Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Youth: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

This article reviews the literature on culturally responsive schooling (CRS) for Indigenous youth with an eye toward how we might provide more equitable and culturally responsive education within the current context of standardization and accountability. Although CRS for Indigenous youth has been advocated for over the past 40 years, schools and classrooms are failing to meet the needs of Indigenous students. The authors suggest that although the plethora of writing on CRS reviewed here is insightful, it has had little impact on what teachers do because it is too easily reduced to essentializations, meaningless generalizations, or trivial anecdotes—none of which result in systemic, institutional, or lasting changes to schools serving Indigenous youth. The authors argue for a more central and explicit focus on sovereignty and self-determination, racism, and Indigenous epistemologies in future work on CRS for Indigenous youth.

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Review of Educational
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The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.3102/0034654308323036
2008 78: 941REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
Angelina E Castagno and Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy
Literature
Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Youth: A Review of the
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941
Review of Educational Research
December 2008, Vol. 78, No. 4, pp. 941–993
DOI: 10.3102/0034654308323036
© 2008 AERA. http://rer.aera.net
Culturally Responsive Schooling for
Indigenous Youth:
A Review of the Literature
Angelina E. Castagno
Northern Arizona University
Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy
Arizona State University
This article reviews the literature on culturally responsive schooling (CRS)
for Indigenous youth with an eye toward how we might provide more equi-
table and culturally responsive education within the current context of stan-
dardization and accountability. Although CRS for Indigenous youth has been
advocated for over the past 40 years, schools and classrooms are failing to
meet the needs of Indigenous students. The authors suggest that although the
plethora of writing on CRS reviewed here is insightful, it has had little impact
on what teachers do because it is too easily reduced to essentializations,
meaningless generalizations, or trivial anecdotes—none of which result in
systemic, institutional, or lasting changes to schools serving Indigenous
youth. The authors argue for a more central and explicit focus on sovereignty
and self-determination, racism, and Indigenous epistemologies in future work
on CRS for Indigenous youth.
KEYWORDS: Indian education, Indigenous peoples, multicultural education.
Culturally responsive schooling (CRS) for Indigenous
1
youth has been widely
viewed as a promising strategy for improving the education and increasing the aca-
demic achievement of American Indian and Alaska Native
2
(AI/AN) students in
U.S. schools. CRS is advocated for not only by a number of scholars but by many
tribal communities and Indigenous educational leaders as well (Beaulieu, 2006b;
Beaulieu, Sparks, & Alonzo, 2005; Demmert, Grissmer, & Towner, 2006;
Demmert, McCardle, Mele-McCarthy, & Leos, 2006; Dick, Estell, & McCarty,
1994; Klump & McNeir, 2005). Coming largely out of the cultural difference lit-
erature, CRS assumes that a
firm grounding in the heritage language and culture indigenous to a particu-
lar tribe is a fundamental prerequisite for the development of culturally-
healthy students and communities associated with that place, and thus is an
essential ingredient for identifying the appropriate qualities and practices
associated with culturally-responsive educators, curriculum, and schools.
(Alaska Native Knowledge Network, 1998)
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Castagno & Brayboy
942
This educational approach requires a shift in teaching methods, curricular materi-
als, teacher dispositions, and school–community relations.
The growing diversity of students in schools paired with the continued homo-
geneity of teachers makes the call for CRS more important than ever:
There are approximately 624,000 AI/AN students enrolled in elemen-
tary and secondary schools in the United States; they account for 1%
of the total public school enrollment (Freeman & Fox, 2005).
Approximately 92% attend public schools while 7% attend schools
operated or funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. (Tippeconnic &
Faircloth, 2006, p. 1)
When the academic performance of Indigenous students is compared to that of
other groups of students, disparities are evident. For example, AI/AN students are
more than twice as likely as their White peers to score at the lowest level on the
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessments and
almost 3 times as likely to score at the lowest level on the NAEP assessments for
mathematics (Freeman & Fox, 2005). On the other hand, White students are 3 to
5 times more likely than their AI/AN peers to score at the highest levels on both
the NAEP reading and mathematics assessments (Freeman & Fox, 2005). Similar
disparities are found on almost every measure of academic success (i.e., from stan-
dardized test scores to graduation rates to discipline referrals to postsecondary
completion to presence in special education and gifted and talented programs).
Schools are clearly not meeting the needs of Indigenous students and change is
needed if we hope to see greater parity in these (and other) measures of academic
achievement. CRS is central to discussions about improving the education of
Indigenous youth.
The primary purpose of this article is to review the literature on CRS for
Indigenous youth in the United States. There is a significant amount of research
and writing on this topic and on the topic of multicultural education, broadly speak-
ing. The abundance of this work makes it difficult for most educators to access and
make sense of this topic. We hope to provide a comprehensive, yet readable,
overview of this work to prompt discussion and changes in practice among educa-
tors working with Indigenous students. Change is clearly needed. Although CRS
has been advocated for over at least the past 40 years, we still see schools and class-
rooms that are failing to meet the needs of Indigenous students. The increased
emphasis on standardization and high-stakes accountability under the No Child
Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) seems to have resulted in less, rather than more,
culturally responsive educational efforts and more, rather than no, Indigenous chil-
dren left behind in our school systems. We want to suggest that although the
plethora of writing on CRS that we review here is insightful, it has had little impact
on what teachers do because it is too easily reduced to essentializations, meaning-
less generalizations, or trivial anecdotes—none of which result in systemic, insti-
tutional, or lasting changes to schools serving Indigenous youth. We hope, then,
that this review will initiate and contribute to discussions about how we might pro-
vide more effective teacher preparation that both avoids these common pitfalls and
helps educators negotiate the context of NCLB in ways that result in more equi-
table and culturally responsive education for Indigenous youth throughout the
country.
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To gather scholarship for this article, the Education Resources Information
Center database was searched for references between the years 1980 and 2007. The
following search terms were used: instructional strategies, culturally relevant
teaching/pedagogy/education, culturally congruent teaching/pedagogy/education,
and culturally responsive teaching/pedagogy/education. And all of these were
paired with Native American, American Indian, and Indigenous. The Journal of
American Indian Education was also searched for the same date range using the
same search terms, as were an online book catalog, Amazon.com, and Google.
3
All
results were compiled with abstracts where available. After compiling the numer-
ous articles, books, and Web sites, we read and typed notes on each of them. We
then coded these notes according to themes derived directly from the notes.
In what follows, we first provide an historical overview of efforts to articu-
late CRS for Indigenous youth. Second, we discuss a number of definitions
offered in the literature for CRS, including both what is and what is not included
in most definitions. Third, we review the most common reasons given for edu-
cators to engage in CRS for Indigenous youth. Fourth, we provide an overview
of the two most frequently discussed topics related to CRS for Indigenous youth:
pedagogy and curriculum. Fifth, we discuss teacher characteristics that are nec-
essary for engaging in CRS. Sixth, we discuss school- and district-level issues
related to CRS. And finally, we share some case studies and examples of suc-
cessful attempts at CRS for Indigenous youth. Throughout each of these sections,
emphasis is on synthesizing and pulling out patterns from the large body of
scholarship on CRS. Our guiding thesis throughout this discussion is that truly
culturally responsive learning for Indigenous youth is a highly complex endeavor
that requires systemic change within and across a number of levels in our school-
ing system. We offer seven areas of analysis in an effort to highlight these com-
plexities and nuances. We will suggest that more explicit and sustained attention
must be paid to tribal sovereignty and self-determination, the racism experienced
by Indigenous youth, and Indigenous epistemologies if educators and scholars
hope to move away from the essentializations, generalizations, and easy anec-
dotes that seem to derive from much of the literature and instead move toward
engaging in genuinely culturally responsive learning for Indigenous youth.
Before proceeding, we should explain our use of two important terms: culture
and Indigenous. We fully recognize that the prevailing construct of culture is an
anthropological invention created by Western science (Smith, 1999; Wagner,
1981), however we also understand that culture is often used to talk about a wide
range of things, beliefs, and behaviors. In a recent discussion in American
Anthropologist, several anthropologists and a legal scholar debated the concept of
culture (Borofsky, Barth, Shweder, Rodseth, & Stoltzenberg, 2001). We do not
intend to repeat the arguments here, but we do want to argue that culture is many
things to many people. Following Brayboy (2005), we use the idea of culture as a
concept that is simultaneously fluid and dynamic, and—at times—fixed and sta-
ble. Like an anchor in the ocean, it is rooted to some place—for many Indigenous
peoples, the seafloor is the lands on which they live and their ancestors lived and
roamed before them. The anchor shifts and sways, like culture, with the changing
tides, ebbs, and flows of the ocean or the life, contexts, and situations for
Indigenous peoples.
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The three overarching themes presented by Borofsky et al. (2001) are informa-
tive because they illustrate the complexity of the concept of culture. In one sense,
culture is “beliefs, behaviors, and/or artifacts [that] are portrayed as developing
through time, often toward some progressive end” (p. 433). This definition
addresses the dynamic and settled nature of culture by addressing beliefs and
behaviors, but it also offers room for movement and growth. Deloria (1970) has
argued that those practices (or a form of culture) growing from Indigenous tradi-
tions must change, adapt, and adjust because little can be expected in terms of
change from the “power brokers” in society. These abilities to change and adapt
are, at times, in tension with the second and third concepts of culture outlined by
Borofsky et al. (2001): “Culture is often portrayed as the beliefs and/or behaviors
people retain despite interaction with the ‘West’” (p. 433). This form of culture is
rooted in resistance. The third form “is still more political”; it focuses on “a peo-
ple’s shared beliefs and behaviors that distinguish them from others and, at the
same time, offer them a sense of shared meaning” (p. 433). For Indigenous peo-
ples, then, the second form may be links to traditions and/or ontologies (ways of
being in the world) that set tribal peoples apart and separate them from members
of the larger population in the United States. These ontologies directly relate to the
concept of nation building inherent in the third concept of culture. Returning to the
analogy of the anchor, these forms of culture are rooted in something that is solid
and mostly unchanging. When the changes do occur, the anchor shifts but eventu-
ally settles and becomes rooted to another (mostly) stable form. These forms of
culture may be manifested in the meanings associated with ceremonies or tradi-
tions that have been carried out for thousands of years and that define—at least in
part—the nature of a people. Taken together, these three forms of culture offer a
range of possibilities for our discussion. Most important, we believe it is important
to agree on the fact that there are components of belief systems and behaviors that
have remained stable but that Indigenous peoples have adapted and adjusted
throughout time, both for survival and because they are, like all humans, groups of
peoples who create and transmit culture.
Throughout this article, we will use American Indian and Alaska Native inter-
changeably with Native and Indigenous to reference groups of people who claim the
earliest connection to land bases in the United States. Indigenous peoples are those
who have inhabited lands before colonization or annexation; have maintained dis-
tinct, nuanced cultural and social organizing principles; and claim a nationhood sta-
tus. Indigenous peoples are both self-identified and are recognized by members of
their community.
4
Importantly, the recently approved Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples provides an internationally recognized statement on the rights of
Indigenous peoples throughout the world to maintain their cultures and languages.
5
Historical Overview of the Push for CRS for Indigenous Youth
It will be helpful for readers to have an historical perspective of the interest in
and push for CRS among Indigenous youth. CRS is certainly not a new phenome-
non or a passing fad; instead, it has been central to tribal nations’ calls for improved
schooling since at least the early part of the 20th century.
Perhaps the first officially recognized call for CRS came in 1928 with the pub-
lication of the Meriam Report (Meriam et al., 1928; Prucha, 2000). Although the
Meriam Report criticized a number of areas of governmental policy with respect
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to tribal nations, the report noted Indigenous education as one of the most deficient
areas with the most negative consequences for tribal communities. The Meriam
Report called for more Indigenous teachers, early childhood programs, and the
incorporation of tribal languages and cultures in schools. The report was “a fore-
runner in the idea that incorporating culturally-based education was a necessary
component of a school’s culture if Native American students were to succeed aca-
demically as students and play a meaningful role as citizens” (Demmert & Towner,
2003, p. 2). Although the Meriam Report was a clear call for change, little change
occurred until more than 30 years later.
In the 1960s and 1970s, tribal nations and urban Indian communities increased
pressure on the federal government to facilitate educational change and greater tribal
control over the education of Indigenous youth. These efforts led to a number of
important pieces of legislation and federal investigations related to Indigenous edu-
cation and, specifically, the role of tribal languages and cultures in schools serving
Indigenous youth. In 1969, the U.S. Senate issued a report titled Indian Education:
A National Tragedy—A National Challenge, which was the beginning of a series
of important events (Special Subcommittee on Indian Education, 1969). The
Havighurst Report of 1970 offered data on the academic performance of Indigenous
youth and the lack of curriculum that supported tribal languages and cultures in
schools (Fuchs & Havighurst, 1973; Havighurst, 1970), the Indian Education Act of
1972 included opportunities and funding for creating tribal culture and language pro-
grams for schools and support for increasing the number of Native educators, and the
Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 facilitated the
development of schools and educational programs that were tribally controlled
(Demmert & Towner, 2003).
In the 1980s, the educational anthropology literature exploded with a focus on
CRS (called by a number of names; see, e.g., Brown, 1980; Deyhle, 1986;
Greenbaum & Greenbaum, 1983; McLaughlin, 1989). This scholarship, combined
with related work in the fields of education and multicultural education, seemed to
bring the discussion of CRS into the mainstream. Furthermore, the rapidly increas-
ing racial and ethnic diversity among youth in U.S. schools in the 1980s and 1990s
also resulted in an increased interest in CRS among a wide array of educators.
Scholarship from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, psychology, applied lin-
guistics, and sociology added to the growing body of knowledge about the challenges
minoritized students were facing in schools. As Pewewardy and Hammer (2003)
note, “much was learned about student motivation, power relations, and resistance
. . .; language and cognition . . .; culture and cognition . . .; and motivation and learn-
ing styles . . ., to mention only a small sample of this body of work” (p. 1).
In the 1990s, another series of federal legislation and reports were issued relat-
ing specifically to Indigenous youth in schools. The Native American Languages
Act of 1990/1992 formalized the importance of the federal government’s role in pre-
serving, protecting, and promoting the rights and freedoms of tribal language use
and preservation. In 1991, the U.S. Department of Education issued a report titled
Indian Nations at Risk: An Educational Strategy for Action Final Report (Indian
Nations at Risk Task Force, 1991), and in 1992, the White House Conference on
Indian Education and a follow-up report were completed (White House Conference
on Indian Education, 1992). In 1998, President Clinton issued Executive Order
13096 on AI/AN education, which included recognition of the “special, historic
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responsibility for the education of American Indian and Alaska Native students,” a
commitment to “improving the academic performance and reducing the dropout
rate” of Indigenous students, and a nationwide effort among tribal leaders and
Indian education scholars to develop a “research agenda” guided by the goals of
self-determination and the preservation of tribal cultures and languages (“American
Indian and Alaska Native Education,” 1998). This 1998 Executive Order includes
the goals of evaluating “promising practices used with” Indigenous students, eval-
uating “the role of native language and culture in the development of educational
strategies,” and assisting “tribal governments in meeting the unique educational
needs of their children, including the need to preserve, revitalize, and use native lan-
guages and cultural traditions.” However, a new Executive Order (13336) signed
into law on April 30, 2004, did not include the final of these three goals (American
Indian and Alaska Native Education, 2004); instead, this new Executive Order
focuses attention on Indigenous students meeting the goals established in NCLB.
