The Corn Pollen Model in Indigenous Leadership in Community Contexts

• In Event: Indigenous Educational Leadership Through Community-Based Knowledge and Research

Abstract

This chapter focuses on providing a brighter and better future vision of a community based project that involves Indigenous leadership and education that addresses and supports the issue of Indigenous language shift and language loss as it relates to Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, specifically the Zuni language. There are many signs and indications of language decline among Indigenous Pueblo speakers. Many Indigenous language speakers shift from speaking the mother tongue language to predominantly speaking English; the final threat is when Indigenous languages are lost. “The common values to education is contributing to language loss” (Fowler, 2022, p. 21 in Vallejo & Werito, 2022). At this stage, language is irreplaceable and irreparable. Albeit this paper does not seek to comprehensively address Indigenous language shift and language loss, rather this paper infuses Indigenous scholarly references re-conceptualizing and re-designing Indigenous education address issues through an Indigenous lens. As New Mexico’s nineteen Pueblos’ tribal leaders, students, and community members face the language shift and language loss phenomena challenge, another follows: During the last fifteen-years, with educational reform initiatives through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the “current turn-of-the century promise to leave no child behind” (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006, p. 6), and now the Every Student Succeeds Act which became law on December 10, 2015 has taken precedence over Indigenous languages in school curricula. The shift takes the focus away from teaching and instructing Indigenous students’ with a culturally responsive curriculum to concentrating more on student learning and achievement through academic achievement discourse (Arcelus, 2008) which now includes the Common Core State Standards. This is one tension that may contribute to a bifurcated conception of Indigenous education. The challenge is for tribal leadership and school administrators to find a balance to support American Indian students’ Indigenous languages through school curricula. It is time to pause, reflect, re-think, and re-construct Indigenous education through our Indigenous lens and our Pueblo families and community (Cajete, 2015). Cajete recommends “environmental learning and teaching” (p. 4) and further alludes to his point that “This kind of teaching, learning, and thinking is infinitely more meaningful, complex, and subtle than the information-processing approach of modern school” (p. 4). So then, Indigenous leadership in modern school involves decolonization (Wilson, p. 70-71) by returning well-being to our Indigenous people. Indigenous leaders must come to a consciousness about the oppressors; the distorted history, and our Indigenous’ collective efforts to decolonize. “Decolonization requires auto-criticism, self-reflection, and a rejection of victimage” (p. 71). One way that this capstone projects paints a brighter and better future vision of a community based project that involves Indigenous leadership and education that addresses and supports the issue of Indigenous language shift and language loss as it relates to Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, specifically the Zuni language, is through Secatero’s “Corn Pollen Model.”

Author

• Bernard Chimoni, University of New Mexico