Confronting Tensions in Collaborative Postsecondary Indigenous Education Programs: A Reader's Theatre Presentation

This conference "performance session" addresses the tensions encountered by indigenous educators in colleges and universities as they collaborate with tribal offices of education to create culturally responsive educational practices. Colonial schooling has left a legacy of institutionalized racism and sexism, sustained by postsecondary institutions grounded in Western epistemology and cosmology. Debate and dialogue among scholars of all races is needed to address this situation. There is mounting energy supporting a new worldview that acknowledges the human relationship with Nature as mutually sustaining. Indigenous worldviews have much to contribute, as they emphasize an eco-centered perspective and more integrative ways of understanding human/earth relations. Place-based education contextualizes curriculum within an awareness of the balance of life systems. Because the indigenous worldview does not separate health, education, and spirituality, the Dine wellness center was placed within the Little Singer Elementary School, where a bicultural learning program nurtures students' abilities to function in Dine and non-Indian worlds. The overlay of Navajo and Anglo concepts of healing provides both the Center's greatest resource and some of its most pressing problems. In addition to the usually recognized leadership qualities, American Indian school leadership requires the ability to listen, work in teams, be a peacemaker, bring disparate people into cooperation, utilize the collective wisdom of organizations, and work through unexpected problems positively and productively. It is important to know when to take an Indian or a Western approach, or both, to address a problem. (TD)