To advance socially just research, scholars—including those who utilize qualitative methodologies—must confront the colonizing reputation that frames such work in Indigenous communities. This article explores the potential for Community-Based Participatory Research to guide the re-envisioning of mainstream conceptions of scholarly control to cross epistemological borders between theory and practice. A project that endeavored to engage Native participants throughout the research process provides context for the discussion of ongoing challenges and emerging possibilities. This work holds implications for participatory research design and implementation in cross-cultural contexts, especially as connected to shifting decolonizing theory to practice.

Although “trauma-informed education” has gained momentum across the United States in recent years, a question remains neglected by the research community: How can education research inform understandings of “trauma-informed” approaches when education itself is trauma-producing for many students? This article (1) explores limitations of traumainformed educational scholarship, particularly its reliance on individualized, biomedical understandings of trauma; (2) articulates theoretical reconceptualizations for subsequent research to account for historical trauma and ways schools and research inflict harm on students; and (3) calls for expansion of relational, participatory, and humanizing methodologies. Overall, we argue for a shift from research that focuses on “trauma-informed education” to scholarship that enacts a sociohistorical trauma-reducing framework to more effectively interrogate the intersections of trauma, schooling, and research.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, the United States assigned Indian Agents—non‐Native employees of the federal government—to coordinate intergovernmental efforts, to encourage the assimilation of Native peoples into European‐American society, and to serve as advocates for individual tribes. Although Indian Agents no longer exist in an official capacity in the United States, the potentially contradictory expectations that informed their work continue to influence communities across the country. Instead of decolonizing education, today's curricular agents typically misrepresent the historical and future agency of Native peoples while reinforcing the patronizing, normative, dominant‐culture narrative. This article outlines the critical discourse analysis of five widely adopted U.S. history textbooks, as situated within the broader scope of textbook research and emerging educational movements. Findings show that textbook authors and other curricular agents use strategies of exclusion and passivation to control the historical and curricular agency of Indigenous peoples. Given the influence of educational reform efforts such as those related to the Common Core Standards, now is the critical time to retheorize curriculum design and inquiry as dialogic, dynamic, transformational, and agentive processes. The project's conclusions demonstrate the need to confront the biases of curricular agents in order to guide the decolonization of curriculum materials.

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Due to the influence of digital media, today’s educators encounter unique challenges—and possibilities—surrounding efforts to advance civic dialogue and critical literacy.  This case study, which focuses on two projects with rural Indigenous communities, describes student-led research and filmmaking as teaching pedagogy and research methodology within formal and informal educational spaces.  Findings demonstrate the potential for Indigenous counter-narratives to support place conscious and culturally revitalizing media education; increased learner motivation through student-centered pedagogy, anti-colonial education and civic engagement; and expanded intercultural dialogue and intergenerational understanding.  The study offers implications for educators, researchers, and community partners.