Elementary students are often hampered by a tendency to ascribe innovation to increasing human intelligence or individual agency rather than increased information, better access to information, or collective and institutional agency. As a result, they struggle to build evidence-based interpretations of the distant past. A fifth-grade…

This article describes the history of the Native nations' ability to adapt to their surroundings in order to survive and preserve their cultures. Today, the tribal colleges and universities are employing a variety of methods to preserve culture and maintain Native identity. Large and small TCUs across North America are incorporating the…

This article introduces Sherry Red Owl, also known as "Stands at Dawn Woman," because she greets each day as a new opportunity and has spent her life working at new things. She worked at Sinte Gleska University (SGU) during its founding years, taught at an elementary school when few Native teachers were employed in the school systems,…

Beginning November 2006, and continuing through December 2007, Oklahomans were alerted to the promotions of the Oklahoma Centennial. For Indigenous Oklahomans, this was a problematic marking of a historical event. The Centennial's grand-narrative advanced a story privileging the "pioneers" who "settled the land" as the…

Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, a former English teacher and school counselor, is an award-winning author, best known for her children's books about the Rosebud Sioux life and culture, which combines history and legend to create culturally rich and authentic Native American stories. In this article, the authors share their conversations with Virginia…

The Thanksgiving Day holiday celebrated in the United States is generally traced to a first harvest celebration in the newly established Plymouth colony (present-day Massachusetts). Traditional storytelling describes the first Thanksgiving feast as having been attended by 53 Pilgrims (the European settlers) and 90 Native Americans. The holiday can…

This essay derives from a course called ‘"The Rhetoric of Native America,’" which is a historical-critical survey of Native American primary texts. The course examines the rhetoric employed by Natives to enact social change and to build community in the face of exigencies. The main goal of exploring a native text (particularly, Simon Pokagon's…

In this article the author starts from the premise that, although there were no renowned Indian poets at Carlisle and other Indian boarding schools in the United States, students in federal boarding schools read and wrote poetry. She argues that the rhetorically bold Carlisle poems--along with the letters and articles published in the Carlisle…

On Christmas Day 1975, Marcia Marie Summers was born to Charlene Summers, a member and resident of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation in North Dakota. A few months later, a white couple from Indiana approached the young mother and offered to care for her infant while Summers attended school. Summers realized that the couple intended to permanently…

Just two years after losing her Danish father, Coast Salish mother, and metis sisters to an undocumented tragedy in 1877, Nora Jewell faced another tragic ordeal. The twelve-year-old cleared fields and mended fences for James Smith, a guardian appointed by the court to protect her body and estate until she reached eighteen or married. As Nora…

The topics of Columbus's voyages of exploration, the first encounters between Amerindians and Europeans, and the ensuing collision of their respective worlds provide ample opportunities for creative and stimulating pedagogical approaches that go beyond the stale memorization of dates, places, and names. This essay and accompanying classroom…

As a reflection on pedagogy, this essay seeks to provide strategic tools for teaching Native American literature and culture to non-native students. My teaching philosophy is informed by the indigenous-centered, decolonial methodologies as defined by Devon Mihesuah who calls for "indigenizing" the academy by challenging the status quo and debating…

This exploratory study took a post-colonialist lens to record, examine and document schooling experiences of California Indian people across several generations representing three Central Valley tribes: the Mono, the Tachi Yokuts of Santa Rosa Rancheria, and the Tule River Tribe. Past and present perceptions of Indian schooling were elicited…

This paper examines how two sites of adult learning in the food movement create educational alternatives to the dominant U.S. food system. It further examines how these pedagogies challenge racialised, classed and gendered ideologies and practices in their aims, curricular content, and publically documented educational processes. The first case is…

The centering processes of geographic information system (GIS) development at the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was an extension of past cartographic encounters with American Indians through the central control of geospatial technologies, uneven development of geographic information resources, and extension of technically dependent…