Indigenizing Education: Transformative Research, Theories, and Praxis brings various scholars, educators, and community voices together in ways that reimagines and recenters learning processes that embody Indigenous education rooted in critical Indigenous theories and pedagogies. The contributing scholar-educators speak to the resilience and strength embedded in Indigenous knowledges and highlight the intersection between research, theories, and praxis in Indigenous education. Each of the contributors share ways they engaged in transformative praxis by activating a critical Indigenous consciousness with diverse Indigenous youth, educators, families, and community members. The authors provide pathways to reconceptualize and sustain goals to activate agency, social change, and advocacy with and for Indigenous peoples as they enact sovereignty, selfeducation, and Native nation-building. The chapters are organized across four sections, entitled Indigenizing Curriculum and Pedagogy, Revitalizing and Sustaining Indigenous Languages, Engaging Families and Communities in Indigenous Education, and Indigenizing Teaching and Teacher Education. Across the chapters, you will observe dialogues between the scholar-educators as they enacted various theories, shared stories, indigenized various curriculum and teaching practices, and reflected on the process of engaging in critical dialogues that generates a (re)new(ed) spirit of hope and commitment to intellectual and spiritual sovereignty. The book makes significant contributions to the fields of critical Indigenous studies, critical and culturally sustaining pedagogy, and decolonization.

In the past four decades Native American/First Nations Literature has emerged as a literary and academic field and it is now read, taught, and theorized in many educational settings outside the United States and Canada. Native American and First Nations authors have also broadened their themes and readership by exploring transnational contexts and foreign realities, and through translation into major and minor languages, thus establishing creative networks with other literary communities around the world. However, when their texts are taught abroad, the perpetuation of Indian stereotypes, mystifications, and misconceptions is still a major issue that non-Native readers, students, and teachers continue to struggle with. To counter such distorted representations and neo/colonialist readings, this book presents a strategic selection of critical case studies that set specific texts within cross-cultural contexts wherein Native-based methodologies and key concepts are placed at the center of the reading practice. The challenging role of teachers and researchers as potential intermediaries and responsible disseminators of what Gayatri C. Spivak calls “transnational literacy” as well as the reception of Native North American works, contexts, and themes by international readers thus becomes a primary focus of attention. This volume provides a set of critical analyses and practical resources that may enable teachers outside the United States and Canada to incorporate Native American/First Nations literature and related cultural and historical texts into their teaching practices and current research interests in a creative, decolonizing, and responsible manner.

Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada thinks boldly about how to make space for Indigenous knowledges and have an honest discourse on truth and reconciliation. By engaging with Indigenous epistemologies and strategies, the contributors navigate the complexities of the decolonization and indigenization of post-secondary institutions. What is needed in this field is less theorizing and more action: the contributors offer practical steps on how one might positively transform the Canadian academy. Through this lens of action-based solutions, each of the fifteen chapters advances critical scholarship on issues of pedagogy, curriculum, shifting power dynamics, and challenging Eurocentric perspectives in higher education. With contributions from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics from across Canada and in varying academic positions, Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada provides a unique perspective specific to the Canadian education system. Featuring discussion questions, further reading lists, and practical examples of how to engage in decolonization work within the academy, this text is an essential resource for students and scholars studying Indigenous knowledges, education and pedagogies, and curriculum studies.

Drawing on treaties, international law, the work of other Indigenous scholars, and especially personal experiences, Marie Battiste documents the nature of Eurocentric models of education, and their devastating impacts on Indigenous knowledge. Chronicling the negative consequences of forced assimilation, racism inherent to colonial systems of education, and the failure of current educational policies for Aboriginal populations, Battiste proposes a new model of education, arguing the preservation of Aboriginal knowledge is an Aboriginal right. Central to this process is the repositioning of Indigenous humanities, sciences, and languages as vital fields of knowledge, revitalizing a knowledge system which incorporates both Indigenous and Eurocentric thinking.

Native American scholars reflect on issues related to academic study by students drawn from the indigenous peoples of America. Topics range from problems of racism and ethnic fraud in academic hiring to how indigenous values and perspectives can be integrated into research methodologies and interpretive theories.

In Colonized Classrooms, Sheila Cote-Meek discusses how Aboriginal students confront narratives of colonial violence in the postsecondary classroom, while they are, at the same time, living and experiencing colonial violence on a daily basis. Basing her analysis on interviews with Aboriginal students, teachers and Elders, Cote-Meek deftly illustrates how colonization and its violence are not a distant experience, but one that is being negotiated every day in universities and colleges across Canada.

Across Canada, new curriculum initiatives require teachers to introduce students to Aboriginal content. In response, many teachers unfamiliar with Aboriginal approaches to learning and teaching are seeking ways to respectfully weave this material into their lessons. Learning and Teaching Together introduces teachers of all levels to an indigenist approach to education. Tanaka recounts how pre-service teachers enrolled in a crosscultural course in British Columbia immersed themselves in indigenous ways of knowing as they worked alongside indigenous wisdom keepers. Transforming cedar bark, buckskin, and wool into a mural that tells stories about the land upon which the course took place, they discovered new ways of learning that support not only intellectual but also tactile, emotional, and spiritual forms of knowledge. By sharing how one group of non-indigenous teachers learned to privilege indigenous ways of knowing in the classroom, Tanaka opens a path for teachers to nurture indigenist crosscultural understanding in their own classrooms.