Toward New Beginnings: A Review of Native, White, and Black American Education Through the 19th Century

Abstract

Histories of 19th-century U.S. education center White experiences, while formal education policy and practice pertaining to Black and Native Americans are treated as marginal phenomena that had little impact on schooling at a national level. Furthermore, current historical framings overwhelmingly analyze Native, White, and Black American education as separate entities, which conceals the political economic character of race as a relational phenomenon. To explore connections between race, school, and nation building, this review presents a relational analysis of scholarship on Native, White, and Black American education through the 19th century. In doing so, it outlines how formal U.S. education expressed, created, and adjusted racial hierarchies through the 19th century; and more importantly, it highlights how America’s education system developed in a context where Native, White, and Black American experiences were deeply interrelated. The review ends by identifying paths for new research on the racial dimensions of U.S. education during its foundational years and beyond.

Engaging a Kanaka ʻŌiwi Literature Review Methodology Through Research on Native Hawaiian Culture-Based Education

“…This conclusion is corroborated in Stender's (2010) study, which positioned Ea as expressions of culturally-engaged Kanaka ʻŌiwi students that exist in the hearts and souls of our youth (R. H. Stender, personal communication, February 26, 2021). I argue that Kanaʻiaupuni and colleagues' ( 2021) operationalization of self-determination as a meaningful element for the construction of a globallyoriented, critically-conscious Kanaka ʻŌiwi student identity helps us to realize the importance of searching for historical connections across groups in order to contextualize contemporary sociocultural and sociopolitical phenomena (Givens & Ison, 2022). Although the three works in this theme do not discuss pathways to Indigeneity through their operationalization of self-determination and Ea, I believe Kanaʻiaupuni and colleagues' (2021) exploration of Hawaiian educational wellbeing through a global Indigenous lens softens the terrain for future scholarship on the connections between Native Hawaiian CBE and Indigeneity.…”

“…What, then, does it take to internalize self-determination, sovereignty, and Ea, and to self-identify as Indigenous and a member of a global Indigenous community in order to engage in decolonial pathways to praxis? For Kanaka ʻŌiwi, this internalization necessitates a capacity for relationality, a realization that our educational and social experiences under the settler colonial state have not—and do not—develop in isolation from the experiences of Native students and other Students of Color; they are “interrelated, politically and economically” (Givens & Ison, 2022, p. 2). Consequently, a future in which decolonial pathways to praxis are normalized sociocultural outcomes of Native Hawaiian CBE requires institutions to honor both the symbiotic relationship between Kanaka ʻŌiwi and ʻāina and the shared experiences between Native Hawaiians and other members of the global Indigenous community.…”