Cherokee Stories and Methodologies in Addressing Historical Trauma in Education

• In Event: Indigenous Pathways in a Doctoral Degree: Creating Lived Methodologies Centered in Community

Abstract

Educational spaces, and/or the Land they reside upon, have deep meaning for Native students and draw upon kin-space-time envelopes that may evoke memories, feelings, or trauma (Harjo, 2019). Throughout my doctoral journey, I often reflect on the experiences of women in my family and my upbringing as an at-large tribal citizen and descendant of an Indian boarding school survivor. For my dissertation, I am interested in exploring the intergenerational effects of historical trauma as they relate to how Choerkee women understand and feel about their relationships with educational systems.
I draw upon Indigenous methodologies (Kovach, 2021; Smith, 2021; Wilson, 2008) and compatible methods to capture knowledge via stories, such as conversational methods (Kovach, 2010) and visiting (Tuck et al., 2023). Each story is an avenue for (re)membering and contributes to our collective Cherokee cultural knowledge. Stories transcend time and space. Kovach (2021) adds that “Stories braid the past, present, and future generations together” (p. 158). As a methodology, visiting requires active listening, responsibility for one's position within a community, comfort with silence, and slowness (Tuck et al., 2023). Visiting is a way of being with the past/history of a place in the present to enact futurity. Conversational methods are a tool rooted in oral storytelling tradition used for gathering knowledge within Indigenous methodologies that is true to Indigenous approaches (Kovach, 2010). My conversational method will be rooted in Cherokee epistemology, allowing it to be both relational and reflexive.
I live Cherokee Nation’s community values through my scholarship, including ᏂᎦᏯᎢᏐ ᎦᏚᎩ ᏂᏨᏁᏍᏗ, meaning, “In the mind and heart always have the thought of working together.” I will work closely and in community with the Cherokee women within my own family during my research because this mirrors existing family dynamics between the family matriarchs, lovingly called “the sisters.” Except, we are more than a sisterhood- we are a family of scholars bringing deeply embodied knowledge to the surface by sharing stories to co-construct knowledge together. As Pat Bellanger (Ojibwe) said, “We needed to come together as families. The women define the family and the family is the base of our culture…” (as cited in Million, 2013, p. 123).
When my family visits, we gather around the kitchen table- talking, catching up, visiting. This is a Cherokee way of being in relation. As a methodology, visiting around the kitchen table allows me to be in a real-time conversation with my academic and biological ancestors as “the sisters” represent everyone in our family who came before them. They are the knowledge holders for my family. Planning visits to happen around the table will allow us to have difficult, emotional conversations in spaces where we can also find comfort and solidarity. As we visit, the kitchen table also serves as a space to collectively enact Cherokee futurity in everyday spaces, for this work is not just for us, it is for the younger members of our family and our future descendants (Harjo, 2019).

Author

• Shelby White, University of Oklahoma