Worldviews of Urban Iroquois Faculty: A Case Study of a Native American Resource Program

Introduction and Conceptual Framework

Too many times, in Rapid City and other cities where there is a high concentration of Native Americans, the schools' expectations of the students are that they are lazy, dumb, slow, and that they're going to grow up to be drunks. This negative expectation is difficult to overcome.

(Sneve 1993, 41)

Many inner-city schools are underfunded, challenged by low parent involvement, and struggling with a plethora of problems, real and perceived, regarding achievement in schools. Students at these schools bring into classrooms physical and psychological issues related to poverty such as illness, hunger, fatigue, fear, stress, and depression. Haberman noted that "Dealing as it does with psychological as well as physical life and death, teaching in these situations is an extraordinary life experience—a volatile, highly charged, emotionally draining, physically exhausting experience for even the most competent, experienced teacher" (1995, 1). He compared teachers in urban schools to air traffic controllers because they have lives in their hands and wrote, "For the children and youth in poverty from diverse cultural backgrounds who attend urban schools, having effective teachers is a matter of life and death" (1).

The following article will highlight a unique public school for kindergarten through eighth-grade students where the negative expectations noted by Sneve are not held, and this is due, in large part, to a segment of extraordinary Iroquois faculty. The school is Buffalo's Native American Magnet School, also known as P.S. #19. The school's Native American population constitutes one-third of the entire student body and comes from the six Iroquois tribes: Oneida, Seneca, Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Tuscarora, with the majority being Seneca and Mohawk. Most of the Native American students at P.S. #19 are second or third generation removed from reservations, and their parents or grandparents moved to the city in search of jobs. Five Indian reservations are within a ninety-mile radius of Buffalo; three of these (Tonawanda, Cattaragus, and Tuscarora Indian Reservations) are within a thirty-mile radius. The city, however, has had increasing unemployment in the past two decades due to the decline of the steel industry. Major employers Bethlehem Steel and Ford Motor Company closed plants, and the city has not recovered economically.

Freire acknowledges the importance of researchers conducting thematic investigations. He advises a researcher to "re-present that universe [in this case, the universe of urban Iroquois education] to the people from whom she or he first received it" (1970, 90). Another important task is to represent that universe to a wider audience. As Fran Hill, director of the Native American Resources Program, said on the first day of classes, "We need someone to convey our beliefs, values, and traditions to others."

In this vein, we have multiple goals in this article. We will dispel myths about the educability of urban Iroquois children and will introduce readers to the philosophies or, as the participants describe them, worldviews that ground the work of these exceptional Iroquois teachers. Themes such as concepts, values, and challenges will be identified and opposing themes will be introduced. We will share how teaching at P.S. #19 fulfills Paulo Freire's criteria for "problem-posing education" (1970).

While the curriculum, teachers, and philosophy at P.S. #19 are unique, in many ways it is a typical urban school. Buffalo's West Side, where the school is located, is a poor neighborhood in which few homes are owner occupied. Ninety-nine percent of students in the school are eligible for free lunch. The school itself is a three-story brick building surrounded by a narrow strip of grass and a tall chain-link fence to deter theft and vandalism. The neighborhood is visibly deteriorating with burnt buildings, boarded-up windows, graffiti, burglar bars, and vacant lots...