Basic Empowering Strategies for the Classroom

I have been teaching about Native history and culture since 1988, while I was still in graduate school and after I had completed most of my PhD requirements. I was allowed to teach first-year American history classes and to guest lecture in the American Indian History Survey course while I studied for my comprehensive oral and written exams. In retrospect, it is clear that teaching helped me to study and pass my exams, but teaching others also taught me more than a few things about how students of different racial and cultural backgrounds respond to lecture material.

It was my perception that the majority of students were upper-middle-class whites who had little knowledge about people of color. History professors were traditional, that is, they taught facts and figures and never discussed controversial issues. The American Indian history courses were "safe" in that never once did professors mention the terms "decolonization" or "empowerment," nor did anyone ever talk about author bias, theory, or the importance of considering Native voices. Anytime I mentioned controversial topics in my lectures, such as repatriation, colonization, the disastrous colonization policies, or even racism, I was challenged and informed on end-of-semester student evaluations that I was trying to be "politically correct" and was "making things up." Indeed, unless the students were already aware of the realities of racism, prejudice, and territoriality in academia (and in real life), then many of them expected to receive an education that made them feel comfortable in their positions as privileged citizens of the United States. It was taken for granted that Indians lived in the past and that the white (male) professors know best.

I then taught for ten years in the history department at Northern Arizona University where I created and taught thirteen courses on Native history and culture. I always received above-the-college-mean evaluations, but I also never failed to receive a few comments similar to patriotic ones I got as a graduate student (in addition to nationalistic students, I also had to deal with territorial professors, but that story is addressed in Indigenizing the Academy). Although a professor can try, he or she cannot expect to win over every student, especially if those students hold deeply ingrained racist attitudes or have never before interacted with anyone outside their cultural group. Changing everyone's reality in the classroom is pretty much impossible. You may not want to be that intrusive, anyway. But you can try to educate.

After I moved to the new Applied Indigenous Studies (AIS) department, I encountered completely different receptions to my lectures. I basically taught the same material I always have, but only in ais have I seen almost across-the-board enthusiasm. There is an obvious reason for this: The majority of the students enrolled in the ais courses are Indigenous who, unlike mainstream students who feel like they are being "force fed" information about Natives, want to hear the information because it directly impacts their lives. Many Native students face serious problems and any encouraging remark and empowering strategy is welcomed with open ears. Properly managed ais courses are unique in that we can focus on the needs of tribes, not just areas of interest to students with no intention of using the information for greater good. I am able to put my array of works on stereotypes, methodologies of writing about Indians, repatriation, women's history and feminism, activism, history, education, and literature to good use in my lectures and class discussions.

Those professors concerned about tribes retaining culture are the ones most appealing to Native students, but they are the least appealing to most non-Natives. Why is that? One reason may be that many non-Natives feel like the professor is attacking them for past and present events. I have learned that some argue this stance regardless of how inclusive the instructor tries to be. Some students think that...