“So You Know You're Not Alone”: Mutual Responsibility Among Children and Adults on Tribal Land

• In Event: Sustaining Agency Across Social Contexts: How Young Children and their Communities are Reclaiming Agency

Abstract

Purpose and Theoretical Perspectives
In an era of state-controlled early childhood curriculum and practices, where can sovereignty impact children’s lives at school? This presentation focuses on present and past coordinations of mutual responsibility (Bang et al., 2018) during daily life in an infant-toddler classroom within a tribal-governed child-care center and in an elementary school with native children governed by the state. We offer examples of how in both spaces the community a) follows the rhythm and agency of the children through agentic movement and b) supports children's collective relationships through indigenous ways of knowing and learning. We also show the types of imposed regulatory barriers that make mutual responsibility difficult for children and adults.

Methods and Data Sources
The Markers of Agency (MOA) video-cued, co-constructed study included two years learning with a child-care center and elementary school located near Tahlequah, the tribal headquarters of the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians (UKB). The tribe’s director of education welcomed and granted permission through tribal leadership, center educators, and staff. The study included mutual construction of research approaches (see Rogoff et al, 2017) including filming, recording, community interviews, teacher interviews and by request, teacher documentation and recordings.

Results
Initial findings verified by families and teachers show that young children – as young as three months old – engage in daily practices of caring and taking responsibility for one another. Young children coordinate their efforts with caring adults, reflecting community values. In one example, a five-month-old baby cries uncontrollably for a few minutes while an eleven-month toddler looks on. When an adult arrives with a thermometer to take a reading of the baby’s temperature, the toddler crawls over to the baby’s pacifier that fell out and motions to the adult to get the pacifier. The toddler points and then touches the pacifier, looking up at the adult. Soon the pacifier is in the baby’s mouth, and she seems to be feeling better. She then loses the pacifier and cries out loudly again. The toddler goes to the baby and tries to return the pacifier to her mouth. This kind of gathering and collaboration was explained (by elders, teachers, parents) as a collective act and a way for children to feel connected to the larger group (Dayton et al, 2022).

Significance
Our findings counter assumptions that young children are egoistic and do not develop empathy and care until later childhood. Empirical evidence from this study demonstrates why early childhood and child development scholars strengthen their understanding of young children when they include inquiry models and analytic frameworks informed by the cultural knowledges of the children’s communities. This study also shows an example of co-constructed methods and data collection procedures that begin with indigenous knowledge and permission. Researching young children over time in contexts governed by their own community made children’s abilities and desires visible in unique ways. Without a supportive context in which children can enact community values, such skills and knowledge can remain hidden and considered (falsely) to be absent.

Authors

• Jennifer Keys Adair, The University of Texas at Austin

• Monica Alonzo, University of Texas at Austin