Through My Body and In My Heart: A Primer

How do we think about Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS)? I want to offer here my own thinking about what IKS are. There will certainly be debate about this. These are my views only; they serve as an invitation to others to share their own ways of outlining these crucial ideas. IKS are—for me—fundamentally about the intersections between philosophical ideas and the daily realities of tribal nations, communities, and other entities that comprise the peoples who belong to them, and their lands and waters. Before I discuss this further, let me be clear about what I am NOT engaging here. These are not sacred or limited knowledges. They are not specific knowledges or sets of knowledges; rather, they are principles and connectors. They are sites of convenings. They are systems. IKS unite Indigenous peoples across the globe. Indigenous peoples are simultaneously tethered to place and migratory. We have always moved. Often the movement was tied to food or water. Sustenance. Or to mates. Another form of sustenance, I suppose. The movement allowed Indigenous peoples to trade ideas, peoples. Stuff. Migration enabled relationships between peoples and ideas. Sparked by connection and curiosity, movement spurred innovation. The movement was a particular life force. Those who fail to adapt and adjust perish. Those who do not innovate, perish. Early Indigenous peoples in what is now Alaska created kayaks for transportation in and through waterways. Kayaks were effective in narrow spaces. And fast ones. Kayaks helped move us. They provided fun. Trips toward sustenance

Looking into the hearts of native peoples: nation building as an institutional orientation for graduate education

In this article, we suggest that graduate programs in predominantly white institutions can and should be sites of self-education and tribal nation building. In arguing this, we examine how a particular graduate program and the participants of that program engaged tribal nation building, and then we suggest that graduate education writ large must also adopt an institutional orientation of nation building. We connect Guinier's notion of democratic merit to our discussion of nation building as a way to suggest a rethinking of "success" and "merit" in graduate education. We argue that higher education should be centrally concerned with capacity building and graduates who aim to serve their communities

Teaching Ethnographic Methods for Cultural Anthropology: Current Practices and Needed Innovation

Historically, ethnographic methods were learned by cultural anthropology students in individual research projects. This approach creates challenges for teaching in ways that respond to the next generation’s calls to decenter anthropology’s White, heteropatriarchal voices and engage in collaborative community-based research. Analyzing syllabi from 107 ethnographic methods training courses from the United States, we find the tradition of the “lone researcher” persists and is the basis of ethnographic training for the next generation. There is little evidence of either active reflection or team-based pedagogy, both identified as necessary to meet career opportunities and diversification goals for the wider field of cultural anthropology. However, we also find that, by centering the completion of largely individual research projects, most ethnographic methods courses otherwise adhere to best practices in regard to experiential and active learning. Based on the analysis of syllabi in combination with current pedagogical literature, we suggest how cultural anthropologists can revise their ethnographic methods courses to incorporate pedagogy that promotes methodologies and skills to align with the needs of today’s students and communities

Learning to Take No for an Answer: Co-Designing Digital Experiences With Indigenous Youth in the Southwestern United States