This is a significant change and highlights our concern—and that of many
Indigenous communities—that schools are moving further away from providing an
effective, high-quality, and culturally responsive education to Indigenous youth. We
agree with Inupiaq scholar Leona Okakok’s (1989) insightful commentary. She
writes, “To me, educating a child means equipping him or her with the capability to
succeed in the world he or she will live in” (p. 253). She continues by making a pow-
erful (and political) statement that “education is more than book learning, it is also
value-learning” (p. 254). Indeed, to equip a child with the capability to exist in the
world requires value judgments about what that child needs to succeed. The values,
ideas, and priorities embedded in NCLB are not necessarily shared within tribal
nations and Indigenous communities.
Definitions of CRS
The literature on CRS for Indigenous youth is a substantial and still growing
body of scholarship. It also comes out of other, even broader, bodies of literature
on multicultural education, cultural difference, and improving the academic
achievement of youth who are not members of the dominant cultural group in the
United States. The general message out of this larger boby of scholarship is that
students of color and students from low-income backgrounds consistently and per-
sistently perform lower than their peers according to traditional measures of school
achievement because their home culture is at odds with the culture and expecta-
tions of schools. This mismatch in cultures results in the perennial “achievement
gaps,” and in response to these gaps, educators have theorized that schooling must
be designed and practiced in ways that more closely match the cultures students
bring with them from home. Importantly, this scholarship is not specific to
Indigenous youth but rather argues that CRS can lead to improved learning and
achievement among all minoritized youth. It is also important to keep in mind that
this literature is somewhat inconsistent with respect to the name given to these cul-
turally based educational practices; some of the most commonly used names are
culturally responsive, culturally relevant, culture-based, and multicultural educa-
tion. Various scholars also focus their attention on different aspects of education;
some speak only of curriculum, others only of pedagogy, and still others of the
entire schooling process (including, for example, disciplinary policies, classroom
management, building design, etc.). For the purposes of this article, we will use the
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phrase culturally responsive and schooling rather than education. Culturally
responsive seems to be the most commonly used name in the literature on
Indigenous youth, and we are specifically discussing the schooling of AI/AN stu-
dents rather than the other places, ways, and means through which these youth are
educated. Furthermore, “the dynamic nature of the word ‘responsiveness’ suggests
the ability to acknowledge the unique needs of diverse students, take action to
address those needs, and adapt approaches as student needs and demographics
change over time” (Klump & McNeir, 2005, p. 4).
Before reviewing the literature that focuses on specific aspects of CRS for
Indigenous youth, we want to provide a general overview of some of the defini-
tions offered by various scholars for CRS. We are focusing here, and in the remain-
der of this article, on the scholarship that speaks directly to the education of
Indigenous youth. One of the most general but direct explanations is that CRS is
that which “makes sense” to students who are not members of, or assimilated into,
the dominant social group (Klug & Whitfield, 2003, p. 151). In a similar vein, CRS
has also been described as that which “builds a bridge” between a child’s home
culture and the school to effect improved learning and school achievement
(Pewewardy & Hammer, 2003, p. 1). And related but still more specific, Klump
and McNeir (2005) draw on the multicultural education literature to note that
culturally responsive education recognizes, respects, and uses students’ iden-
tities and backgrounds as meaningful sources for creating optimal learning
environments. Being culturally responsive is more than being respectful,
empathetic, or sensitive. Accompanying actions, such as having high expec-
tations for students and ensuring that these expectations are realized, are what
make a difference (Gay, 2000). (p. 3)
The ability of educators to engage in CRS requires that they have a certain degree
of cultural competence themselves. Becoming a culturally competent educator is
a constant learning process that requires flexibility and adaptability on the part of
the educator depending on the particular students and contexts with which they are
working. Diller and Moule (2005) define cultural competence as “mastering com-
plex awarenesses and sensitivities, various bodies of knowledge, and a set of skills
that taken together, underlie effective cross cultural teaching” (p. 5). The aware-
ness, knowledge, and skills required are not often the focus of typical teacher edu-
cation programs, nor have most of the White, middle-class women who become
teachers in the United States grown up with this background. Thus, becoming a
culturally competent educator requires additional time and energy devoted to this
important goal. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, including teachers
exploring the communities in which their students live, participating in commu-
nity events, and collaborating with community members on projects both within
and outside of the school (McCarty & Watahomigie, 2004). In what follows, we
will briefly review some of the definitions offered for culturally responsive cur-
riculum, teaching, and schooling.
Belgarde, Mitchell, and Arquero (2002) define culturally responsive curriculum
as that which “generally validates the cultures and languages of students and allows
them to become co-constructors of knowledge in the school setting” (p. 43). They go
on to explain that teachers must “infuse the curriculum with rich connections to stu-
dents’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds within family and community contexts”
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(p. 43). Klug and Whitfield (2003) rely on Ismat’s definition of culturally responsive
curriculum; they note:
Ismat (1994) characterizes culturally responsive curriculum as that which (a)
capitalizes on students’ cultural backgrounds rather than attempting to override
or negate them; (b) is good for all students; (c) is integrated and interdisciplinary;
(d) is authentic and child centered, connected to children’s real lives; (e) devel-
ops critical thinking skills; (f) incorporates cooperative learning and whole lan-
guage strategies; (g) is supported by staff development and preservice
preparation; and (h) is part of a coordinated, building-wide strategy. (p. 151)
Because the curriculum offered to students is only one aspect of the schooling
process, other scholars have focused their energy specifically on the pedagogy and
teacher qualities needed for culturally responsive teaching. Pewewardy and
Hammer (2003), drawing on the work of Phuntsog (1998), offer a comprehensive
summary of this literature; the most important qualities they identify are
(1) cultural literacy . . .; (2) self-reflective analysis of one’s attitudes and beliefs
. . .; (3) caring, trusting, and inclusive classrooms . . .; (4) respect for diversity
. . .; (5) transformative curriculum to engender meaning. . . . Each of these ele-
ments has appeared in discussions of effective practice in American Indian and
Alaska Native education and each is based on the central and critical role of the
teacher in creating a classroom that respects diversity and ensures the self-worth
of all children. (p. 1)
And finally, although curriculum and teaching are two central aspects of school-
ing, they do not make up the totality of the schooling process. Earlier reviews of
the literature on CRS have offered helpful and comprehensive summative defini-
tions of CRS. These earlier reviews highlight the idea that CRS entails a number
of important elements that relate to curriculum, pedagogy, school policy, student
expectations, standards, assessment, teacher knowledge, community involvement,
and many more. In the remainder of this article, we will discuss each of these ele-
ments by drawing on the literature that specifically addresses CRS for Indigenous
youth. First, however, we want to discuss three topics that are rarely included in
discussions of CRS: sovereignty, racism, and epistemologies. We argue that these
three elements represent a critical hole in most of the current work on CRS and that
they are necessary for the successful implementation of CRS for Indigenous youth.
Sovereignty and Self-Determination
One of the most important factors that the brief history of the push for CRS
brings to our attention is the central place of sovereignty and self-determination for
tribal nations and Indigenous peoples. The unique status of tribal nations as polit-
ical entities within the United States means that issues of Indigenous education
must be understood, researched, analyzed, and developed in ways that take into
account the sovereign status and self-determination goals of Indigenous commu-
nities (Brayboy, 2005). Unfortunately, however, the overwhelming majority of
scholarship on CRS for Indigenous youth is silent on this important issue. Very
few authors even mention sovereignty or self-determination let alone connect these
concepts to their analyses of CRS.
Although it is far beyond the scope of this article to detail the historical, legal,
and ethical foundations of tribal sovereignty and self-determination, a few points
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are worth highlighting. Hundreds of treaties and thousands of constitutional rul-
ings, executive orders, and legislative acts have acknowledged and reaffirmed the
sovereign status of tribal nations, the unique government-to-government relation-
ship between tribal nations and the federal government, and the trust responsibil-
ity of the United States to tribal nations (Wilkins, 1997, 2002; Wilkins &
Lomawaima, 2001). The ramifications on education for Indigenous youth are both
wide and deep in scope, but they include—at a minimum—that tribal nations have
inherent rights to determine the nature of schooling provided to their youth. This
right is more threatened than ever given the current conditions under NCLB, high-
stakes accountability, and standardization (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006), which
is precisely why clear understandings of sovereignty and self-determination must
become central to any future discussions of CRS for Indigenous youth.
In 1991, Kirkness and Barnhardt noted that Indigenous communities desired an
education that would bring them “not just empowerment as individuals but
empowerment as bands, as tribes, as nations, and as people” (p. 3). Deloria and
Wildcat (2001) also note the important connection between self-determination and
education, and even more recently, in interviews with tribal leaders across the
United States, Beaulieu et al. (2005) noted that sovereignty was one of the central
themes identified by interviewees:
Witnesses identified education as a fundamental aspect of tribal sovereignty.
The devolution of the trust relationship of the federal government to tribal
government is a growing concern, given the growing presence of State gov-
ernments in the education of Native students in tribal jurisdictions, as well as
state involvement in determining the context for BIA funded education
including both Tribal and federal operated schools. The need for tribal con-
sultation involving NCLB and the shifting intergovernmental, tribal, federal,
and state relationships in Native education was strongly identified. It is noted
that States are increasingly controlling the education contexts through stan-
dards accreditation and teacher certification which is now aligned with direct
Federal management of provisions of NCLB affecting Indian education in
State public schools and tribal education while the tribal voice appears to be
unnoticed. (p. 19)
The message is clear: Although tribal communities have a strong sense of the
connections between education, sovereignty, and self-determination, these connec-
tions are rarely recognized among mainstream educators or educational policy mak-
ers. An important exception resides in the Coolongatta Statement on Indigenous
Rights in Education, which is an international effort among Indigenous peoples
from a number of countries to reassert their identities as tribal nations and the sta-
tus of education as a human right (http://www.wipcehawaii.org; King, 2005). But
among scholars of Indigenous education, the connections between CRS and sover-
eignty and self-determination are rarely explicit. In fact, Brayboy’s (2003) point
about the “failure to explicate the unique political status of American Indian tribes”
(p. 2) in the recent book on CRS for Indigenous youth by Klug and Whitfield (2003)
can be extended to virtually all of the books and articles we reviewed. The one
exception may be an edited book by Swisher and Tippeconnic (1999), but although
the editors note that the chapter authors “support the concept of tribal self-determi-
nation in education” (p. 295), we found this support more implicit than explicit. This
failure among so many scholars writing about CRS for Indigenous youth represents
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a critical area for new work—and an area that educators must become more famil-
iar with and knowledgeable about.
Racism in Schools
Another important area that was rarely acknowledged in the literature reviewed
for this article is the racism present in schools and endured by Indigenous youth
across the country. A few scholars note the important role racism has played and
continues to play in the academic achievement of Indigenous students, but as with
sovereignty and self-determination, the concept of racism was rarely integrated
with analyses of CRS. Cleary and Peacock (1998) note this absence as well: “No
existing book and few articles on teaching American Indian students have
addressed the complex and troubling issues that characterize contemporary
American Indian education within the context of racism and oppression” (p. 61).
This absence is curious because “effective [teaching] strategies are easily
thwarted by potent sociocultural forces endemic to American life, including
forces of ethnocentrism and racism” (Garcia & Ahler, 1992, p. 25). We do not
mean to suggest that no scholarship exists on the racism faced by Indigenous
youth in schools; rather, we are arguing that the scholarship on CRS rarely
includes discussions of racism and how racism might relate to the need for and
the effectiveness of culturally responsive educational practices.
We know that racism is a pervasive and consistent element in the schooling
experiences of Indigenous youth. Students experience racism in a number of ways
and from a variety of sources, including paternalism, prejudice, harmful assump-
tions, low expectations, stereotypes, violence, and biased curricular materials (see,
e.g., Deyhle, 1995; Hickling-Hudson & Ahlquist, 2003; Sparks, 2000; Ward,
1998). Another common form of racial oppression against Indigenous youth in
schools is the use of euphemisms (Hilliard, 1978). Through euphemisms, issues of
concern are presented in ways that do not make the majority or dominant social
group uncomfortable. As Grant and Gillespie (1993) note,
in the case of schooling, the problem would be the lack of success of Native
students in the present school system. Native students are portrayed as hav-
ing too many problems, thereby freeing educators from acknowledging that
they and the system are the real problem. (p. 28)
These sorts of euphemisms are part of a larger culture of whiteness that pre-
dominates in most U.S. schools; this whiteness is manifest in the predominantly
White educational faculty, the social relations, the norms and expectations, and
the inequitable access to resources and quality education within our school sys-
tem (see, e.g., Castagno, 2006; Lee, 2005; Sleeter, 1996). These are just a few of
the reasons it is critical that educators attempting to engage in CRS understand
the dynamics of racism and the ways in which racism and oppression affect efforts
at providing a high-quality CRS to Indigenous youth. The Critical Race Theory
scholarship (see, e.g., Bernal, 2002; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Ladson-Billings
& Tate, 1995; Tate, 1997) offers a more broad discussion of the pervasiveness of
racism in society, and Brayboy’s (2005) work on Tribal Critical Race Theory
along with Grande’s (2004) Red Pedagogy sheds light on the various forms of col-
onization affecting Indigenous students (see also Castagno, 2005; Castagno &
Lee, 2007). As with the concepts of sovereignty and self-determination, racism,
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its manifestations, and its effects must be made a more explicit part of the
discussion among scholars researching and writing about CRS.
Indigenous Epistemologies
Indigenous epistemologies is another theme that is rarely discussed in the scholar-
ship on CRS. We suggest, however, that any discussion of CRS for Indigenous youth
must take into account issues of sovereignty and racism as well as the epistemologies
of Indigenous peoples and tribal communities. The task of succinctly defining what
we mean by Indigenous epistemologies here is daunting. Instead of offering a detailed
definition, we will offer some of the components that compose the notions of
Indigenous epistemologies. Battiste (2002) notes that “Indigenous knowledge com-
prises the complex set of technologies developed and sustained by Indigenous civi-
lizations” and that these knowledges are “passed on to the next generation through
modeling, practice, and animation” (p. 2). Other Indigenous scholars note that these
knowledges serve as threads, which, once woven together, make up the cultural cloth
of particular communities (Meyer, 2001). There are components of these knowledge
systems that include a central focus on communities (Battiste, 2002; Deloria, 1970),
a sense of relationality (Burkhardt, 2004; Marker, 2004; Meyer, 2001), notions of
responsibility to self and community (Basso, 1996; Burkhardt, 2004; Deloria, 1970;
Medicine & Jacobs, 2001), a rootedness in place (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2004, 2005;
Basso, 1996; Cajete, 2001; Marker, 2004; Okakok, 1989), and a responsible use of
power (Basso, 1996; Stoffle, Zedeno, & Halmo, 2001). Indeed,
the educational journey of modern Indian people is one spanning two distinct
value systems and worldviews. It is an adventure in which the Native
American sacred view must inevitably encounter the material and pragmatic
focus of the larger American society. (Deloria & Wildcat, 2001, p. v)
This is not to say that all Indigenous peoples ascribe to the same epistemology.
