“We Need to Make Action NOW, to Help Keep the Language Alive”: Navigating Tensions of Engaging Indigenous Educational Values in University Education

Abstract

Despite centuries of contact and conquest, Indigenous communities persist in maintaining their cultures and psychologies. Key to this success in cultural survival is the maintenance of Indigenous languages, which contain distinct worldviews. However, Indigenous languages are at risk, with fewer and fewer fluent Elder speakers. Fortunately, there remain committed groups of community educators who carry out Indigenous language education. Current mainstream teacher education programs do not typically introduce the importance of Indigenous language education to teacher candidates, who are the next generation of K‐12 teachers. We view this as highly problematic, and thus carried out a proof‐of‐concept project in which one U.S. university's American Indian/Alaska Native teacher candidates collaborated with, and learned from, Indigenous language educators during a two‐week‐long summer institute at the university. In our article, we share three main findings, based on qualitative analyses of daily‐written student journals collected during the two‐week pilot project: (a) Indigenous language education supports the social justice vision in the American Psychological Association's Multicultural Guidelines; (b) intergenerational educational opportunities are invaluable for affirming Indigenous psychologies; and (c) Indigenous community language educators do important survivance work. Our findings provide insight into how Indigenous language education is crucial for advancing education that honors Indigenous community psychological well‐being.

Working Together to Advance Indigenous Interests with Community Psychology

“…Integral to supporting self‐determined representations of Indigenous experiences and community life in knowledge production and dissemination processes is engagement with Indigenous languages. Jacob and colleagues () underscored the essential value of Indigenous languages to preserving Indigenous knowledge and ways of living. While one article detailed an Indigenous language education pilot program for K‐12 teachers‐in‐training to highlight language learning as a key pathway toward community wellness (Jacob et al., ), contributions to this special issue frequently engaged Indigenous languages as integral to knowledge production or dissemination.…”

“…Jacob and colleagues () underscored the essential value of Indigenous languages to preserving Indigenous knowledge and ways of living. While one article detailed an Indigenous language education pilot program for K‐12 teachers‐in‐training to highlight language learning as a key pathway toward community wellness (Jacob et al., ), contributions to this special issue frequently engaged Indigenous languages as integral to knowledge production or dissemination. Indigenous language terms and phrases were often used in defining problems and solutions for community wellness (e.g., Cwik et al., ; Rasmus, Charles, et al., ), and on two occasions, analysis of language practices (e.g., storytelling) enabled researchers to illuminate less readily apparent dimensions of community life (e.g., Gone, ; Quayle & Sonn, ).…”

Community Psychology and Indigenous Peoples

“…() show how community‐academic partnerships can support Indigenous nation building, that is, increase capacity for community self‐determination, Jacob et al. () directly discuss the topic of nation building and Indigenous survivance. In “We Need to Make Action NOW, to Help Keep the Language Alive”: Navigating Tensions of Engaging Indigenous Educational Values in University Education,” they describe the important role that teachers play in Indigenous cultural survivance, and then present a pilot study of a exposing Indigenous teachers in training to Native language education.…”

“…We find papers such as Gone (), Jacob et al. (), Fraser, Hunter, Lemay, and Splicer (), and Schmidt () taking on this challenge.…”

“…It is this more complex understanding of “communities” that we find revealed through the papers in this special issue. For example, numerous authors in this special issue describe processes surrounding community self‐determination, capacity development, and national building, yet each unique project and community‐academic relationship is highly different, with examples ranging from food and habitat restoration (Chung‐Do et al., ) and suicide prevention (Rasmus, Charles, John, & Allen, ) to language education for teachers (Jacob, Sabzalian, RunningHawk Johnson, Jansen, & Skawennio Morse, ) and art as an evaluation strategy (Straits, deMaría, & Tafoya, ). Gone's () analysis emphasizes the ways in which community psychology can support pluralism, embracing and advancing diversity of Indigenous communities and psychologies.…”