Alignment Before Action: Navigating Participatory Indigenous Allyship Toward Emerging Community Priorities

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 5:10 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Building Bridges: Collaborative Approaches to Community Needs in Education and Mental Health (Table 6)

Abstract

Highlighting the experiences leading to Ǫgwa:węh–an Indigenous-led language learning experience for displaced and diasporic Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ people–from the point of view of allyship, this paper surfaces and elaborates on the specific contexts and terms of alliance building. Focusing on the creation of a critically important, Indigenous-led effort to strengthen their highly endangered language through Ǫgwa:węh, this paper carefully addresses the work of trust building: how trust was defined, enacted, navigated, and facilitated between Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ and allies during the planning process of Ǫgwa:węh. Through an Indigenist paradigm, this paper discusses crucial relational complexities informing alignment and action–including the recognition of non-Indigenous and settler desires–to foreground the moment-to-moment processes of building allyship.

Authors

• Troy Richardson, Cornell University

• Josephine Martell, Cornell University

• Sarah Buffett, Cornell University