Battiste (2002) reminds us of this reality:
Within any Indigenous nation or community, people vary greatly in what they
know. There are not only differences between ordinary folks and experts,
such as experienced knowledge keepers, healers, hunters, or ceremonialists,
there are also major differences of experiences and professional opinion
among the knowledge holders and workers, as we should expect of any liv-
ing, dynamic knowledge system that is continually responding to new phe-
nomena and fresh insights. (p. 12)
We must be vigilant in our resistance to essentialize and generalize any group of
people, but we must also come to understand that multiple epistemologies exist and
are valid and that these epistemologies are intimately connected to schooling, edu-
cation, teaching, and learning. Furthermore, reclaiming Indigenous knowledges
and epistemologies is an important strategy toward the actualization of sovereignty
and self-determination among tribal nations (Wilson, 2004).
One of the most frequently noted differences between Indigenous epistemolo-
gies and dominant mainstream epistemologies is the holistic nature of the former.
Multiple scholars have explained the Indigenous worldview as placing emphasis
on the big picture and its meaning rather than the smaller parts that make up the
whole (Deloria & Wildcat, 2001; Rhodes, 1994; Swisher & Tippeconnic, 1999).
In a similar vein, other scholars have noted the relational worldview of many
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Indigenous peoples in which connections and interrelations between living beings
and the natural world are central to understanding and living in the world (Cleary
& Peacock, 1998; Klug & Whitfield, 2003).
Another aspect of epistemology concerns the nature of knowledge. Rhodes
(1994) explains that whereas the majority of Americans see knowledge as avail-
able for anyone to gain and use, many Navajo people see knowledge as more
restricted and subject to appropriate use. There are some things that are not meant
to be known or are only meant to be known by particular people. Furthermore, with
knowledge comes the burden of using it correctly and using it for the good of the
group rather than for individual gain. Understanding varying conceptions of
knowledge is central to understanding and practicing CRS for Indigenous youth.
As Deloria and Wildcat (2001) note,
as Indians we know some things because we have the cumulative testimony
of our people. We think we know other things because we are taught in school
that they are true. The proper transition in Indian education should be the cre-
ative tension that occurs when we compare and reconcile these two perspec-
tives. (p. 86)
They further explain that knowledge in mainstream educational settings is gener-
ally the memorization of facts and a narrow set of specialized concepts and rules.
This is manifested in the divisions schools draw between subject areas and the
strict categorization of our curriculum. Deloria and Wildcat (2001) explain that
within Indigenous epistemologies, knowledge of a unified and complex reality is
far more valuable. Battiste (2001) extends this when she cautions scholars to resist
the urge of seeing Indigenous knowledge systems in opposition to mainstream
ones. She notes:
Indigenous scholars discovered that Indigenous knowledge is far more than
the binary opposite of western knowledge. As a concept, Indigenous knowl-
edge benchmarks the limitations of Eurocentric theory—its methodology,
evidence, and conclusions—reconceptualizes the resilience and self-reliance
of Indigenous peoples, and underscores the importance of their own philoso-
phies, heritages, and educational processes. Indigenous knowledge fills the
ethical and knowledge gaps in Eurocentric education, research, and scholar-
ship. By animating the voices and experiences of the cognitive “other” and
integrating them into educational processes, it creates a new, balanced centre
and a fresh vantage point from which to analyze Eurocentric education and
its pedagogies. (p. 5)
This new vantage point can lead to a rethinking of the ways that epistemology
informs the CRS literature.
Some understanding of epistemological concerns is important for educators
hoping to engage in CRS for Indigenous youth because one’s epistemology is fun-
damental to how he or she sees the world, understands knowledge, and lives and
negotiates everyday experiences. We do not mean to suggest here that teachers
must give up their own epistemologies and adopt those of the community in which
they teach. Indeed, this may be neither possible nor appropriate in some cases.
Instead, educators must come to know that multiple epistemologies exist and that
their students may come to school with a very different worldview than they them-
selves have grown up with. Multiple epistemologies can and must coexist within
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school settings (Herr, 1995; Jacobs & Reyhner, 2002), and we would likely serve
Indigenous youth more effectively if we did a better job integrating multiple epis-
temologies within our pedagogy, curricula, and educational policies.
We want to reiterate that part of what we discovered in our review of the litera-
ture on CRS for Indigenous youth was the absence of the three concepts that seem to
us to be of utmost importance when considering the schooling of Indigenous youth:
self-determination and tribal sovereignty, racism, and Indigenous epistemologies.
Especially in the current context of standardization and accountability, these are crit-
ical areas for inquiry, research, analysis, and theorizing. Although our goal in what
follows is to synthesize the existing literature, we will also suggest ways that issues
related to self-determination and tribal sovereignty, racism, and Indigenous episte-
mologies might be integrated into the existing scholarship to advance an even
stronger and more nuanced understanding of CRS for Indigenous youth.
Reasons Offered for CRS
A number of reasons are cited in the scholarship as to why educators should
engage in CRS for Indigenous youth. These reasons are about, first, what students
come to school with and, second, what educators want students to leave school
with. CRS is seen by many scholars as necessary because Indigenous students
come to school with different learning styles and cultural practices that result in
incongruity between teaching and learning. The learning styles and cultural differ-
ences of Indigenous youth and tribal communities are perhaps the two most com-
mon themes addressed in the literature on CRS for Native students. It is important
to note, however, that these two emphases place the focus of the “problem” on
Indigenous peoples rather than on schools or educators. CRS is also viewed by
many scholars as necessary because its goal is to produce students who are bicul-
tural and thus knowledgeable about and competent in both mainstream and tribal
societies.
Learning Styles of Indigenous Youth
For many years now, various scholars have argued that Indigenous peoples pos-
sess particular learning styles that put them at a disadvantage in schools because
schools generally assume a very different learning style. Ross (1982, 1989) offers
a representative example of the oft-cited right-brain dominance perspective. He
argues that Indigenous peoples are right-brain dominant and that schooling for
these youth should, therefore, address right-brain functions, such as holistic per-
spectives, instinct, dance, music, spatial orientation, and feminine qualities. Even
more recently, Goin (1999) makes the same argument that “American Indians are
primarily right-brained” (p. 2) and that right-brained intelligences include spatial,
musical, interpersonal, and bodily kinesthetic. It is important to note that much of
the work on brain dominance, Ross’s included, is both racist and sexist in nature.
Scholars and educators must continue to be alert to assumptions and expectations
that construct Indigenous youth and communities in these ways.
Closely related to the brain dominance arguments are discussions of learning
styles. Although multiple definitions of learning styles exist in the literature, most
revolve around the notion that one’s learning style is their most commonly used
and most effective mental processes and instructional settings (More, 1989).
Because one’s learning style is the way in which they most easily and effectively
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learn, students who are taught in their preferred learning style are said to demon-
strate higher levels of school achievement (Gilliland, 1995). Scholarship on learn-
ing styles generally argues that youth from similar cultural backgrounds share a
common learning style. As Gilliland (1995) notes, “although there are great indi-
vidual differences, common patterns of thinking styles, learning styles, and inter-
ests characterize students who share a common cultural background” (p. 52). More
(1989) concurs and adds that learning styles are acquired through life experiences,
which explains how culture has an influence on them.
In his review of the Native American learning styles scholarship, More found five
dimensions of learning styles: global/analytic, verbal/imaginal, concrete/abstract,
TEF (trial, error, feedback)/reflective, and modality. Like other scholars, he suggests
that Indigenous youth generally fall on the opposite side of these dimensions than the
majority of students in public schools. Most scholars agree on a general set of learn-
ing style characteristics shared by Indigenous youth. Butterfield (1994) offers a rep-
resentative summary by noting that “many American Indian and Alaskan Native
students show strengths in visual, perceptual, or spatial information as opposed to
information presented verbally and frequently use mental images rather than word
associations” (p. 4).
In our review, the most commonly cited learning styles for Indigenous youth
included visual, hands-on, connecting to real-life, direct experience, participating
in real-world activities, global, seeing the overall picture before the details, cre-
ative, holistic, reflective, collaborative, circular, imaginal, concrete, simultaneous
processing, observation precedes performance, and naturalistic (Cleary & Peacock,
1998; Davidson, 1992; Gilliland, 1995; Goin, 1999; Hilberg & Tharp, 2002; More,
1989; Sparks, 2000; Swisher & Deyhle, 1989; Tharp & Yamauchi, 1994). This
scholarship supports Swisher and Deyhle’s (1989) conclusion that “American
Indian students come to learn about the world in ways that are different from main-
stream students” (p. 4). In their very recent review, Lomawaima and McCarty
(2006) found similarly cited categories as we did, but they caution against making
one-dimensional generalizations about Indigenous students:
The alleged attributes of Native students’ difference constitute a lexicon of
marvelous abundance (Lomawaima, 1995, 2003): Nez Perce kindergarten
students who possess “less developed” visual perception . . . and “severe lin-
guistic inadequacy” . . . are among the fundamentally “disadvantaged” chil-
dren from “cultures of poverty.” . . .Less loaded language classifies Indians
as silent learners . . .; observational or “private” learners . . .; cooperative
verses competitive . . .; visual learners . . .; field-dependent or field-
independent learners . . .; “right-brained” or “whole brained” learners . . .; and
“ecological,” “holistic,” or “spiritual” learners. . . . We do not want to dismiss
out of hand the literature cited above. Much of it is instructive, well-crafted
research. Just as importantly, we absolutely know that culturally rooted prac-
tices produce distinct orientations toward teaching and learning (McCarty,
Wallace, Lynch, & Benally, 1991). We must recognize the serious error,
however, of reducing our ideas of any learners to one-dimensional propor-
tions. (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006, p. 21)
Cleary and Peacock (1998) concur with Lomawaima and McCarty’s (2006)
caution about resisting the essentialism that often pervades the learning styles dis-
course, and they add that all students employ multiple learning styles at various
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times and in different contexts. Although some may conclude that Indigenous stu-
dents as a whole possess different learning styles than their White peers, we must
also recognize that there may be just as much variation within the group as there
is between groups. Furthermore, some scholarship suggests that pedagogical
strategies that were once argued to be effective for Indigenous learning styles are
actually effective in producing higher achievement levels in all students (Hilberg
& Tharp, 2002), and that all students perform better when teachers are able to mod-
ify curriculum and instruction to better meet their students’ needs (Klump &
McNeir, 2005). Cleary and Peacock (1998) pose an important question to consider
in the discussion of learning styles: “How much of what teachers say is learned
from workshops on American Indian learning styles (or multicultural education
workshops or courses), and how much is based on unbiased observation and expe-
rience?” (p. 152). Keller (2005) also provides insightful direction: “Native students
may be better served if we focus on ‘What teaching accommodations have proven
most effective in helping Native students succeed?’ rather than ‘How do Native
students learn?’” (p. 1).
Tribal Cultural Practices and Cultural Differences
The scholarship on CRS for Indigenous youth is replete with references to the cul-
tural differences between Indigenous youth and their peers. Some of the most com-
mon cultural practices that researchers highlight include differences in the way people
show they are paying attention and giving respect, the meaning of passive behavior,
the willingness of people to influence others, linguistic and social interactions, and the
meaning and use of silence (Basso, 1996; Cleary & Peacock, 1998; Kasten, 1992;
Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006; Philips, 1983; Plank, 1994; Powers, Potthoff,
Bearinger, & Resnick, 2003; Tharp & Yamauchi, 1994, 2000; Wax, Wax, & Dumont,
1969, 1989). The use and meaning of silence is an especially popular theme in the lit-
erature on Indigenous youth in school (Foley, 1996). Powers et al. (2003) note that
non-Native teachers may misperceive American Indian/Alaska Native stu-
dents to be uninterested in developing a relationship with them, or to be
overly shy, rude, or immature (Hornett, 1990; Kasten, 1992; Murdoch, 1988;
Plank, 1994). Any of these conclusions may impede the formation of inter-
personal relationships between school staff and Native students. (p. 19)
The stereotype of the silent Indian persists to this day, and many educators misin-
terpret silence by their Native students. Other scholars have noted that listening
and observing are highly valued skills in many Indigenous communities and that
students from these communities are likely to exhibit behavior at school that they
have been socialized into valuing even when the school may value very different
behaviors (Cleary & Peacock, 1998; Grant & Gillespie, 1993).
Another common cultural practice noted in the literature is the tendency to learn
by example in natural settings from one’s peers and other community members.
Scholars talk about how tribal communities view nature as an important teacher,
that education occurs by example, that skills are learned from siblings and peers,
that learning occurs through observation and participation in everyday activities,
that education is for the betterment of the group, that relationships and reciprocity
are highly valued, that individuals are taught to act competently or not at all, and
that Native peoples are more collaborative and less competitive (Cleary & Peacock,
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1998; Deloria & Wildcat, 2001; Demmert, 2001; Gilliland, 1995; Grant & Gillespie,
1993; Hilberg & Tharp, 2002; Jacobs & Reyhner, 2002; Swisher & Deyhle, 1989).
Each of these cultural practices may be different from the cultural norms of the dom-
inant culture, and each has implications for teaching and learning.
One of the reasons it is important for educators of Indigenous students to have
an awareness of cultural norms and practices in the communities where they teach
is that CRS requires that educators use culture to teach effectively. As one tribal
leader in Belgarde et al.’s (2002) study explained, “do not teach our children our
culture. Use our culture. Use our culture to teach them” (p. 42). And even more
recently, tribal leaders across the country expressed a “significant concern for the
diminishment of schools to provide effective and meaningful education for Native
students” (Beaulieu et al., 2005, p. 16). The connection between employing stu-
dents’ cultural background, effective teaching, and improved learning is highlighted
by many scholars. “A substantial number of studies have shown that when local
knowledge plays a dominant role in instruction (usually in combination with use of
the Native language), improvements are seen in various performance and attainment
measures” (Demmert, 2001, p. 19). Other scholars argue that educators must know
and understand culture to provide an effective education for Indigenous students
(Demmert & Towner, 2003; Gilliland, 1995; Klug & Whitfield, 2003; Reyhner,
1992c; Rhodes, 1994). Still others argue that using students’ culture in the class-
room results in more engagement and better classroom management (Gilliland,
1995; Rhodes, 1994; Taylor, Stevens, Peregoy, & Bath, 1991). And yet others focus
on the improved learning that occurs when educators use students’ cultural back-
grounds in the classroom (Demmert & Towner, 2003; Tharp & Yamauchi, 1994).
