american indian studies
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2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-16
Author(s):  
Alan Lechusza Aquallo

This article focuses upon how, within American Indian Studies courses, there is a necessary border crossing between territorialized Native and non-Native students. Taking the literal borders of Indian reservations, and repositioning these realities as a metaphor for critical epistemological deconstruction, I argue that there is a necessary educational border crossing which is necessary for Native/Indigenous equity and socio-political justice to be realized and acquired as cultural currency. As students within these courses begin to understand, embrace, and challenge American Indian Studies (AIS) courses, and the dynamics of the discipline, there is a self-defined border crossing between, and within, the Native/Indigenous ideological territories, and literal, physical reservation borders, which the curriculum represents. Each student may – or will – find their own point of critical Native/Indigenous inquiry, from which they are challenged and welcomed to embrace, as well as depart from previous scripted Euro American rhetorical references regarding Native/Indigenous cultures. Following this critical epistemology, for the student participant, a new territory of knowledge, cultural, and expressed understanding from, and about, Native/Indigenous Peoples becomes manifest; a new academic frontier is possible. Applying this methodology, for academic decolonization, the i/Indian image/icon need not exist within the textbook(s); the potential for recognizing and decolonizing the physical reservation borders becomes possible. The realities of Native lives – both historic and contemporary - do matter, beyond these limitations and scripted inclusions within textbooks. Whereas a text may prove as a site of disenfranchisement, inequity, and, tribal marginalization, there, then, lies the necessity for Native V/voices to be heard, reviewed, and function as sovereign references and expressions, which advances beyond the terminal reservation borders as agency. This article seeks to challenge pre-determined academic references, mis-representations and re-presentations of Native Peoples, read: the i/Indian image/icon, as well as providing a critique of how Native/Indigenous realities are, then, able to sovereignly relate to the large non-Native population beyond the limitations of a physical reservation border. Taking note that there is no one single educational methodology, which can be applied within American Indian courses, multiple academic perspectives begin to surface, which address the educational process about Native Peoples. The 3 views of Indian education – anthropological/archeological/ethnographic/historical, sympathetic, activist - as I argue, become, and are maintained as antiquated points of articulation, which continue to be employed about Native Peoples, replacing the active dynamics of Native cultures, customs, traditional knowledge, and expressions. This article, therefore, challenges these 3 views of Indian education - anthropological/archeological/ethnographic/historical, sympathetic, activist - noting that the classroom, textbook(s), and their references, mis-representations and re-presentation(s) about Native Peoples, need to be decolonized, following the importance, ideology, dialectics and dynamics of tribal sovereignty, equity, and socio-political justice.


Author(s):  
Alan Lechusza Aquallo ◽  

This article focuses upon how, within American Indian Studies courses, there is a necessary border crossing between territorialized Native and non-Native students. Taking the literal borders of Indian reservations, and repositioning these realities as a metaphor for critical epistemological deconstruction, I argue that there is a necessary educational border crossing which is necessary for Native/Indigenous equity and socio-political justice to be realized and acquired as cultural currency. As students within these courses begin to understand, embrace, and challenge American Indian Studies (AIS) courses, and the dynamics of the discipline, there is a self-defined border crossing between, and within, the Native/Indigenous ideological territories, and literal, physical reservation borders, which the curriculum represents. Each student may – or will – find their own point of critical Native/Indigenous inquiry, from which they are challenged and welcomed to embrace, as well as depart from previous scripted EuroAmerican rhetorical references regarding Native/Indigenous cultures. Following this critical epistemology, for the student participant, a new territory of knowledge, cultural, and expressed understanding from, and about, Native/Indigenous Peoples becomes manifest; a new academic frontier is possible. Applying this methodology, for academic decolonization, the i/Indian image/icon need not exist within the textbook(s); the potential for recognizing and decolonizing the physical reservation borders becomes possible. The realities of Native lives – both historic and contemporary – do matter, beyond these limitations and scripted inclusions within textbooks. Whereas a text may prove as a site of disenfranchisement, inequity, and, tribal marginalization, there, then, lies the necessity for Native V/voices to be heard, reviewed, and function as sovereign references and expressions, which advances beyond the terminal reservation borders as agency. This article seeks to challenge pre-determined academic references, mis-representations and re-presentations of Native Peoples, read: the i/Indian image/icon, as well as providing a critique of how Native/Indigenous realities are, then, able to sovereignly relate to the large non-Native population beyond the limitations of a physical reservation border. Taking note that there is no one single educational methodology, which can be applied within American Indian courses, multiple academic perspectives begin to surface, which address the educational process about Native Peoples. The 3 views of Indian education – anthropological/archeological/ethnographic/historical,sympathetic, activist – as I argue, become, and are maintained as antiquated points of articulation, which continue to be employed about Native Peoples, replacing the active dynamics of Native cultures, customs, traditional knowledge, and expressions. This article, therefore, challenges these 3 views of Indian education – anthropological/archeological/ethnographic/historical, sympathetic, activist – noting that the classroom, textbook(s), and their references, mis-representations and re-presentation(s) about Native Peoples, need to be decolonized, following the importance, ideology, dialectics and dynamics of tribal sovereignty, equity, and socio-political justice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Amy Sueyoshi ◽  
Sutee Sujitparapitaya

While the United States wrestles with a college completion crisis, the Division of Institutional Research at San Francisco State University found a high correlation between Ethnic Studies curriculum and increased student retention and graduation rates. Majors and minors in the College of Ethnic Studies graduated within six years at rates up to 92%. Those who were neither majors nor minors in Ethnic Studies also boosted their graduation rates by up to 72% by taking just a few courses in Africana Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Latina/Latino Studies, or Race and Resistance Studies. Faculty in the College of Ethnic Studies demonstrated significant levels of high impact instruction in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and senior exit surveys as compared with their colleagues across the university.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-131
Author(s):  
James Mackay

AbstractTribal sovereignty, at the time of writing directly threatened by actions of the Trump Administration, expresses more than just a bare legal concept. Reviewing six recent texts in American Indian studies, this essay argues that imaginative sovereignty—that is to say, tribal peoples’ creative expression of lived experience of resistance to colonial assault and erasure—cannot be codified in legal terms, and indeed may at times exist in opposition to sovereignty as defined under US federal law. The legal tensions around sovereignty are traced in books by David J. Carlson and Cheryl Suzack and in collections edited by J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Scott Richard Lyons, and then used as a hermeneutic for assessing works by Mark Rifkin and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.


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