Centering Land: Designing Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Spaces With and for Native Educators

• In Event: Honoring Black and Indigenous People’s Place and Land Relations: Educational Engagement in and Beyond Schools

Abstract

Purpose

The systems and structures of white supremacy and settler colonialism have reinforced systemic inequities, the oppression of communities of color, and have been further ingrained in school systems. For Indigenous people, educational spaces and schools have been and continue to be sites of dehumanization, violence, and erasure. Indigenous education specifically has a history of religious and secular agencies assimilating, standardizing, and recasting Native peoples (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2008) to name a few. Despite the harms of education, communities are challenging colonization through the revitalization of language and culture (McCarty & Lee, 2014) and further enacting tribal and educational sovereignty. Teachers have opportunities to disrupt systems and create systemic change but can feel isolated in doing this work and often lack the tools, space, or community that is needed to sustain themselves on this journey and in their teaching.

For educators of color, research shows that critical affinity groups can provide support, build allyship, and offer a collective space for healing, laughter, and joy (Pour-Khorshid, 2018). Affinity spaces have shown to help facilitate reflection, well-being and offer a space for sharing about practice (Bristol et al, 2020; Pour-Khorshid, 2018). This study explores the ways that Native educators collaboratively design spaces that support us as teachers. The purpose of this study is to better understand the impact of spaces designed by and for Native educators and to explore the diverse identities and experiences of Native educators, our ties to the land, and the ways that we sustain ourselves and one another as teachers and Native peoples.

Methods, Data, & Theoretical Framework

This qualitative, participatory research study explores the ways that Native educators collaboratively designed a supportive space. This study is framed using TribalCrit (Brayboy, 2005) and Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy (CSRP; McCarty & Lee, 2014) to explore the ways that educators navigate their Native identities and build spaces that center kinship, culture, and land. Educators collaboratively designed six sessions over the span of six months based on the desires and shared interests of the collective group. Participants were four Native elementary educators: two first year teachers in an urban and tribal school, one teacher candidate in an urban school, and myself, an instructional coach and prior elementary school teacher.

Results

Findings suggest the intimate relationship that Native educators have with land and the ways that this relationship informs their teaching practice. Teachers in this study desired and designed culturally sustaining and revitalizing spaces. They were sustained on Native lands and in spaces with other Native people. They also sustained one another through their shared identities, teaching practices, and social connectedness.

Significance

These findings challenge settler colonial logics and position Native educators as changemakers working toward an otherwise. Spaces like the ones created in this study, model how we might look to teachers to design spaces that not only support retention, but center relationships with land and foster community that supports change within and beyond colonial systems.

Author

• Kiana Smith, University of Washington