Some of the ways the literature advises educators to use culture to provide a
more effective education include using images of tribal life, projecting an unhur-
ried demeanor when interacting with Indigenous students, integrating oral and
written tribal histories and stories with the curriculum, teaching through observa-
tion, working from student strengths, and inviting elders and other communities
members to teach lessons (Deloria & Wildcat, 2001; Reyhner & Jacobs, 2002;
Rhodes, 1994; Sparks, 2000). Skinner (1999) notes a core set of shared values and
cultural norms that educators should draw directly on:
Amidst our cultural and linguistic diversities, we share guiding values that could
form the base of a tribal code of education or could become curricular content,
learned through interdisciplinary activities. These shared values include:
• generosity and cooperation
• independence and freedom
• respect for elders and wisdom
• connectedness and love
• courage and responsibility
• indirect communication and noninterference
• silence, reflection, and spirit. (Skinner, 1999, p. 17)
Importantly, employing culture to teach more effectively is not easy and can be
worse than doing nothing if done superficially or inaccurately. As Deloria
and Wildcat (2001) note, “unless we incorporate features of our cultures into a
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holistic and integrated indigenous process of education, what we have produced is
most likely ‘educational tokenism’” (p. 39).
Furthermore, we want to caution researchers, educators, and policy makers
against the relatively simple integration of the material aspects of culture at the
expense of systemic change within schools serving Indigenous youth. Hermes’s
(2005, 2007) work with the Ojibwe highlights how inserting cultural knowledge
as self-contained curricular material fundamentally changes the meaning of cul-
ture, forces students to chose between being “academically successful” or being
“an Ojibwe” (p. 57), and fails to alter the culture and structure of schooling. We
share Hermes’s concerns and fear that much of the scholarship on CRS encourages
educational approaches that assume culture to be something that can and should be
taught as a discrete school subject. Our discontent with these tendencies provides
yet another impetus for our suggestion that sovereignty and self-determination,
institutional racism, and Indigenous epistemologies must take center stage in future
articulations of and for CRS for Indigenous youth.
Anticipated Outcomes of CRS
There are a number of outcomes scholars suggest result from CRS for
Indigenous youth. We can learn something about the suggested outcomes by look-
ing at what research has shown to be the outcomes when CRS is not practiced.
Belgarde et al. (2002) offer a concise summary: “Most studies found that American
Indian students were forced to assimilate into the dominant mainstream culture,
experienced cultural discontinuity, suffered from low self-esteem and performed
poorly in academe” (p. 44). Skinner (1999) adds that when schools neglect Native
cultures and present curricular materials that are biased or not culturally relevant,
Indigenous students are “robbed” of their cultural pride and personal identities.
And Deloria and Wildcat (2001) extend the discussion to the impact on tribal com-
munities (rather than simply individuals) by noting that Indigenous peoples
presently do not know how to bring knowledge and information back to the
tribe because [schools] have not paid sufficient attention to the history and
culture of our people. We have been deluded into thinking that there is no
applicability of information on behalf of the tribe or no possibility of making
our knowledge meaningful. (Deloria & Wildcat, 2001, p. 86)
It may be helpful to understand the theoretical explanations for why these neg-
ative outcomes result from mainstream schooling of Indigenous youth and why
other, more positive, outcomes are connected to the practice of CRS for Indigenous
youth. The most commonly held theoretical explanation is that of cultural differ-
ence or cultural compatibility theory. This theory posits that schooling is most
effective when there is a greater match between the cultural norms and expecta-
tions of the school and those of the students. Demmert and Towner (2003) add cog-
nitive theory and cultural-historical-activity theory (CHAT) to this discussion.
Cognitive theory suggests that learning occurs more readily when prior knowledge
is activated and connected to new information being presented and that CHAT
“places more emphasis on community-level elements for connectivity, thereby
multiplying the richness of potential associations between student experience and
the academic curriculum” (Demmert & Towner, 2003, p. 9). These authors point
out an important similarity between the three theoretical explanations—that is, that
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they all agree that education ought to be based on personal and community-level
connections to students’ experiences, cultures, and knowledge. Demmert and
Towner further suggest that researchers must consider all three of these theoreti-
cal explanations when trying to make sense of the outcomes of various educational
approaches for Indigenous youth.
The majority of scholarship we reviewed for this article was not strongly
grounded in theory but instead offered data-based discussions of various observed
outcomes of efforts at CRS for Indigenous youth. Some claims were quite vague
and noted outcomes such as “students do well” (U.S. Department of Education,
2001, p. 3), CRS makes “a positive difference” (Lipka, 1990, p. 20), and CRS is
“essential to successfully educating” Indigenous youth (Powers et al., 2003, p. 20).
Other claims were more specific and focused on particular aspects of student
behavior, achievement, knowledge, and dispositions. Our review concurs with
Demmert’s (2001) that
a series of studies conducted in the past 30 years collectively provides strong
evidence that Native language and cultural programs—and student identifi-
cation with such programs—are associated with improved academic perfor-
mance, decreased dropout rates, improved school attendance rates, decreased
clinical symptoms, and improved personal behavior. (p. 17)
A number of additional studies support these conclusions. In general, scholars have
found that efforts at CRS for Indigenous youth result in students who have
enhanced self-esteem (Agbo, 2004; Cleary & Peacock, 1998), develop healthy
identity formation (Trujillo, Viri, & Figueira, 2002), are more self-directed and
politically active (Garcia & Ahler, 1992), give more respect to tribal elders (Agbo,
2004), have a positive influence in their tribal communities (Cleary & Peacock,
1998; Pewewardy, 1998; U.S. Department of Education, 2001), exhibit more pos-
itive classroom behavior and engagement (Cleary & Peacock, 1998; Lipka, 1990),
and achieve academically at higher rates (Apthorp, D’Amato, & Richardson, 2002;
Demmert, 2001; Demmert & Towner, 2003; Klump & McNeir, 2005; Smith,
Leake, & Kamekona, 1998; Swisher & Tippeconnic, 1999; Taylor et al., 1991;
Zwick & Miller, 1996). A smaller body of scholarship points to the importance of
recognizing all voices in the classroom and ensuring that Indigenous students are
not silenced in the schooling process (Belgarde et al., 2002), which in turn leads to
more meaningful educational experiences and student empowerment (Gay, 2000;
Nieto, 2004; Reyhner, 1992b). And still other research points to the enhanced
learning outcomes for both Indigenous and non-Native students when tribally
focused curricula are used (Lipka & Adams, 2003; Lipka, Hogan et al., 2005;
Lipka, Parmelee, & Adams, 2005).
The Alaska Native Knowledge Network has developed a list of standards for
students involved in CRS. The cultural standards for students they suggest include
the following:
1. Culturally-knowledgeable students are well grounded in the cultural heritage
and traditions of their community.
2. Culturally-knowledgeable students are able to build on the knowledge and
skills of the local cultural community as a foundation from which to achieve
personal and academic success throughout life.
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3. Culturally-knowledgeable students are able to actively participate in various
cultural environments.
4. Culturally-knowledgeable students are able to engage effectively in learn-
ing activities that are based on traditional ways of knowing and learning.
5. Culturally-knowledgeable students demonstrate an awareness and appreci-
ation of the relationships and processes of interaction of all elements in the
world around them. (Alaska Native Knowledge Network, 1998)
These standards are meant to sit alongside the strictly academic standards
advanced by NCLB, school districts, and mainstream educational leaders.
Recent research by McCarty, Romero, and Zepeda (2006) among Indigenous
youth in the Southwest suggests that many young people in tribal communities
have pride in their heritage language and culture. Although some youth also rec-
ognize the privileging of English within the United States and the connections
between English and whiteness, many still possess a genuine interest in learning
and retaining their linguistic abilities in their tribal language. As McCarty et al.
(2006) note, these interests among youth “constitute crucial resources to be tapped
in tribal-community efforts to revitalize heritage languages” (p. 42). But these
interests among youth and the efforts within tribal communities are in jeopardy
given the ways that NCLB has been enacted and the intense pressures on schools
to make adequate yearly progress. In fact, a major concern among Indigenous edu-
cators is the impact of NCLB on CRS efforts (Beaulieu et al., 2005)—in other
words, many Native adults see value in facilitating the learning of tribal cultures
in school, but they see this goal taking a backseat to the priorities mandated by the
federal government. Importantly, however, although most Indigenous parents are
interested in and supportive of including culture in the school curriculum, Yazzie
(1999) points out that “how and whether to teach tribal cultural knowledge in
schools remains controversial” (p. 92).
This interest and controversy is highlighted in recent scholarship published by
the United States Department of Education:
Research generally supports the premise that students do well when their cul-
ture and language are incorporated into their education. There appear to be at
least two approaches in the views of educators and parents about the proper
role of Native language and culture in the school. The first perspective gen-
erally appears in situations where the tribe or village’s language and culture
ought to be pervasive and structure the overall educational experience. This
perspective does not exclude having the student master English or the subject
matter that is expected of students in majority culture schools, but it puts a
premium on local ways of knowing. The second perspective appears where
Native students are not in the majority in the schools and Native parents are
only one strand among the voices seeking to shape the school’s approach. In
this second perspective, the objectives appear to be more limited although no
less important; that is, the school should respect the cultures of its Native stu-
dents, support and promote the search by Native students to understand who
they are in a multicultural world, and provide opportunities for those students
and the students from other backgrounds to learn about Native languages and
cultures. The goal in this second perspective is to teach non-Indian students
about Indian cultures and history, and to instill respect for these cultures.
(U.S. Department of Education, 2001, p. 16)
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Other research supports this summary, adding that a number of Indigenous adults
believe that children should have an opportunity to learn their culture and language
to preserve their tribal identities, that they should learn traditional values from
elders, that tribal languages and cultures are an important aspect in the education of
Indigenous youth, and that schools ought to become clearinghouses for community
traditions and cultures (Agbo, 2001, 2004). It is important for teachers to realize that
they are inherently and consistently engaged in cultural production and reproduc-
tion. The transmission of dominant cultural knowledge and norms occurs on a daily
basis in U.S. schools, and the consistent message in much of the research is that suc-
cessful teachers of Indigenous youth also work to transmit values, beliefs, knowl-
edge, and norms that are consistent with their students’ home communities
(Franklin, 1995; Grant & Gillespie, 1993; Ogbu, 1987). This message comes not
only from researchers but also from Indigenous parents, youth, and educational
leaders; thus, the teaching of tribal cultures and languages in schools serving
Indigenous youth is a shared priority among a range of constituents (Cahape &
Howley, 1992; Tharp & Yamauchi, 1994). In Cleary and Peacock’s (1998) research
with both Native and non-Native teachers of Indigenous youth, this message was
central. Although both groups of teachers believed it was important to teach tribal
cultures alongside “academics,” the Native teachers in the study “saw it as an imper-
ative, essential part of the school” (Cleary & Peacock, 1998, p. 109).
None of the scholarship we reviewed for this article indicated that
Indigenous youth should learn tribal cultures and languages at the expense of
learning mainstream culture, English, and the typical “academic” subjects gen-
erally taught in schools. This is an important point because the shared assump-
tion by most scholars, parents, and educational leaders is that schools should
facilitate the acquisition of all of these knowledges and skills—what we might
call a “both/and” approach rather than an “either/or” approach. The scholarship
on multicultural education provides a nice backdrop for this argument. Scholars
such as Delpit (1988, 1995), Ladson-Billings (1994, 1995a, 1995b), Sleeter and
Grant (2003), and many others have suggested that students must become
knowledgeable about and comfortable within both the mainstream culture and
their home cultures. Delpit, for example, argues that students who are not part
of the “culture of power” must be explicitly taught the rules and codes of that
culture to be able to successfully negotiate it and make decisions about how and
when they will negotiate it. Ladson-Billings adds the important component of
high expectations and academic success for all students. Scholars discussing
Indigenous education make similar arguments about the need to teach
Indigenous youth about the dominant culture (Franklin, 1995), hold them to the
same high academic expectations that we hold for their White peers (Agbo,
2001, 2004), and provide explicit and direct instruction about dominant cultural
and academic norms, expectations, and skills (Cleary & Peacock, 1998).
Fortunately, in the past three decades,
a growing number of Indigenous students have the opportunity to use
Indigenous knowledge and language to meet “both” local “and” Western edu-
cation goals (Swisher & Deyhle, 1987; Swisher & Tippeconnic, 1999;
Yazzie, 1999). This “both/and” paradigm (Lipka & McCarty, 1994) supports
an educational approach that values both Native and Western knowledge.
(Lipka, 2002, p. 3)
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According to the literature reviewed for this article, what this amounts to is the
need and desire for Indigenous youth to become bi/multicultural
6
and the impor-
tant role of the school in facilitating that process. This is perhaps the most funda-
mental goal of CRS addressed in the literature. When teachers, curricula, and
schools provide a challenging and high-quality education that is intimately con-
nected and relevant to tribal communities, they will be far more likely to graduate
youth who are academically prepared, connected to and active members of their
tribal communities, and knowledgeable about both the dominant and their home
cultures. Indeed, as Cleary and Peacock (1998) note, “a primary ingredient of
American Indian student success is the ability to live successfully in both the
American Indian culture and the majority culture” (p. 121). Successfully negotiat-
ing these “two worlds” requires students to “code switch” (Delpit, 1988; Klug &
Whitfield, 2003), a skill that is more easily obtained when tribal cultures are a vis-
ible and central part of the school (Gilliland, 1995). This code switching results in
Indigenous youth who are both academically and culturally prepared to succeed in
the mainstream culture and in their tribal communities (Deyhle, 1995; Deyhle &
Swisher, 1997; Reyhner & Jacobs, 2002).
The reasons most often cited in the literature for CRS shed light on the impor-
tance of self-determination and tribal sovereignty, racism, and Indigenous episte-
mologies. Much of the learning styles literature risks either implicitly or explicitly
making broad generalizations and essentializing what is actually an incredible
range of variation. This work and the way it is often read perpetuate racist beliefs
and schooling practices. Furthermore, many of the presumed “cultural” reasons for
engaging in CRS would be better understood if reframed in relation to Indigenous
epistemologies. And finally, the anticipated outcomes of Indigenous youth suc-
cessfully negotiating multiple and varied contexts becomes even more critical
when connected to tribal sovereignty and the goals of self-determination.
Curricular and Pedagogical Strategies for CRS
Two aspects of schooling that have a significant and direct impact on students
are pedagogy and curriculum. Accordingly, a substantial amount of the literature
we reviewed for this article focuses on pedagogical techniques and curricular mate-
rials teachers could use in their classrooms with Indigenous youth.
Pedagogy
Many Native adults are concerned that the increased focus on testing and stan-
dardized direct instruction has resulted in a decline in pedagogical approaches that
are culturally responsive to Indigenous youth (Beaulieu et al., 2005). The typical
teacher-centered direct instruction approach employed in most classrooms often
fails to meet the needs of Indigenous students (Cleary & Peacock, 1998; Jacobs &
Reyhner, 2002). This is, in fact, a widespread concern nationwide and among edu-
cators and researchers working with students from other ethnic and racial groups
as well. This concern makes sense since studies have shown that when teaching
methods are adapted to be more congruent with students’ cultural norms, acade-
mic achievement generally improves (see, e.g., Deyhle & Swisher, 1997; Grant &
Gillespie, 1993; Vogt, Jordan, & Tharp, 1993).
