Native American Education vs. Indian Learning: Still Battling Pratt after All These Years
Rent from DeepDyveAs Virginia Carney, an Eastern Cherokee professor at Leech Lake Tribal College (Anishinaabe), pointed out in her presentation at the 2002 meeting of the Modern Language Association, teaching American Indian literatures to American Indian students is a pedagogically unique situation that is complicated by several elements: tribal heterogeneity (or lack thereof) in the classroom; the identity of the instructor; the texts being studied, as well as the identity of the authors of those texts; and many other factors. For instructors of American Indian ancestry, particularly those from tribes other than those of their students, the responsibilities involved in teaching American Indian literatures perhaps increase exponentially. Many American Indian instructors, having become part of the intertribal world of Indian academia in America, feel we have a vested interest in seeing American Indian students succeed—no matter from what tribe, they are our future. With only 1.1 percent of college graduates being American Indian and only 13 percent of Native people earning a degree (U.S. Office of Management and Budget), every American Indian college student needs to succeed if we are to have what many elders stress: education in both mainstream and in traditional ways for our peoples not merely to survive but also to thrive in the years to come. Many of us were educated in a system that was neither friendly to our learning styles nor designed to encourage our success, and we enter these situations with a hyperawareness of and hypersensitivity toward the needs of our students. Perhaps even more than non-Indian instructors, we are also aware that though there is commonality, [End Page 3] there are distinct cultural differences between us and our students, some of which are tribal and some of which have to do with our degrees of assimilation.
This is precisely the situation in which we found ourselves when asked by the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes to teach a one-week, three-credit-hour course in American Indian literatures to a group of mostly Cheyenne and Arapaho students in El Reno, Oklahoma, in association with Redlands Community College. While Redlands is a local community college, the tribal education director negotiated to offer the course to tribal and nontribal members under the auspices of this public institution. Primary funding for the course came from the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. The tribes funded half of the teaching stipend along with room and board for the two of us and tuition and books for students who were tribal members, and Redlands funded the other portion of the teaching. Though we knew there would be grueling eight-hour days in the classroom, plus additional guided study time afterward to meet the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools' accreditation requirement for contact hours, we had both been adopted by a well-known local Cheyenne family, the Blackbears, and felt an obligation to give back to the young people in this community. Even though there would be no members of the Blackbear family in the classroom, this was their tribal government paying us, their community trusting us, and we were honored by that. Out of respect for our relationship, besides our commitment as educators, we wished to do the best job possible. This situation was also prime for beginning a study in an area in which we were both interested: how do we best meet the learning needs of these students in regard to American Indian literatures? We had two measurement instruments at our disposal that we would incorporate besides utilizing methodology supported by the literature, and we felt we could do a qualitative study based on our experiences, a study that we hope to refine and expand greatly in the future. Though this project would be limited in scope and would only be a pilot, with the students' willingness to participate, we felt...
