Remembering in the Wake of Erasure: Reclaiming Research as an Act of Unforgetting

• In Event: Truth and Healing in California: Land, Education, and the Remembering, Restorying, Reclaiming Project

Abstract

the Spencer Foundation’s Transformative Research Grant, RRR confronts the persistent erasure of California Indian histories from public education and land policy. Rather than defaulting to frameworks of loss or resistance, the project centers Indigenous knowledge, sovereignty, and memory as the foundation for institutional transformation. At the heart of RRR is a network of Tribal partners, faculty, staff, and students working collaboratively across four universities and multiple Tribal Nations. Together, we examine the entangled histories of land tenure and educational policy in California, tracing how public education and public lands have functioned as overlapping tools of dispossession and misrepresentation. The project leverages archival research, community-engaged storytelling, and relational data collection to surface Tribal truths that have been long erased or distorted in state systems.

Rather than seeking recognition from institutional systems, RRR reorients research around Tribal priorities, relationships, and values. It draws from three of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999, 2012, 2021) Twenty-Five Indigenous Projects—remembering, restorying, and reclaiming—as ceremonial acts that honor intergenerational memory and affirm sovereignty. These practices function as both method and mandate, positioning research as a process of responsibility, repair, and resurgence. This presentation outlines the project’s core vision and theoretical foundation, setting the stage for the remainder of the symposium. RRR challenges extractive research paradigms and offers an approach rooted in kinship, place, and long-term accountability. In doing so, it reframes educational research as a site of return—where healing, truth-telling, and transformation are possible when led by Tribal communities and grounded in love.

Author

• Kelly Leah Stewart, University of California, Los Angeles