More (1989) suggests that teachers ought to adopt a teaching style that is in
line with their students’ learning styles and that this is particularly important for
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teachers of Indigenous youth because one’s teaching style is generally based on
their own learning style and most teachers come from different cultural back-
grounds and thus have different learning styles from many of their Native stu-
dents. Other scholars recommend a series of general pedagogical techniques that
are believed to work well with Indigenous students. One of the most popular is
cooperative learning, which is argued to reduce the traditionally competitive
nature of schooling and increase student engagement (Cleary & Peacock, 1998;
Demmert, 2001; Gilliland, 1995; Grant & Gillespie, 1993; Pewewardy &
Hammer, 2003; Sparks, 2000). Gilliland (1995) points out, however, that “coop-
erative learning is not a single method, or several methods. It is an attitude
toward students, a concept of learning, a whole way of life within the classroom
and, hopefully, throughout the school” (p. 43). To truly be engaging in cooper-
ative learning school wide, schools would need to be organized around and con-
stantly employing values such as cooperation, sharing, and harmony while
recognizing that both students and teachers have important things to contribute
to the learning process (Klug & Whitfield, 2003; Taylor et al., 1991). Because it
closely matches the values and behaviors within many tribal communities, the
use of cooperative learning with Indigenous students appears to improve student
achievement and student attitudes (Taylor et al., 1991).
Another commonly cited pedagogical technique in the literature on CRS for
Indigenous youth is the creation of a visual learning environment within the class-
room. Scholars suggest that teachers integrate the visual arts across the curriculum,
design learning activities that allow students to observe, and use tools such as
paper, markers, videos, and chalk (Cleary & Peacock, 1998; Gilliland, 1995; Grant
& Gillespie, 1993; Philips, 1983). The use of visual learning is meant to comple-
ment, not replace, the use of oral teaching methods so that learning is maximized
by the use of diversified techniques (Sparks, 2000; Tharp & Yamauchi, 1994).
Scholars of CRS also argue that teachers must employ pedagogical techniques
that explicitly connect learning to students’ everyday lives. When education takes
a holistic approach with multiple and obvious connections to students’ worlds out-
side of school, it is both more interesting and more effective for Indigenous youth
(Gilliland, 1995; Klug & Whitfield, 2003). The suggestion that schooling take a
more holistic approach means simply that the goal is to understand “many aspects
[of a concept] at the same time and the interrelationships involved” (Rhodes, 1994,
p. 92). This approach may require a loosening of disciplinary boundaries within
schools, but it certainly would result in more authentic and real-life application of
learning. Some concrete ways to employ a more holistic approach in which learn-
ing is connected to students’ lives are to integrate experiential learning, service
learning, hands-on learning, and field trips (Cleary & Peacock, 1998; Hall, 1996).
Another general pedagogical technique discussed in the literature on CRS for
Indigenous youth is related to time within the classroom. Multiple scholars advo-
cate for teachers to increase the wait time between question and answer and the
time they give students to process information (Gilliland, 1995; Rhodes, 1994).
Studies have found that many Indigenous students are socialized to wait to speak
or act until they are confident in their correctness or mastery, so extended wait
times and opportunities for observation within the classroom allow students to con-
fidently respond to teachers’ requests (Deyhle & Swisher, 1997; Swisher &
Deyhle, 1989). In a related vein, students are generally more involved in classroom
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discussions when they are allowed to set the pace of the conversation rather than
having to follow the teacher’s tempo (Tharp & Yamauchi, 1994).
And finally, Cleary and Peacock (1998) suggest that to motivate students
to learn, teachers must also connect “to the human need for self-determination”
(p. 212). They argue that teachers need to tap into this desire to engage their stu-
dents in the schooling process, and that teachers can help students develop strate-
gies for understanding and acting on the world around them. This is not unlike
much of the literature on multicultural education that argues that students must
learn to “read the world” and act in ways that create social change and, ultimately,
lead to greater equity and social justice (Freire, 1970; Nieto, 2004; Sleeter, 1996;
Sleeter & Grant, 2003). When students feel empowered and have greater agency
within their schools and communities, education is both more meaningful and
socially responsible.
Before moving into some of the pedagogical strategies suggested for particular
subject areas, we want to share a couple summaries offered in the literature on cul-
turally responsive pedagogy. Cleary and Peacock (1998) offer the following pat-
terns of successful teacher practice:
the need to build trust; to connect with the community; to establish cultural
relevance in the curriculum; to tap intrinsic motivation for learning; to use
humor; to establish family support; to provide situations that yield small suc-
cesses; to make personal connections with students; to use highly engaging,
activity-based learning and, in some cases, cooperative learning; to provide
role models; to be flexible, fair, and consistent; and to provide real audience
and purpose for student work. (p. 13)
Similarly, Swisher and Deyhle (1989) offer the following suggestions to teachers
of Indigenous students:
• Be aware of the “pacing” of activities within a time framework which may be
rigid and inflexible;
• Be aware of how questions are asked; think about the discussion style of your students;
• Remember, some students do not like to be “spotlighted” in front of a group;
• Provide time for practice before performance is expected; let children “save
face,” but communicate that it is “okay” to make mistakes;
• Be aware of proximity preferences; how close is comfortable;
• Organize the classroom to meet the interactional needs of students; provide
activities which encourage both independence and cooperation;
• Provide feedback that is immediate and consistent; give praise that is specific. (pp. 9–10)
All of these suggestions are mentioned by other scholars as well and provide spe-
cific pedagogical advice for teachers hoping to employ CRS with Indigenous
youth. In addition to these suggestions, some scholars have focused on pedagogi-
cal strategies within particular subject areas, so we will briefly discuss the areas of
math, science, and language arts.
Most of the suggestions for culturally responsive pedagogy in math and science are
consistent with the general suggestions discussed earlier. Unfortunately, math and sci-
ence are most often taught through abstract and isolated concepts rather than through
more tactile, visual, and holistic stimuli (Gilliland, 1995). But as Butterfield (1994) notes,
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practices most consistent with how Native students learn mathematics and
science best include (a) simultaneous processing (seeing the whole picture)
instead of successive processing (analyzing information sequentially), (b)
instruction that builds on American Indian and Alaskan Native strengths as
learners, (c) using hands-on materials or manipulatives, and (d) structuring
classrooms to support cooperative learning. (pp. 4–5)
Teachers must also be clear, explicit, and direct about the terminology used in
these subject areas. Many of the terms used in math and science have different
meanings than their everyday meanings, and this can be especially confusing for
students whose first language is not English (Davidson, 1992; Gilliland, 1995).
Teachers may be more effective teaching such concepts in students’ native lan-
guage first and then relating that understanding to the English terms. Furthermore,
recent research that demonstrates clear connections between how people think and
what people think has clear implications for math and science teaching. Bang,
Medin, and Atran (2007) are exploring the “cognitive consequences of different
conceptualizations of nature and the place of humans within it” and suggest a num-
ber of implications for improved science learning among Indigenous children (p.
13868). Indeed, learning will be improved when teachers draw on the epistemo-
logical and cultural orientations of students within their classrooms.
As with math and science, language arts and literacy instruction seems to be
most effective when drawing on the strategies discussed earlier. It is important
for teachers to realize that literacy can be an especially frustrating learning expe-
rience for any student who is continually corrected and that this frustration can
lead to resistance among students (Cleary & Peacock, 1998). It is also important
for teachers to be aware of the tasks they are asking students to engage in because
“most American Indian students are expected to respond to literature and other
school materials in ways that have not been modeled to them” (Cleary &
Peacock, 1998, p. 190). To overcome these barriers, teachers can connect lan-
guage arts and literacy learning to real-life experiences, give students real audi-
ences with real purposes to write for, teach students explicitly how to engage in
abstract analyses, and read potential language arts texts with the cultural knowl-
edge and language of the community in mind (Cleary & Peacock, 1998;
Gilliland, 1995). A number of scholars also recommend the use of whole lan-
guage approaches to literacy learning for Indigenous youth because they incor-
porate oral language practice, integrate culturally relevant materials, and provide
more explicit connections to real world experiences (Gilliland, 1995; Goodman
& Wilde, 1992; Grant & Gillespie, 1993; Kasten, 1992; Klug & Whitfield, 2003;
McCarty, 1993b).
Curriculum
Like pedagogy, curriculum is another area discussed frequently in the scholar-
ship on CRS for Indigenous youth. This focus should not be surprising since a
school’s curriculum closely shapes what material students are exposed to on a daily
basis. The traditionally Eurocentric focus of the curriculum in U.S. schools has been
critiqued by countless scholars in the field of multicultural education, and
Indigenous peoples across the country are concerned about the narrowing of the cur-
riculum given the recent emphasis on standardization and testing. Unfortunately,
“Native languages and culture have not been well represented in schools’ curricular
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program and attention to the arts, music, and literature is generally being dimin-
ished” (Beaulieu et al., 2005, p. 16). Cleary and Peacock (1998) agree, noting “there
is a mismatch between what might be relevant curriculum and what American
Indian students actually experience in many schools” (p. 51). But this mismatch and
lack of representation is curious because policy studies, research, and evaluation
studies have consistently found that Indigenous students’ academic performance is
improved when school curricula promote the language and culture of the local com-
munity (Demmert, 2001). It is, in fact, counterintuitive to assume that students
would do worse in school when the curriculum is related to their everyday lives,
represents their cultures and communities, and validates their cultural integrity
(Grant & Gillespie, 1993; Native Education Initiative of the Regional Educational
Labs, 1995; Noley, 1992). Other concerns about the curriculum expressed in the
scholarship on CRS for Indigenous youth include that the mainstream curriculum
generally trivializes and stereotypes tribal cultures, that Native students are too often
exposed to remedial curricular materials, and that teachers rely too heavily on text-
books that ignore Indigenous experiences (Powers et al., 2003; Reyhner, 1992a,
1992b).
In response to these concerns, a number of scholars have suggested alternative
curricula that are more culturally responsive to Indigenous students and tribal
nations. We might think of these curricular suggestions as composing a “transfor-
mative curriculum” that both integrates cultural knowledge and questions the
assumptions of traditionally Eurocentric school curricula (Pewewardy & Hammer,
2003). In fact, a number of tribal communities have created curricula for use in
schools serving their youth (Reyhner & Jacobs, 2002), but much more work is
needed in this area (Rhodes, 1994). The Alaska Native Knowledge Network (1998)
provides an exemplary model in developing its own cultural standards for curricu-
lum. They have adopted these curricular standards to complement the standards set
forth by external governmental agencies to ensure that local cultures and languages
are represented in school curricula:
• A culturally-responsive curriculum reinforces the integrity of the cultural
knowledge that students bring with them.
• A culturally-responsive curriculum recognizes cultural knowledge as part of a
living and constantly adapting system that is grounded in the past, but contin-
ues to grow through the present and into the future.
• A culturally-responsive curriculum uses the local language and cultural
knowledge as a foundation for the rest of the curriculum.
• A culturally-responsive curriculum fosters a complementary relationship
across knowledge derived from diverse knowledge systems.
• A culturally-responsive curriculum situates local knowledge and actions in a
global context. (Alaska Native Knowledge Network, 1998)
One of the primary messages is that curricula must be connected to students’
lives, represent their cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and present accurate
images of both the past and present (Agbo, 2001; Skinner, 1999). Culturally
responsive curriculum will tap into students’ curiosity and engage them in top-
ics that are interesting to them; it does this without watering down, but rather by
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strengthening, the quality of learning materials (Cleary & Peacock, 1998; Sparks,
2000).
In addition to these general curricula suggestions, some scholars also offer sug-
gestions for making the curriculum of particular subject areas more culturally
responsive to Indigenous youth. In what follows, we briefly share these sugges-
tions for math, science, social studies, and language arts.
The most commonly cited curricular approach to math for Indigenous students
is ethnomathematics. Ethnomathematics is recommended because it draws con-
nections between home and school and, therefore, promotes academic success
among students. According to Apthorp et al. (2002),
ethnomathematics is the study of traditional and everyday mathematics and
the integration of findings from this study into the development and use of
curricular methods and materials that are aligned with content standards
(Brenner, 1998; Davidson & Miller, 1998). Ethnomathematics “acknowl-
edges the value of the knowledge base that children themselves bring to
school” and engages children in activities based on everyday mathematics in
ways that help them “develop meaningful problem solving and greater math-
ematical power” (Brenner, 1998, p. 239). (p. 9)
To successfully implement ethnomathematics, teachers must “identify culturally
specific and everyday knowledge,” develop “responsive curricular materials,” and
“use formative evaluation to make adaptations and revisions” (Apthorp et al., 2002,
p. 11). As with other curricular areas, it is important that the integration of culture
is not trivial (Nelson-Barber & Estrin, 1995), and it must require students to regu-
larly use systematic language activities (Davidson & Miller, 1998). Although
Gilliland (1995) does not specifically advocate ethnomathematics, he advises sim-
ilar curricular strategies. He recommends that math teachers infuse their curricu-
lum with examples and situations involving Indigenous peoples, such as the “Aztec
calendar” and “Mayan numeration,” because students will learn more when they
see connections to their own life and cultural backgrounds (Gilliland, 1995, p.
155). Taylor et al. (1991) suggests math activities that involve tessellations “for
artistic creativity and geometric exploration” (p. 15) and beadwork for its “reliance
on geometric patterns” (p. 19). Lipka and others in Alaska have developed and
studied the use of a Yup’ik-centered math curriculum in a number of southwest-
ern Alaskan communities; their work supports that of others and calls for a more
sustained commitment to the development and integration of culturally responsive
and tribally specific math curricula in schools serving Indigenous youth (Lipka,
1990, 1994; Lipka & Adams, 2003; Lipka, Hogan et al., 2005; Lipka, Mohatt, &
the Ciulistet Group, 1998; Lipka, Parmelee et al., 2005). Overall, then, the consen-
sus is that math curriculum needs to include cultural relevance and be built around
local interests and cultures (Davidson, 1992).
Similar recommendations are made for science curricula in schools serving
Indigenous youth. School science generally relies on learning from textbooks and
memorizing discrete facts, but a more culturally responsive science curriculum might
include the vast stores of Native knowledge “of nature, of animal ways, and of the uses
of plants”; explicit instruction in the language of science; field trips; and observation
of nature (Gilliland, 1995, p. 34). Gilliland (1995) provides a number of curricular top-
ics that should be integrated into science teaching for Indigenous students:
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Indian students should know that at the time of the European invasion of
America, American and European natives were approximately equal in scien-
tific knowledge, and that much of the Indians’ traditional knowledge is still use-
ful today. Teach your students about the Mayas’ advanced knowledge of
astronomy, the Aztecs’ study of genetics, the Incas’ technical approach to archi-
tecture and their intricate use of brain surgery, the fact that although their
approach was different, most North American tribes were more knowledgeable
than their European peers in zoology and in the use of herbal medicines. Let
them know that their own ancestors contributed more different food plants to
our present diets and the rest of the world than their European counterparts did.
Then ask parents and local elders to accompany your classes on field trips to
teach them were to find edible wild plants and material for weaving and other
projects, and have them teach the students about the local animal life. (p. 150)
It is important for teachers to be aware of and treat appropriately the connections
many Indigenous peoples make between spirituality and science. Although much
tribal knowledge of the earth, animals, and humans is intimately tied to moral and
spiritual values, many teachers are reluctant to bring spirituality into the classroom
(Pewewardy & Bushey, 1992). However,
if we remember that spirituality is the way we form relations with a univer-
sal higher power and all of Creation, including our relationships with others,
we can readily determine that there is a place in education for spirituality and
ceremonies cementing those relationships for American Indian students.
