.

Scholarly Significance
This study builds on the work of Indigenous scholars who have examined how professional development that are led by Indigenous communities and rooted in the Land shape the curricular and pedagogical choices of teachers (Calderon et al. 2021; Lees et al. 2021,). It takes up this line of inquiry with respect to Latinx Indigenous peoples, offering examples of approaches to teaching and learning that account for the ways ‘multiple and overlapping colonialisms’ (Calderón & Urrieta, 2019) have “disrupted and replaced” (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103), but not erased, our knowledges.

Authors

• Marial Quezada, University of Texas at Austin

• Pablo Montes, Texas Christian University