Many Indigenous communities engaged in digital spaces are concerned with issues of sovereignty and intellectual property rights in relation to information that might be accessed online (Belarde-Lewis, 2013; Duarte, 2017). These concerns are further multiplied when Indigenous youth, who may not be fully aware of appropriate protocols for sharing information or maintaining its confidentiality, become producers in digital spaces. Yet, we know that youth becoming producers and not just consumers of digital technologies is an important aspect of access to and identification with STEM disciplines (Bell, Van Horne, & Cheng, 2017; Scott, Sheridan, & Clark, 2015), as well as a way to engage youth in aspects of culture they often perceive as “going dead” (Int., 6/15/17). In designing with Indigenous communities, how do we balance a desire for Indigenous youth to become critical producers of technology with community desires for privacy and protection of information, particularly around cultural heritage? In this paper, we explore what it means when an Indigenous community says “no” to researchers as part of the co-design process of developing culturally responsive computational making activities (Rode et al., 2015). Drawing on methodological approaches to design research with communities (Bang, Faber, Gurneau, Marin, & Soto, 2016; Brayboy, Gough, Leonard, Roehl, & Solyom, 2012; DiSalvo, Yip, Bonsignore, & DiSalvo, 2017; Smith, 2012), we frame our work in terms of the history of research in Indigenous communities that has led to such “no” moments. We then present data from a larger, five-year ethnographic engagement with a relatively small (10,000 enrolled members) Indigenous community in the Southwestern United States. Drawing on field notes, photographs, collection of relevant documents, interview transcripts, and youth-produced digital artifacts, we present two case studies of moments in the co-design process where community stakeholders, especially the community’s cultural relations department, told us no. In the first case, members of the research team proposed a superhero themed unit, which community stakeholders rejected because of a perceived clash of values between individual superheroes and the more communal-orientation of the community. In the second case, members of the research team proposed that youth would create virtual community tours of significant local sites, including the site of the first school in the community. However, stakeholders expressed concerns about youths’ respect for heritage and material culture. This led us away from working with the cultural resources department and towards working with the community relations department around engaging youth in documenting and sharing valuable aspects of their community with outsiders. Findings emphasize the importance of co-designing with community stakeholders and emphasize the value of taking a broader perspective on culture that moves beyond material and heritage culture to include expressions of contemporary Indigenous identities, such as tribally-owned business enterprises. Rather than viewing “no” as the end of the conversation, this paper makes a contribution to community-based co-design work by both recognizing the historical relationship between researchers and Indigenous peoples and demonstrating how “no” can be a productive locus for extending conversations into new directions

Exploring Maker Technologies in Creating a Sense of Belonging With American Indian College Students

American Indian college students are not academically successful for four primary reasons: financial barriers, K-12 academic barriers, few role models with college degrees, and cultural incongruities between their home culture and that of institutions of higher education (Brayboy, Fann, Castagno, & Solyom, 2012). Following a series of focus groups with 1,109 American Indian students at a University in the Western United States, we found that while there were financial and academic barriers, students also had strong feelings of being invisible, not belonging to the institution, and being unable to access both academic and social resources. Working with these focus groups, we created a series of responses to address the students’ concerns. First, we created a course that made American Indians and American Indian students more visible to the entire institution. Second, we co-created a magazine for and by students to assist them in navigating the academic, financial, and social components of college. Third, we co-created a collection of mobile apps that serve as resources for American Indian students. In this poster, we share the story of this latter response aimed to create a sense of belonging for American Indian university students by enabling them to become makers and creators of resources for their peers. We engaged American Indian students in a two-day workshop emphasizing making with mobile technologies to create relationships between students and the institution. Using Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling (ARIS; Holden, Gagnon, Litts, & Smith, 2013), a narrative-based programming platform for non-programmers, American Indian students built prototype ideas around two key themes: (1) building a sense of belonging, and (2) “I wish I knew…” (resources senior students wish they knew about earlier). Students expressed high interest in integrating resources that were specific to the Native Students on campus. For example, one student designed a game to encourage storytelling about cultural spots on campus recognizing the local Native community and their homeland by allowing players to share their stories and geo-locate them on campus. Another group created an interactive story that shared the historical narrative of how Indigenous People’s Day became a recognized holiday at their university. Two other groups built tour-like experiences that guided players across campus highlighting resources particularly relevant to Native students including both official university resources and unofficial social resources. As incentives to engage peers in their games, students proposed trading in-game points for real-world rewards (textbook, parking, food, gift cards, etc.). The majority of students expressed interest in further developing their prototype designs for more widespread use among their Native peers. Our project offers insights to the ways that the creation of technology served to build relationships between people and place. Specifically, technology, particularly using a platform that is both story- and place-based, can mediate and facilitate relationships between marginalized students and institutions. Additionally, by utilizing student voices and ideas we can create tools to support retention and success for marginalized student populations. Most importantly, our project demonstrates how willing students are to take ownership of their academic success by becoming creators of technology