(Klug & Whitfield, 2003, p. 161)
The opposite side of this issue is when teachers include curricular material that is
offensive to or against the spiritual and moral beliefs of Indigenous students. Many
biological experiments and activities may be taboo for some Native students, and
teachers should be aware of local norms before including these activities in their
science curriculum (Gilliland, 1995).
Social studies is another curricular area that is addressed specifically in the lit-
erature on CRS for Indigenous youth. As with other curricular areas, the general
consensus is that social studies must be made relevant to tribal cultures and histo-
ries and that it must also be accurate and fair in its portrayal of Indigenous peoples
both past and present. Gilliland (1995) offers the following suggestions for improv-
ing social studies for Indigenous students:
• teach from a multicultural viewpoint (p. 80),
• allow time for Native American history and culture (p. 81),
• give Native Americans their rightful place (p. 82),
• assure historical accuracy (p. 82),
• teach Native American contributions (p. 83),
• teach social studies as ongoing and dynamic (p. 84),
• integrate other subjects into your social studies unit (p. 84), and
• learn more about Native Americans (p. 84).
Other recommendations for more culturally responsive social studies curricula
include teaching about tribal governments, presenting a balanced and honest image
of Native histories, focusing on both the past and present, teaching about both
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general patterns and the specific tribal nations in which your school is located, and
focusing on the unique needs and interests of your students (Gilliland, 1995; Klug
& Whitfield, 2003; LaCounte, 1992). In general, “the social studies curriculum
should help American Indian students understand and function effectively in the
personal, social, and cultural worlds in which they live” (LaCounte, 1992, p. 215).
Language arts curriculum also needs to be connected to students’ worlds and
everyday experiences. Because reading is largely about making meaning of text,
texts should be related to a world students can recognize (Cleary & Peacock, 1998;
Gilliland, 1995; Reyhner, 1992c). This, of course, requires added work on the part
of the teacher because most texts in our schools are more closely related to a world
White, middle-class students can recognize. Language arts might also include sto-
ries from students’ local communities; these stories can be collected from elders
and written down by students as a way to create more culturally relevant literacy
materials.
With all curricular material, teachers must become diligent reviewers of the
texts they are given to use in their classrooms. Current curricula should be exam-
ined for accuracy, inclusivity, bias, stereotyping, and omission and then used in
critical and limited ways (Gilliland, 1995; Grant & Gillespie, 1993; Kaomea, 2005;
Klug & Whitfield, 2003; Lipka, 2002; Seale & Slapin, 2006). This is important
because, as Swisher and Tippeconnic (1999) note, “negative stereotypes coupled
with inadequate and inaccurate information about this nation’s Indigenous peoples,
particularly in social studies curricula, damage the self-concepts and subsequent
behavior of our youth” (p. 303). Grant and Gillespie (1993) cite work by the
Manitoba Indian Brotherhood in the following list of common biases found in
school curricular materials:
1. Bias by omission—selecting information that reflects credit on only one
group, frequently the writer’s or speaker’s group.
2. Bias by defamation—calling attention to the Native person’s faults rather
than virtues and misrepresenting the nature of Native people.
3. Bias by disparagement—denying or belittling the contribution of Native
people to mainstream culture.
4. Bias by cumulative implication—constantly creating the impression that
only one group is responsible for positive development.
5. Bias by (lack of) validity—failing to ensure that information about issues
is accurate and unambiguous.
6. Bias by inertia—perpetuation of legends and half-truths by failure to keep
abreast of historical scholarship.
7. Bias by obliteration—ignoring significant aspects of Native history.
8. Bias by disembodiment—referring in a causal and depersonalized way to
a group of people.
9. Bias by (lack of) concreteness—dealing with a race or group in generaliza-
tions that apply shortcomings, or positive characteristics, of one
individual to the group. To be concrete, the material must be factual, objec-
tive, and realistic.
10. Bias by (lack of) comprehensiveness and balance—failure to mention all
relevant facts that may help form the opinion of the students. (pp. 17–19)
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This list helps illuminate why careful and limited use of standardized curricular
materials is needed and why communities must also develop alternative and sup-
plemental curricular materials that are culturally responsive to Indigenous youth
and tribal nations. When communities and students are involved in the process of
determining subject matter and creating curriculum, cultural responsiveness is
more likely to be achieved.
The curricular and pedagogical strategies discussed in the literature are impor-
tant, but we suggest that they might become even more powerful and meaningful
for Indigenous youth and tribal communities if they were explored and analyzed
within the context of sovereignty and self-determination, racism, and Indigenous
epistemologies. Without a tight connection to these three themes, culturally
responsive curricular and pedagogical efforts will continue to provide only
surface-level and compartmentalized opportunities for Indigenous students to see
themselves and their communities in schools. This, in turn, fails to honor the
locally articulated priorities and needs within most Indigenous communities.
Curricula and pedagogy developed with a deep understanding of sovereignty and
self-determination, racism, and Indigenous epistemologies will be far more pow-
erful in their ability to provide good schooling to Indigenous youth. These ele-
ments—particularly the first and last—are what set CRS for Indigenous youth
apart from other educational efforts.
Educator Characteristics Necessary for CRS
Although curricular and pedagogical issues are certainly important for an under-
standing of CRS for Indigenous students, there are a number of teacher character-
istics that are also necessary for CRS to be made a reality. Teachers must possess
a particular set of dispositions, attitudes, values, and knowledges to be successful
with Indigenous students.
Teacher Values, Attitudes, and Ideologies
One of the themes that came out of the literature we reviewed for this article
was the importance of teachers’ values, attitudes, and ideologies toward their stu-
dents and toward Indigenous communities and cultures. However, although a
number of scholars touched on this theme, it was rarely a central theme within
articles and books; it generally took a backseat to the more common themes of
curriculum and pedagogy. In Demmert’s (2001) review, he notes that “teacher
attitudes about students, knowledge of the subject matter, and understanding and
knowledge about the culture of students are all shown to promote improved aca-
demic performance and student behavior (Yagi, 1985)” (p. 26). In a similar vein,
other scholars have noted that CRS “relies on the development of certain dispo-
sitions toward learners” (Pewewardy & Hammer, 2003, p. 1). Yazzie offers one
of the most direct and explicit points about the importance of teachers’ values,
attitudes, and ideologies:
Affective qualities, rather than skills or academic preparation, seem to char-
acterize effective teachers in the research literature. Studies indicate that
teachers who serve Native students effectively are informal, are caring and
warm, give up authority, and have and show respect for the students. (Yazzie,
1999, p. 95)
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The affective qualities to which Yazzie refers are also noted by a number of schol-
ars in the multicultural education literature. Ladson-Billings (1995a) and
Bartolome (1994) both argue that dispositions are critical to successful teachers of
students of color, and other scholars of Indigenous education concur—noting the
importance of teacher temperament, tolerance, flexibility, and overall disposition
(Klug & Whitfield, 2003; Rhodes, 1994).
A related theme in the literature on CRS for Indigenous youth is the importance
of caring relationships between teachers and students. Again, the theme of caring
is common in the general multicultural education literature as well. First introduced
by Noddings, caring is a main theme in an ethnographic study conducted by
Valenzuela (1999). In her research, Valenzuela distinguishes between the authen-
tic caring sought by Mexican American students and the aesthetic caring demon-
strated by teachers. Powers (2006) notes a similar theme in research with
Indigenous youth:
Dehyle (1992) observed Native students’ mistrust of schooling as a reaction
to negative stereotypes perpetuated by teachers. Conversely, she witnessed
Native students’ enthusiasm for learning under the instruction of approach-
able and caring teachers. She reported that “the issue of teacher caring” was
very important to many of the Native youth (p. 31). Over one third of
American Indian dropouts interviewed by Coladarci (1983) and almost half
of those interviewed by Dehyle (1992) reported that their teachers failed to
care about them. (p. 19)
Other scholars of Indigenous education have also noted the importance of caring
relationships, mutual respect between students and teacher, and teachers being per-
ceived as safe by Indigenous students (Cleary & Peacock, 1998; Gilliland, 1995;
Swisher & Tippeconnic, 1999). Gilliland (1995) reminds us that “Kleinfeld (1979)
found that the teachers who were most successful with Native students were those
who were personally warm and supportive, as opposed to those who concentrate
solely on academic tasks or have a detached demeanor” (p. 54). But although car-
ing is an important affective quality for teachers hoping to practice CRS, caring is
certainly not enough. In other words, we might think of caring as a necessary but
not sufficient quality of effective teachers for Indigenous youth.
Another important disposition for culturally responsive teachers is an attitude
and presence that expects high performance levels while caring about and under-
standing Indigenous youth—what some scholars have referred to as a “warm
demander” (Kleinfeld, 1979; Swisher & Deyhle, 1989; Vogt & Au, 1995). In fact,
a number of studies have suggested that an important common element in success-
ful programs for Indigenous youth is the expectation for excellence (McCarty,
1993a; Rhodes, 1994) and that in unsuccessful schooling environments,
Indigenous youth are negatively affected by teachers who hold low expectations
for them (Chrisjohn, Towson, & Peters, 1988; Hornett, 1990). Thus, “teachers’
expectations, academic encouragement, and provision of sufficiently challenging
material appear to be critical instructional issues for Native students’ school suc-
cess” (Powers, 2006, p. 24).
A third important disposition of teachers who engage in CRS is an attitude of
respect, appreciation, and value for tribal communities and cultures. A number of
scholars suggest that this is not only a critical element for CRS but also the element
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that is very often missing among educators serving Indigenous youth (Demmert,
2001; Garcia & Ahler, 1992; Grant & Gillespie, 1993). Given the high numbers of
teachers who have no experience with tribal communities, this is an important area
for better teacher education and support. Teachers must not only be interested in
and value tribal communities, but they must also show similar interest in students’
personal lives and be responsive to their students (Kleinfeld, 1979; Reyhner &
Eder, 2004). Importantly, none of these dispositions are easy or quick to cultivate;
in fact, “true appreciation and respect are attitudes that take a long time and a lot
of effort to translate into behaviors. Appreciation and respect are the antecedent
attitudes for teaching Indian children” (Garcia & Ahler, 1992, p. 14). Two strate-
gies teachers can employ are to “watch more, ask less” (Rhodes, 1994, p. 197) and
to appreciate and demonstrate appreciation for their own cultures, languages, and
roots (Klug & Whitfield, 2003). These strategies are useful for all teachers of
Indigenous students to keep in mind because White teachers as well as teachers of
color can grow into becoming more reflective educators (Pewewardy & Hammer,
2003)—indeed, being more reflective is intimately connected to being a more
authentically caring teacher and a warm demander.
Community Involvement and Support—It Goes Both Ways
Another common theme in the literature on CRS for Indigenous youth is the
importance of community involvement and support both by the teacher and by the
tribal community members. Teachers must know the community in which the
school is situated, interact with community members, and support community
agendas. On the other hand, members of the community must also be invited and
welcomed into the school and be given plenty of authentic opportunities to con-
nect with the school and the work of educators in the school.
A number of scholars discuss the need for teachers of Indigenous students to
learn about local language issues and cultural practices and to support tribal nations
in their efforts at linguistic and cultural preservation (Cleary & Peacock, 1998;
McCarty, 1993a). Talking with people in the community is an obvious way to
begin this process, and teachers are regularly advised in the scholarship to talk to
mothers and work with their students’ extended families (Gilliland, 1995; Jacobs
& Reyhner, 2002; Klug & Whitfield, 2003; Weasel Head, 1993). Teachers are also
advised to become familiar with the environment in which their students live by
visiting homes, spending time at community events, observing and asking ques-
tions, working with students on community-based research projects, incorporating
local events into the curriculum, tapping community resources, and allowing elders
to become participants in the teaching process (McCarty & Shaffer, 1992; Rhodes,
1994; Skinner, 1999; Sparks, 2000; Swisher & Deyhle, 1989).
In addition to teachers becoming involved with and active in the local school
community, scholars also note the importance of community members supporting
and becoming involved in the schooling process. Tribal members, elders, parents,
and other adults need to be given active roles in the development of culture-based
education initiatives, programs, and school policies; invited in culturally appropri-
ate ways to daily, weekly, or monthly schooling events; and generally be viewed
as equal partners and collaborators in the schooling of their children (Demmert &
Towner, 2003; Klug & Whitfield, 2003; Noley, 1992; Skinner, 1999). To facilitate
this, schools must provide “ongoing staff development to improve communication
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patterns with American Indian/Alaska Native parents” and “ongoing outreach to
American Indian/Alaska Native parents that focuses on positive contacts with
homes, rather than crisis intervention” (Butterfield, 1994, p. 5).
Parental and community support and involvement in schools is important for a
number of reasons. Parents and other community members have the capacity to
help their children negotiate the culture of the school, and they can provide much-
needed sanctioning to their children about the importance of school so that students
know they will be supported by their families in their pursuit of educational goals
(Klug & Whitfield, 2003; Powers, 2006). “Parental input can [also] assist schools
in refining curricula to become more culturally relevant and responsive to stu-
dents” (Yazzie, 1999, p. 91). Demmert’s (2001) review raises an important point
about community involvement and power. He writes:
More research is needed to sort out under what circumstances parental and
community involvement works most powerfully; however, the research that
exists supports the importance of local control on community attitudes and
academic achievement among Native students. The research on how parental
support influences students’ success is also very revealing. In light of this
research, Native communities that have not yet gained control and taken
direct responsibility for the education of their children must evaluate their role
in the educational process. (p. 36)
In other words, parent and community ownership over schooling is an important
aspect of actively engaging tribal sovereignty and realizing the goals of self-deter-
mination. As Deloria and Wildcat (2001) point out, local communities must take
control of their local schools because “the thing that has always been missing in
Indian education, and is still missing today, is Indians” (p. 152).
Teacher Knowledge
An unfortunate reality of AI education is that the vast majority of teachers lack
much of the necessary knowledge to provide an effective, high-quality, and cultur-
ally responsive education to Indigenous youth (Agbo, 2001, 2004; Belgarde
et al., 2002). The most obvious, but also most lacking, knowledge among teachers
is an awareness and understanding of Indigenous cultures, histories, and political
issues.
