Storytelling and Success: How Storytelling Can be Used to Promote Diversity, Cross-Cultural Understanding, and Confidence in the Classroom

Storytelling plays an important role in preserving historical and cultural traditions. Research proves it is beneficial to utilize in the classroom setting as well. One college seeks to cultivate an interest in storytelling for teacher education candidates by having storytelling incorporated into their future classrooms. In two of the education courses, Education (EDUC) 488—Cross Cultural Education; Native American Studies, and Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) 200—Encounter with Cultures, prospective teachers gain an appreciation of different cultures and traditions through storytelling. This article will address the personal and teaching benefits that arise from implementing storytelling into classroom curriculum.

Native American Studies

While Indigenous knowledge systems, theories, and research have been in existence for time immemorial, the academic field of Native American Studies (NAS) grew out of the civil rights era in the late 1960s. During the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, Native people in the United States organized resistance efforts, such as the reclaiming of Alcatraz Island in 1969, the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties march to Washington, DC, and the seventy-two-day protest and prayer at Wounded Knee in 1973. These activities are a few of the most well known, yet Native peoples have been resisting occupation of their lands, assimilationist forces, and settler colonialism and reclaiming land for decades. Activist groups such as the American Indian Movement organized many of these efforts, and with the increase of Native American students entering college during this time period, the level of activism and public awareness aligned with students’ demands for Native knowledge, perspectives, and experiences to be included in college courses. They also challenged universities to hire more Native American faculty. NAS in universities came out of these efforts, and academic programs were created from the West Coast to the East Coast in several universities. NAS draws on interdisciplinary perspectives from areas such as history, political science, anthropology, sociology, and education to examine the historical and modern issues faced by Native American and other Indigenous people and communities globally. This interdisciplinary approach allows scholars of NAS to examine the complexities and breadth of interests and problems in Native American communities. Of particular significance is the understanding and exercise of political sovereignty among Native Nations, which sets NAS apart from other ethnic-studies areas. Sovereignty is the right of a people to self-governance and self-determination. This includes rights to self-education and linguistic and cultural expression. Native Nations’ inherent sovereignty was recognized during treaty negotiations and agreements, and it has provided the basis for policies affecting Native communities today. This article recognizes the diverse areas of study that encompass NAS, including important areas connected to Native Nations’ application of their sovereign rights. The article identifies twelve subject areas that have prominence in scholarship that informs NAS. It also prioritizes scholarship by Indigenous authors, who provide the perspectives and lived experiences relevant to NAS.

Dimensions of Decolonial Future in Contemporary Indigenous Speculative Fiction: Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God and Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning

Departing from the traditional representations of the colonial past and its aftermath, speculative fiction emerges as a new important trend in the North American Indigenous literary landscape, allowing Native writers to represent decolonial futures. This article focuses on the representations of the future offered by two recent Indigenous speculative novels: Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God (2017) and Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning (2018), in the context of their decolonial potential. The analysis of the selected literary texts pays special attention to the status of women and its revision, as well as to the re-narrativization of space in the face of the anthropogenic climate change, and their significance to Indigenous decolonial project. In order to facilitate the discussion of the Indigenous speculative novels, the article refers to recent theories in Native American studies concerning Indigenous futurism, Native dystopia, and definitions of decolonization.

The Anthropocene and the Catawba

This chapter explores Lawson’s observation of nature and the history of the Catawba. Huler reviews Lawson’s recordings of birds, particularly the Carolina parakeet and the passenger pigeon. During Huler’s stay in Catawba, he takes interest in the pottery displays at the Native American Studies Center. Huler compares the land from Lawson’s period to modern time and describes Lawson’s experience with the Indians there and their loss of territory.

Indian trouble

This exploratory essay thinks through late-20th and early 21st century autobiographical novels and storytelling by indigenous migrants from Mexico and Central America. The think-piece examines the idea of “archiving selves” as well as the literary sensibilities of Manuel Olmos, Alma Murrieta, and Lamberto Roque Hernández. Focusing on how these non-professional writers document their border crossings and recount their uprooted lives in California, this essay casts new questions on indigenous Mesoamerican futurities that intersect—and depart from—Latino/a Studies and Native American Studies. It examines how a new social and cultural formation—indigenous-cum-migrant—is unfolding and revealing contemporary configurations on language and ethnic belonging.

Book Review: Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science, Society, and Solutions

An up-to-date and critical examination of international issues is essential as climate change creeps higher up the global agenda every year. While there are many works on this topic, circumstances change so quickly that it can be difficult to capture in this format. Author Dr. Bruce E. Johansen, the Fredrick W. Kayser Professor of Communication and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, offers up this timely three volume set as an investigation into societal impact, science, and solutions. This is the author’s fourth encyclopedic work on the topic of climate change and global warming. The work’s intent is to address the disconnect between scientific study of climate change and the language of popular discourse and policy making. To that end, many of the topics are inherently political and they have far-reaching global impact, the solutions for which take up a large amount of political real estate.

Situating Native American Studies and Red Feminisms

This essay aims to show that serious and robust engagement with Native American Studies and Red feminist research, methods, and theories contribute to the epistemological core of Ethnic Studies and produce new and important understandings of phenomenology, resistance, coloniality, and structures. Native American Studies and Red feminism are situated in relationship to Ethnic Studies and Feminist Studies to question the ongoing necessity of Native American scholars to occupy academic spaces. Ultimately, this paper illustrates how Native American Studies and Red feminism offer inroads to understanding the matrix of coloniality and the systematic efforts of Native American scholars, including Red feminists, to arrive at an Ethnic Studies that works for the people and serves in efforts to achieve social justice and Native American sovereignty simultaneously.