Enacting Hope through Narratives of Indigenous Language and Culture Reclamation

In globalizing landscapes, Indigenous ways of knowing and being persist in their connectedness to specific geographies, even as they are transformed by migrations, both forced and voluntary, and dynamic exchanges. This paper presents narratives of Indigenous and ally scholars which explore what it means to enact language and culture reclamation from a place of hope—by Indigenous peoples, for Indigenous communities—and in connection with distinct historical, political, and geographic sites. By naming the identities the authors represent—Chickasaw, Nez Perce, Eastern Shoshone/Northern Arapaho, Hopi, San Carlos Apache and Euro-American—we use a framework of hope to counter damaging assumptions of homogeneity of Indigenous communities while also searching for common themes to advance an agenda of decolonization across positionalities. Understanding that Indigenous sovereignties are built on “contingency with the beliefs, and understandings of the past” (Grande 250), we interrupt settler-colonial narratives which portray Indigenous languages and cultures as deficient and vanishing. Further, through narratives, we explore how disciplines such as linguistics, anthropology, education, and cultural studies can be interwoven to highlight experiences of identity reconciliation, spirituality through language revitalization, and storytelling as narrative reclamation. A critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy unifies the narratives and provides a framework for attending to “asymmetrical power relations and legacies of colonization” (McCarty and Lee 8). In this way, Indigenous narratives of persistence and optimism find relevance in the global and local here and now while emphasizing the relevancy of hope as a rooted practice of relationality in Indigenous language and cultural education. Sharing narratives of hope acknowledges the experience of colonization, while privileging the hope in Indigenous knowledge as a return to the community and generator of new narratives.Ye

“It Has Just Opened My Eyes to How Important It Is”: An Analysis of Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Teachers: Engagement with Critical Indigenous Theories

This dissertation targeted Indigenous educators who have affiliations with both the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes in the Wind River Reservation. The study analyzed how their perspectives around curriculum and pedagogy were impacted when they interacted with critical Indigenous education theory and conversed with Indigenous education scholars. The research questions were 1) What are the ways Indigenous educators can sustain Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho ways of life in the classroom?; 2) How will participants’ teaching philosophies change from their conversations with Indigenous scholars and their interactions with Indigenous education research?; 2a) How does this experience with Indigenous theories and scholars inform the ways in which Indigenous educators sustain Indigenous knowledge and values?; and 3) How can Indigenous educators incorporate Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho knowledge systems in curriculum and pedagogy? The study used qualitative methods and incorporated Indigenous qualitative research methods along with Indigenous knowledge systems. Data was gathered through self-reflective journal entries, pre/post interviews, and focus groups. Within the theme of relationality, subthemes emerged addressing Indigenous teachers’ relationality to community and school, Indigenous teachers’ relationships with students and their families, and relationality between teachers’ and students’ identities and curriculum. The second main theme was the teachers engaging with Indigenous theories and scholars. A subtheme that arose described the teachers’ personal reflections regarding Indigenous theories. A third main theme that occurred was experience with Indigenous theories and scholars and interactions with Indigenous knowledge and values. The subtheme for this theme analyzed teachers’ reflections after meeting Indigenous education scholars. The fourth main theme was contextualizing the process and how teachers engaged with critical Indigenous theories. A subtheme that occurred was how teachers took steps to incorporate Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho knowledge systems in curriculum and pedagogy. A final theme was how critical dialogues impact curriculum possibilities. The study showed initial dialogues and ideas teachers had for centering Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho knowledge systems in curriculum and pedagogy. The implications of the study were how the Indigenous teachers engaged in critical Indigenous consciousness upon reading critical Indigenous educational theory and dialoguing with the Indigenous education scholars, a space for the Indigenous teachers to have dialogues in order to sustain their efforts toward educational sovereignty, the necessity for more research to support Native teachers confronting schools that refuse to see the benefit of critical Indigenous pedagogy, culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy, and decolonial praxis, impacts on policies, development of Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho curriculum and pedagogy, a need for more collaboration between language teachers and classroom teachers, and professional developments that focus on critical Indigenous education theories

“Why Don’t We Try Something New?”: How Indigenous Educators Supported One Another in Leaning Toward in Community-Based Inquiry

What would the impact be on Indigenous practitioners’ viewpoints if they had access to resources pertinent to Indigenous education and make the information they learn from these resources relevant to their community? How can a teacher push through problematic rhetoric and obstacles when committing to Indigenous youth’s education? This article presents these questions, showing how a group of Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho educators dialogued about education and teaching. When these educators dedicated time to discuss Indigenous education resources, they were able to lean toward in community-based inquiry and dream about curriculum that centered Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho beliefs

Community-Based Inquiry from within Indigenous Early Learning Communities of Practice: Introduction to the Special Issue

Community-Based Inquiry (CBI) is a research method in which Indigenous communities engage in asking and answering their own questions about their early childhood practices. Community members are the researchers: they formulate the questions based on community needs, create the methodology to pursue answers to those questions, find solutions, and put those solutions into practice to strengthen early childhood education in their communities. In this introductory piece, we share the philosophical and practical foundations of CBI, and introduce readers to the visionary community and university scholars who, throughout this special issue, share their stories of innovation, insight, and advocacy on behalf of early learners, families, and their communities

Global COVID-19 lockdown highlights humans as both threats and custodians of the environment

The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence. However, negative effects of lockdown on conservation also emerged, as confinement resulted in some park officials being unable to perform conservation, restoration and enforcement tasks, resulting in local increases in illegal activities such as hunting. Overall, there is a complex mixture of positive and negative effects of the pandemic lockdown on nature, all of which have the potential to lead to cascading responses which in turn impact wildlife and nature conservation. While the net effect of the lockdown will need to be assessed over years as data becomes available and persistent effects emerge, immediate responses were detected across the world. Thus initial qualitative and quantitative data arising from this serendipitous global quasi-experimental perturbation highlights the dual role that humans play in threatening and protecting species and ecosystems. Pathways to favorably tilt this delicate balance include reducing impacts and increasing conservation effectiveness