Teachers must have knowledge of Indigenous cultural issues if they hope to be
successful with Native youth. Agbo’s (2004) research, however, shows that many
White teachers in schools serving Indigenous youth are “ignorant” of the local cul-
tures and ways of doing things and that local community members believe it is cru-
cial for teachers to understand the local culture and way of life given their
positionality within the community and relationships with children. As he argues,
the “successful implementation” of CRS depends on “teachers’ understanding of
the Mohawk worldview, their recognition of ethnic content education and their abil-
ity to adapt teaching programs to suit the special conditions of the children” (Agbo,
2001, p. 46). Indeed, a number of researchers have argued that the overall impact
of CRS will likely be minimal if White teachers fail to acquire the knowledge and
skills needed to integrate and reinforce local community cultural norms in the class-
room (Agbo, 2001; Klug & Whitfield, 2003; Tippeconnic, 2000). Important aspects
of cultural knowledge that scholars have suggested teachers must acquire include
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spiritual traditions, past and present issues facing tribal nations, characteristics of
the local culture, broad as well as tribally specific histories, common manifestations
and impacts of racism among Indigenous peoples, differences between and within
tribal nations, issues surrounding language preservation, the history of Indigenous
educational policies and practices, and the history and continuation of colonization
(Gilliland, 1995; Jacobs & Reyhner, 2002; Klug & Whitfield, 2003; Pewewardy,
1994; Pewewardy & Hammer, 2003; Reyhner & Jacobs, 2002; Reyhner, Lee, &
Gabbard, 1993; Swisher & Deyhle, 1989). Perhaps most important, and yet least
often acknowledged in the literature, is that teachers must learn and know about the
unique government-to-government relationship between tribal nations and the fed-
eral government, the federal government’s trust responsibility to Indigenous com-
munities, the legal/political status of Native peoples in the United States, and the
importance of self-determination within tribal communities. This knowledge is
almost never included in teacher preparation, and yet it provides the foundation for
Indigenous education in this country.
In addition to these aspects of cultural knowledge, teachers also need more spe-
cific and sustained training in pedagogical knowledge as it relates to working with
Indigenous youth. A number of Indigenous adults, however, feel that NCLB has
resulted in the de-emphasis of this knowledge to focus more attention on standard-
ized pedagogical strategies (Beaulieu et al., 2005). Instead, what is needed is sus-
tained and in-depth training at both the preservice and in-service stages of teaching
because brief and superficial training has been shown to have little or no effect on
teacher attitudes and behaviors in the classroom (Butterfield, 1994). This training
must include cultural knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and information about
how culture affects students’ responses to schooling (Grant & Gillespie, 1993).
Furthermore, as Hickling-Hudson and Ahlquist (2003) note,
teachers and teacher educators need to study alternative epistemologies, mul-
tiple perspectives, and critical multicultural pedagogies, including both-ways
curricula, which would lead them to different ways of educating. They need
to experiment with the difficult task of creating alternative curricula and ped-
agogical approaches that not only rock the boat but ultimately overturn the
boat of the traditional curriculum grounded in the dominant culture of unex-
amined whiteness. (p. 89)
There is, in fact, a fairly extensive body of scholarship suggesting promising edu-
cation practices for Indigenous youth, and teachers working with this population
should be very familiar with this work (Native Education Initiative of the Regional
Educational Labs, 1995). Other pedagogical knowledge teachers of Indigenous
students must acquire includes how Native children learn to learn at home, theo-
ries and practices of first and second language acquisition, characteristics of exem-
plary Indigenous educational programs, developing culturally specific curricular
materials, acquiring Indigenous literature suitable for the classroom, and how to
effectively share Native histories in the classroom (LaCounte, 1992; Reyhner
et al., 1993).
Facilitating the acquisition of this knowledge among teachers will require a revi-
sioning and reorganization of teacher education programs (Barnhardt, 1994;
Belgarde et al., 2002; Irvine, 1992). The teachers in Agbo’s (2004) study would
have preferred to learn the needed cultural and pedagogical knowledge in their
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university programs, and it is quite likely that other teachers around the country
share this preference. Such training will require a cross-disciplinary approach in
which students gain an understanding of the fields of history, anthropology, sociol-
ogy, and linguistics in addition to the traditional education curriculum. This is
beginning to happen in some teacher preparation programs, and there are a handful
of federally funded programs specifically geared to prepare Indigenous teachers for
Indigenous schools. Recent research on these programs highlights the continued
need for culturally and locally specific course development (Beaulieu, 2006a;
Yazzie-Mintz, 2007). Teachers and teacher educators must shift their perspective
from continually seeing students as “disadvantaged” to instead seeing teachers and
other educators as disadvantaged because of our general lack of cultural knowledge
and culturally responsive pedagogical knowledge—in other words, we need to start
educating ourselves differently (Gilliland, 1995; Grant & Gillespie, 1993).
Klug and Whitfield (2003) offer a helpful discussion of the need for teachers to
become bicultural. Here again, a shift in perspective is required for educators to
see the necessity of becoming bicultural ourselves before we might hope to help
our students become bi/multicultural. Educators “must be able to operate effec-
tively within their own cultures and the cultures of their students” as well as be
“aware of and sensitive to the strengths, needs, and potentialities of our Native
American students” (Klug & Whitfield, 2003, pp. 2, 13). For teachers to become
bicultural, they must confront their own prejudices and redefine their perceptions
of Indigenous peoples, get involved in the community and learn about students’
backgrounds, and reshape their own identities by examining the world from mul-
tiple perspectives and taking risks in obtaining new knowledge (Klug & Whitfield,
2003). The Alaska Native Knowledge Network (1998) again provides helpful
guidance in their cultural standards for educators:
• Culturally responsive educators incorporate local ways of knowing and teach-
ing in their work.
• Culturally responsive educators use the local environment and community
resources on a regular basis to link what they are teaching to the everyday lives
of the students.
• Culturally responsive educators participate in community events and activities
in an appropriate and supportive way.
• Culturally responsive educators work closely with parents to achieve a
high level of complementary educational expectations between home and
school.
• Culturally responsive educators recognize the full educational potential of each
student and provide the challenges necessary for them to achieve that potential.
Each of these aspects of teacher knowledge plays a role in the improved schooling
of Indigenous youth. Some research has shown a high correlation between teach-
ers’ awareness, understanding, and appreciation of cultural knowledge and stu-
dents’ successful academic performance (Butterfield, 1994). And on a broader
scale, when teachers of Indigenous students possess the knowledge outlined here,
students, schools, and communities are more likely to be positively influenced
(U.S. Department of Education, 2001).
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Despite appearing to be less of a priority than curriculum and pedagogy in
much of the literature on CRS for Indigenous youth, teacher knowledge and
characteristics become critical when self-determination and tribal sovereignty,
racism, and Indigenous epistemologies are brought into the discussion. If edu-
cators working with Indigenous students gained an understanding of Indigenous
epistemologies and adopted an explicit commitment to tribal sovereignty and
self-determination, schooling would surely better meet the needs of both Native
students and tribal communities. Additionally, when educators examine the
structural racism present within their schools, curricula, and practices, they will
likely begin engaging in less racist and more equitable schooling practices.
School- and District-Level Issues Within the Context of NCLB
Although the majority of scholarship we reviewed for this article focused on
teacher- and classroom-level issues related to CRS, as we mentioned in the early pages,
culturally responsive efforts need to be school wide and have relevance to larger pol-
icy issues as well. In the late 1980s, Hampton (1988) developed a list of criteria for an
“Indian theory of education.” This list is applicable not only to teachers and classrooms
but also to schools, districts, and even larger educational entities. Hampton argued that
to be “authentically Native,” schooling must incorporate the following influences:
1. spirituality—an appreciation for spiritual relationships;
2. service—the purpose of education is to contribute to the people;
3. diversity—meeting the standards of diverse tribes and communities;
4. culture—a people’s way of thinking, communicating, and living;
5. tradition—continuity with tradition;
6. respect—the relationship between the individual and the group recognized
as mutually empowering;
7. history—appreciation of the facts of Native American history, including
the loss of the continent and continuing racial and political oppression;
8. relentlessness—commitment to the struggle for good schools for Indian
children;
9. vitality—recognition of the strength of Indian people and culture;
10. conflict—understanding the dynamics and consequences of oppression;
11. place—the sense of place, land, territory; and
12. transformation—commitment to personal and societal change.
As Grant and Gillespie (1993) point out, one of the crucial “common denomina-
tors” is a concern for identity and a reclaiming of autonomy for Indigenous stu-
dents and communities (p. 48). Ten years after the publication of Hampton’s list,
the Alaska Native Knowledge Network developed a set of cultural standards for
schools. Their list represents standards to which schools and districts should strive
to be culturally responsive:
1. A culturally-responsive school fosters the on-going participation of Elders
in all aspects of the schooling process.
2. A culturally-responsive school provides multiple avenues for students to
access the learning that is offered, as well as multiple forms of assessment
to demonstrate what they have learned.
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3. A culturally-responsive school provides opportunities for students to learn
in and/or about their heritage language.
4. A culturally-responsive school has a high level of involvement of profes-
sional staff who are of the same cultural background as the students with
whom they are working.
5. A culturally-responsive school consists of facilities that are compatible with
the community environment in which they are situated.
6. A culturally-responsive school fosters extensive on-going participation,
communication, and interaction between the school and community person-
nel. (Alaska Native Knowledge Network, 1998)
Both Hampton’s and the Alaska Native Knowledge Network’s lists provide help-
ful criteria for schools and districts to consider in their efforts at providing CRS to
Indigenous youth.
Other scholarship also provides guidance to schools and districts. In studies
looking at successful school- and district-wide culturally responsive initiatives, a
number of common characteristics emerge. One critical criterion is a strong and
supportive administrator who shares the vision to make CRS a reality. Such an
administrator must have a long-term commitment to the community, high expec-
tations for faculty and students, and the ability to advocate for faculty to try new
things in a risk-free school environment (McCarty, 1993a; Rhodes, 1994). A core
of primarily local school personnel, consistent financial support, and quality tech-
nical support are also needed at the school and district level for CRS to really take
hold and have a lasting impact in tribal communities (McCarty, 1993a). School cli-
mate is another critical element to successful CRS efforts. Powers’s (2006; Powers
et al., 2003) research suggests that school climate—which she defines as support-
ive personnel in a safe and drug-free environment—has a very large effect on
Indigenous students’ school success.
Scholarship on efforts in Hawaii and communities in the Navajo Nation pro-
vides examples of effective school-wide efforts at CRS. Projects such as Hawaii’s
Kamehameha Early Education Program (KEEP) and Arizona’s Rock Point, Rough
Rock, and Fort Defiance illustrate a number of common elements. For example,
schools and teachers must be viewed as the primary sites of change—rather than
maintaining the dominant and often discriminatory belief that it is the students who
must change (Jordan, 1995). The KEEP model stresses the importance of educa-
tors drawing on cross-disciplinary knowledge about students, culture, language,
and learning, as well as recognizing that smaller, incremental changes may be more
realistic within large, publicly funded school systems (Jordan, 1995; Vogt & Au,
1995). The KEEP project also highlights how critical it is for teachers to have sup-
port, including time, resources, and tools, to reflect on their practice, conduct
research within their own schools, and try new things with their students (Vogt &
Au, 1995). The Rough Rock example provides pointed evidence of the importance
of change being a grassroots effort that emanates from and has the support of the
local community (Begay, Dick, Estell, Estell, & McCarty, 1995; McCarty, 2002;
McLaughlin, 1995; Vogt & Au, 1995). Another important condition for success at
the school and district level is a reevaluation of faculty and staff roles, status, and
salaries so that hierarchies are minimized and locally specific cultures and lan-
guages are genuinely privileged (McLaughlin, 1995). And finally, regular program
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monitoring, consistent funding, and the support of outside collaborators have all
been shown to be important factors in school- and system-wide efforts at CRS for
Indigenous youth (Begay et al., 1995; Holm & Holm, 1995).
The support and buy-in of parents and the local tribal community are also crit-
ical and can assist schools in providing valuable resources and support for cultur-
ally responsive educational efforts (Holm & Holm, 1995; McLaughlin, 1995; Vogt
& Au, 1995; Ward, 1998). To ensure a critical mass of Indigenous students and
parent support, Butterfield (1994) suggests that Native students be brought
together in “schools of choice” or magnet schools in urban and racially diverse
areas. This, of course, would require collaboration among neighboring districts and
district leaders. On an even larger scale, Skinner (1999) recommends a “National
Native Curriculum Project” funded and supported by the U.S. Department of
Education as a mechanism for creating more accurate and culturally responsive
learning opportunities for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in schools
across the nation.
Educational standards and assessment represent two critical areas that must be
addressed in the present educational climate of NCLB, accountability, and stan-
dardization. As Lomawaima and McCarty (2006) explain,
as pressures for standardization have mounted, with no evidence that the
focus on standards and high-stakes testing improves educational outcomes or
opportunities for Native youth, many Indigenous communities have looked
to alternative institutional arrangements as a means of retaining control over
their schools and ensuring that the curriculum is infused with local linguistic
and cultural knowledge. (p. 159)
Some of the “alternative arrangements” that have been tried include charter
schools and the establishment of local educational standards by which tribal
schools are held accountable. The Assembly of Alaska Native Educators and the
Alaska Native Knowledge Network provide an illustrative example of a tribal
community (or, in this case, many tribal communities) coming together to create
its own set of culturally responsive educational standards. These standards are a
parallel set of standards meant to complement and add to the standards set by the
federal government. The Navajo Nation is also moving toward determining its
own culturally responsive and tribally specific educational standards, and other
tribal nations may be considering similar alternatives. As Kawagley (1999),
Apthorp (Apthorp et al., 2002), and others have noted, educational standards
should specify Indigenous and mainstream knowledge, norms, cultures, lan-
guages, and pedagogies as complementary goals. Standards-based reform has the
potential to be a powerful tool for tribal communities if these communities
become involved in developing culturally responsive standards and related assess-
ment procedures (Demmert, 2001).
In addition to the oft-cited test bias in most standardized forms of assessment,
Rhodes (1994) suggests that Indigenous youth from reservation communities have a
number of cultural predispositions that may further impede their success on standard-
ized tests. He cites translation issues, decision-making processes, and norms around
offering assistance as three possible factors affecting Native students’ performance
on standardized tests. He also explains that most standardized tests are timed and
require “quick answers, guessing, and risk-taking” but that many students raised in
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tribal communities have learned to make decisions more slowly and
accurately—a difference that may result in Indigenous students not completing much
of the test in the given amount of time (Rhodes, 1994, p. 158). And finally, Rhodes
cites Lamphere in noting that it is a cultural norm for some tribal communities to
offer help to those in need and that this norm may distract Indigenous students dur-
ing tests where individual work is required. Along these same lines, Solano-Flores
and Nelson-Barber (2001) have argued that “cultural validity” be recognized as a key
component of assessment design and implementation. Nelson-Barber and Trumbull
(2007) recently explained why cultural validity is so important:
because sociocultural groups create meaning from experience in culturally
determined ways, individuals have predisposed notions of how to respond to
questions, solve problems, and so forth. It follows that these predispositions
influence the ways in which they respond to test items. (p. 134)
Although standardized forms of assessment certainly may present difficulties for
students who are not members of the dominant culture, they also represent inap-
propriate and inaccurate ways of assessing knowledge in some Native language
immersion and culturally focused schools for Indigenous youth. This concern was
raised by a number of the Native adults in recent testimony at regional hearings on
NCLB sponsored by the National Indian Education Association (Beaulieu et al.,
2005). Thus, more authentic indicators of learning are needed in schools serving
Indigenous youth and are necessary for those providing CRS (Butterfield, 1994).
A number of scholars have suggested the use of “performance assessment” (Cleary
& Peacock, 1998; Fox, 1999; Grant & Gillespie, 1993) because it allows parents
and communities to be involved, is more consistent with norms in tribal commu-
nities, provides space for students to assess their own progress, and provides an
alternative way to demonstrate knowledge and skill.
