American Indian/Alaska Native Education: Validating Native Culture

In Light of the Feather: Pathways Through Contemporary Indian America, author Mick Fedullo tells of his experiences as an educational consultant in Indian schools. He gives examples of American Indian resistance and intercultural differences. He quotes an Apache elder who says that the students' parents,

had been to school in their day, and what that usually meant was a bad BIA boarding school. And all they remember about school is that there were all these Anglos [white people] trying to make them forget they were Apaches; trying to make them turn against their parents, telling them that Indian ways were evil.

Well, a lot of those kids came to believe that their teachers were the evil ones, and so anything that had to do with "education" was also evil--like books. Those kids came back to the reservation, got married, and had their own kids. And now they don't want anything to do with the white man's education. The only reason they send their kids to school is because it's the law. But they tell their kids not to take school seriously.

The cost to the student of rejecting the school's language and culture is a serious loss of future academic and occupational opportunities. However, the alternative of rejecting one's home language and culture can lead to tragic consequences as students become increasingly unable to communicate with their parents and other extended family members. University of California Professor Lilly Wong Fillmore writes, What is lost is no less than the means by which parents socialize their children: When parents are unable to talk to their children, they cannot easily convey to them their values, beliefs, understandings, or wisdom about how to cope with their experiences. They cannot teach them about the meaning of work, or about personal responsibility, or what it means to be a moral or ethical person in a world with too many choices and too few guideposts to follow. Another tragic consequence of the failure of educators to appreciate Indian languages and cultures is the well documented over-identification of Indian children as learning disabled and mentally retarded. These labels usually are based on assessments by monolingual, monocultural school psychologists using "intelligence" and other tests that measure "Standard" English language ability and familiarity with mainstream American culture.

Native students today vary from traditional to assimilated. Some are bicultural, capable of moving back and forth from white to traditional Indian culture. Because of the tremendous variation among Indians of different tribes and different degrees of assimilation, it is impossible to study "the Indian" and determine what is the best instructional approach for them. The many variations among Indian students point to the conclusion that a variety of methods should be employed.

Teachers can demonstrate that they care about student's background and support family values through modeling learning for their students. They can learn about the home culture of their students through home and community visits and by reading relevant ethnographic literature. They then can use this knowledge to change their teaching methods and to use classroom activities that will better motivate their students. On reservations this has been called "crossing the cattle guard," referring to leaving the fenced compounds that teachers live in next to the schools. Native families see teachers' participation in such Native activities as powwows as affirming the teachers' respect and concern for their students.

To be successful, educators must overcome their students' resistance to education and master the art of intercultural communication. To overcome that resistance Jim Cummins of the Ontario Institute for Educational Studies found that:

1. Educators must involve parents in the running of the school.
2. School curriculum needs to reflect the cultural background of the student.
3. Experiential and interactive teaching methods need to be used.
4. Testing must be used to help students learn effectively, rather than to sort and label students.

If teachers take this approach, they will employ a bilingual-additive, "English Plus" approach, which contrasts dramatically with the traditional assimilationist approach.

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