Beyond Centering Voices: Positioning Indigenous Youth as Educational and Community Leaders

• In Event: By Us, for Us, and With Us: Minoritized Youth Leveraging Participatory Action Research to Reimagine Educational and Racial Justice

Abstract

Context
The Arikara community of White Shield – with an estimated population of 500 – in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota suffers from many of the complex issues found on Indian reservations across the US, including high rates of poverty, unemployment, school push-outs, family dysfunction, suicide, health problems, substance abuse, and intergenerational trauma, as well as a lack of resources, educational opportunities, and strong leaders and mentors.

The lack of opportunities and resources is a serious community struggle. White Shield youth have limited access to educational and self-development resources and opportunities. For example, there are no academic after school student organizations available at White Shield. High school graduation rates are low (40% on North Dakota reservations), as is college attendance (3%).

In many ways, White Shield exemplifies the national statistics that attest that schools,
social workers, and tribal authorities are not sufficiently meeting the needs of Native people. Yet
these problems are so interrelated and complex that solutions are hard to achieve without
ongoing efforts made in achievable, incremental steps. With this context in mind, IYR was established by an Arikara community-member to not only help fill the void described above but to also serve as a key resource in addressing several hardships faced by American Indian people, particularly youth, living on reservations, inner cities, and rural communities.

IYR operates under the assumption that providing real mentorship, increasing
opportunities and resources, and improving the prospects and self-esteem of the youth will create
the greatest long-term impact in White Shield, in effect centering youth as leaders. Building resources is a necessary first step in order to strengthen educational access, college preparation, and support programs. IYR’s work focuses on engaging youth in programming that is guided and led by the youth.

IYR youth have participated in a range of YPAR initiatives. For instance, Arikara youth and IYR members participated in a six-week photovoice project. During these six-weeks, youth were tasked with taking 15 photographs that captured how they understood and experienced their community of White Shield. Students then individually reflected on and analyzed their photographs before presenting their findings to their peers and invited White Shield High School faculty. To culminate the photovoice project, students engaged in a debriefing conversation where they discussed common themes across photovoice projects and outlined action-steps for creating change within the community. Seeking to further disrupt understandings of leadership, IYR also presented their photovoice projects during the 2019 University Council for Educational Administration convening – cementing their identities as transformative and revolutionary educational and community leaders.

Significance
Traditional notions of educational leadership have historically focused on building-level or district administrators in narrow terms, failing to acknowledge youth and/or community members as potential educational leaders. However, IYR youth specifically call-out and challenge the exclusivity of educational leadership and instead highlight youth as potential collaborators in their own education. Moreover, by centering an often-overlooked group, Indigenous people, and in this case Indigenous youth IYR able to position these youth as experts, leaders, and agents of change within their school and community.

Authors

• Erica Fernandez, Miami University

• Brad Kuunux Teerit Kroupa, Indigenous Youth Rising