A final consideration in thinking about educational assessment is for commu-
nities and schools to think carefully about to whom schools and educators ought to
be held accountable. Lomawaima and McCarty (2006) offer insight on this issue:
In contrast to test-driven accountability, some Native nations and states are
adopting formal approaches to assessment that hold schools and educators
accountable to the children, Native nations, and communities they serve.
Cochiti educator Joseph Suina (2004) notes that Native language teachers in
some New Mexico BIA and public schools feel “accountable to the tribal
council first” (p. 291). “I let my elders advisory group know how the kids are
doing,” one Native teacher reports; “they are the ones most interested and
concerned.” (p. 163)
This notion of accountability to tribal nations and communities first is very much
in line with the discussion above regarding tribal nations creating their own cultur-
ally responsive educational standards.
When policies, expectations, and entire school systems are centered around
tribal sovereignty and self-determination, antiracism, and Indigenous epistemolo-
gies, Native students and tribal communities will be better served. Accountability
measures, standardized tests, and countless other policies are too often developed
and sustained according to dominant, mainstream norms and interests. We must
center Indigenous norms and tribal nations’ interests if we hope to engage in CRS
for Indigenous youth.
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Case Studies of Successful Efforts at CRS
There are a number of examples in the scholarship of programs that have suc-
cessfully developed and implemented CRS for Indigenous youth. What many of
these case studies have in common is a “grass roots approach” in which local com-
munities play a key role in developing and sustaining the program, sustained finan-
cial support, and careful record keeping of both achievements and setbacks
(Demmert & Towner, 2003; Lipka & McCarty, 1994; McCarty, 1993a; Native
Education Initiative of the Regional Educational Labs, 1995). We will review some
of these examples here, but this is in no way meant to be an exhaustive list. We
have focused on programs that integrated culture, broadly speaking, and omitted
programs that are more focused on language issues and bilingual or language
immersion models. We realize this is a somewhat superficial divide, as language
and culture are so intimately related, but as with the rest of this article, the focus
remains on CRS for Indigenous youth who may or may not be second language
learners. At the same time, we agree with Hermes (2005, 2007) that there is great
potential in “teaching culture through language” because of the ways language
forces the centering of Indigenous epistemologies and may transform the culture
of schools serving Indigenous youth and tribal communities. Lomawaima and
McCarty’s (2006) recent book discusses a number of educational programs for
Indigenous youth that have focused more specifically on language issues, and we
would direct the reader interested in case studies of language programs to their
insightful work.
One of the most studied efforts at CRS for Indigenous youth is KEEP. This pro-
gram provided culturally responsive language arts and math instruction to Native
Hawaiian students, which led to higher reading and math achievement among stu-
dents in the program as compared to students not in the program (Apthorp et al.,
2002; Brenner, 1998; Lipka, 2002; Tharp & Yamauchi, 1994; Vogt et al., 1993).
When the techniques developed for KEEP were then attempted in a Navajo school-
ing context, similar results did not ensue—thus adding confidence to the conclu-
sion that pedagogy and curriculum must be developed with the local culture in
mind. Klump and McNeir (2005) note that the Center for Research on Education,
Diversity, and Excellence has developed a set of standards for effective pedagogy
based on KEEP findings as well as other successful case studies. These standards
include the following:
1. teachers and students working together,
2. developing language and literacy skills across the curriculum,
3. connecting lessons to students’ lives,
4. engaging students in challenging lessons, and
5. emphasizing dialogue over lectures (Klump & McNeir, 2005, p. 6).
Again, we see the same message that schooling must be connected to student lives,
engaging, and collaborative to be effective and culturally responsive for
Indigenous youth.
Lipka (1990) shares a case study of a successful Yup’ik first grade teacher. This
teacher, Mrs. Yanez, adapted her classroom to resemble the local community in
terms of communication styles, values, praised behaviors, and curricular content.
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She taught students “the 3 R’s while teaching them to be Yup’ik” (Lipka, 1990,
p. 25). Her success is highlighted in one particular lesson where she used a local
activity to teach literacy and math skills:
From the choice of activity, smelting, to presenting the lesson through demon-
strating and observation, to connecting the importance of the lesson to
community-based activities and kin, to the interactional style of the teacher all
contribute to contextualizing this lesson. The implications of this case are that
contextualizing classroom lessons and building on students’ prior knowledge
can positively affect students’ classroom performance. (Lipka, 1990, p. 18)
Many of the elements discussed throughout this review of the literature on CRS
for Indigenous youth are employed by Mrs. Yanez. Barnhardt (1990) also shares
an example of a school serving Yup’ik youth that integrates Yup’ik cultural val-
ues, employs a bilingual curriculum, and maintains strong community support.
Rock Point and Rough Rock community schools, both on the Navajo reserva-
tion, provide two examples that are cited often in the literature. Both have been
described as schools in which teachers are able to resist conventional schooling
and instead experiment with CRS in the community’s native language (Holm &
Holm, 1995; Lipka & McCarty, 1994). Outcomes of these efforts include Navajo
children learning Navajo at no expense to their knowledge of English, higher
scores on math and reading standardized tests, and more confidence and pride
among students (Lipka, 2002). Similar efforts and results have also been reported
at the Hualapai Bilingual/Bicultural Program in Peach Springs (Skinner, 1999;
Watahomigie & McCarty, 1994, 1997; Watahomigie & Yamamoto, 1987).
Klump and McNeir (2005) provide four case studies of exemplary culturally
responsive educational programs for Indigenous youth across the nation. The
Russian Mission School in rural Alaska integrates Native knowledge with acade-
mic standards through a hands-on curriculum centered around subsistence activi-
ties indigenous to the local community. Students engage in learning experiences
related to real activities that are of high interest to the community and draw on local
resources, materials, and knowledge. As Klump and McNeir explain,
traditional knowledge is carefully integrated with academic standards. A unit on
berry picking, for example, asks students to study and identify five types of
berries, learn where those berries are traditionally harvested, and then use the
berries to create traditional Yup’ik foods. The berry picking activity incorporates
benchmarks from science, health, and personal/social skills standards. Students
then demonstrate what they have learned through writing assignments and using
technology to create a PowerPoint presentation about making traditional foods.
“We’re very aggressive about using the standards,” notes Hull [a local educa-
tor]. “But we see Native culture as the pathway to that.” (p. 12)
The results of the Russian Mission School’s efforts have been positive: Enrollment
rates have gone up; crime in the community has gone down; stronger connections
between students, teachers, and elders have resulted; students are rediscovering
aspects of their cultural heritage; and subsistence activities have increased through-
out the community (Klump & McNeir, 2005).
The second case study provided by Klump and McNeir (2005) is also in Alaska.
The Tuluksak School has acquired a school-based dog-sled racing team as a way
to connect core curricular content and standards to culturally relevant, hands-on
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Culturally Responsive Schooling
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activities. The dogs are integrated into home economics, science, and even read-
ing, and the efforts have resulted in improved social and interpersonal skills among
students. The Tuluksak School has also focused on retaining and training faculty
because it traditionally has a very high teacher turnover rate. It provides a six-credit
professional development course on Yup’ik culture and language to all teachers,
training on instructional strategies for English language learners, and improved liv-
ing conditions in the local community. Here too, the efforts have paid off with a
much lower turnover rate among teachers. This case study highlights the need for
schools to assess their local needs and resources and develop strategies that are cul-
turally specific and responsive to changing conditions.
Two other case studies provided by Klump and McNeir (2005) also emphasize
the importance of teacher knowledge and sustained teacher training if schools
hope to provide CRS to Indigenous youth. On the Flathead Indian Reservation,
the Salish Kootenai College has provided sessions in which tribal elders teach
school faculty important aspects of the local culture and language. The goal is to
improve the cultural competency of teachers over a number of days so that they
retain the knowledge and implement it in their classrooms. And finally, the Title
VII Indian Education Program at the Warren School has developed culturally
responsive curricula and resources for teachers to use in their classrooms (Klump
& McNeir, 2005). The materials are integrated throughout the school’s curricu-
lum in every grade. Both of these examples point to the importance of teacher
knowledge, pedagogy, and curriculum in efforts to provide CRS to Indigenous
youth.
A number of similarities can be drawn from the previous examples—all of
which are highlighted throughout this article. These examples point to the impor-
tance of contextualizing or localizing curriculum and pedagogy so that it bears
some connection and resemblance to the knowledge and learning of the local com-
munity. The examples also illustrate how the knowledge, norms, values, resources,
and epistemologies of local communities must be viewed as legitimate and valu-
able and intimately integrated into schools. And finally, many of the examples
highlight the ways in which Indigenous students are engaged and learning school
knowledge at the same time and through experiences that also facilitate the learn-
ing of their local community knowledge, culture, and epistemology. Perhaps most
importantly, these case studies provide concrete, real-life examples of schooling
for self-determination.
Future Directions and Concluding Thoughts
What much of the previous discussion boils down to is that students will learn
better and be more engaged in schooling when they can make connections to it.
This is certainly neither new nor revolutionary information. But the fact that in
2008 we are still making this same argument and trying to convince educators of
the need to provide a more culturally responsive pedagogy for Indigenous students
indicates the pervasiveness and the persistence of the problem. Why is it that schol-
ars are still making similar arguments today that were being made in the early
1980s and even earlier in the Meriam Report? We should find this question both
frustrating but also, maybe, empowering. Perhaps it is frustrating because educa-
tors and policy makers have not taken the suggestions seriously and have contin-
ued schooling in a “business as usual” fashion (Beaulieu, 2006b; Sleeter & Grant,
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2003). Or maybe the repetition of this scholarship over the past three decades
should be viewed as empowering because there is such a vast body of literature
supporting the same conclusion, and maybe we finally have amassed enough sup-
porting research to convince educational leaders, policy makers, and financial offi-
cers that CRS needs a serious and sustained commitment. Unfortunately, Demmert
(2001) has noted persistent and significant resistance to the implementation of CRS
among most state and federal policymakers, and Klug and Whitfield (2003) have
noted that many teachers continue to believe that educational strategies that inte-
grate culture are inferior and remedial in nature. Our review of the literature, how-
ever, sheds light on a number of promising practices for schools and educators
working with Indigenous youth. The programs, strategies, and efforts are certainly
varied, but this may be necessary to provide effective CRS for the many diverse
tribal nations and Indigenous communities in the United States.
A number of scholars have noted the limited nature of conclusive evidence sup-
porting CRS for Indigenous youth. There is a plethora of scholarship consisting of
case studies, program descriptions, and anecdotal calls for CRS, but many have
noted that the causal links in this work are weak and that very few studies make
strong claims about how students’ academic performance is affected by efforts at
CRS (Apthorp et al., 2002; Demmert, 2001; Demmert & Towner, 2003; Klump &
McNeir, 2005; Lipka, 2002; Powers, 2006; Yazzie, 1999). Despite some of these
concerns, all of the recent reviews agree with the conclusion that “congruency
between the school environment and the language and culture of the community is
critical to the success of formal learning” (Demmert, 2001, p. 9). As Demmert and
Towner (2003) note, “what is needed, of course, is scientifically rigorous research
that is on target regarding culturally based education as an educational treatment
or program” (p. 31). Recently, however, the “Math in a Cultural Context: Lessons
Learned from Yup’ik Eskimo Elders” has provided strong empirical evidence that
the math performance of Native youth improves with this locally developed and
culturally responsive math curriculum (Lipka, Shary, Adams, & Sharp, 2007).
Clearly, more still needs to be known about the actual and causal links between
CRS and Indigenous students’ experiences and achievement in schools, but our
review supports many others in claiming that we do know that positive results are
often related to efforts at CRS. As Yazzie (1999) explains, “we can assume there
is a direct relationship among culture, curriculum, and learning in American Indian
schooling experience. But to what degree? We do not know” (p. 97). The in-depth
case studies that currently make up the bulk of research in this area are exactly what
is needed to reveal the complexity of CRS for Indigenous youth. Because the rela-
tionships between culture, curriculum, pedagogy, learning, and academic achieve-
ment are so complex, diffuse, interactive, and far reaching, equally complex and
far-reaching research designs are needed. Research that examines both preservice
teacher education and current schooling efforts in tribal communities and urban
schools serving Indigenous youth must be pursued.
Clearly, more and better research and teacher training are needed if we hope to
change the schooling experience for Indigenous youth in the United States. Still,
however, we are left with numerous questions after reviewing this literature and
thinking about the state of education for tribal communities in this country. For
instance, what does CRS look like in practice in various contexts? Some of the case
studies we described earlier begin to paint a picture, but more of this is certainly
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needed. How do we prepare all teachers (both Indigenous and non-) to engage in
CRS while also meeting the calls for standards and accountability (and is this even
possible)? Given the current context of NCLB, we must develop strategies for edu-
cators to meet both of these imperatives. Tribal communities want good schools
that provide an education that is culturally responsive and makes sense for their
goals of self-determination; although this certainly includes the “core curriculum,”
it includes much more. And finally, what (if anything) do the current NCLB stan-
dards provide for Indigenous communities? Is NCLB simply a return to assimila-
tionist educational agendas, or are there ways to think about how standards might
open up doors for engaging in CRS for Indigenous youth? We clearly need to make
the current calls for standardization problematic because of their lack of attention
to local and contextual issues and needs; this is a critical move along the path of
self-determination and culturally responsive education among tribal nations and
Indigenous communities.
Notes
1. We intentionally capitalize “Indigenous” in this article, although APA suggests
that indigenous is “correct.” Our intent here is to note the political nature of this word
and the role of human rights where Indigenous peoples across the world are concerned.
Although we limit our discussion in this article to Indigenous peoples of the United
States, we stand in solidarity with Indigenous peoples globally.
2. Throughout this article, we will use Alaska Native, AI/AN, Native or Native
American, and Indigenous interchangeably. We are fully aware of the wide range and
variation among the over 500 tribal nation groups in the United States. The purpose of
this article, however, is to offer an overview of the literature that addresses these groups
broadly.
3. We realize that there have been a multitude of master’s and doctoral theses that
address these topics, but we only include a few here because of the extensive nature of
materials available in other published forums. In no way is it our intent to discount the
power of these documents; rather, we are constrained by space issues in this article.
4. This is a highly contested area, and it becomes more elusive as tribal nations are
de-enrolling some of their citizens because of political disagreements. We recognize
the contested nature of these discussions; our point here is that another person in the
community must view an individual as being a member of that community for some-
one to be considered Indigenous.
5. Please see the International Work Group of Indigenous Affairs (2008) for a dis-
cussion of the definition of Indigenous peoples.
6. Although most of the literature references the goal of students becoming “bicul-
tural” and able to “walk in two worlds,” we are cautious in our use of this language
because of the way it obscures the complexity and multiplicity of the actual experiences
and goals of many Indigenous youth and tribal communities.
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Authors
ANGELINA E. CASTAGNO is an assistant professor in the College of Education at
Northern Arizona University. Her work focuses on Indigenous education, multicultural
education, and critical race and Whiteness studies.
BRYAN MCKINLEY JONES BRAYBOY is Borderlands Associate Professor of Educational
Leadership and Policy Studies at Arizona State University and President’s Professor of
Education at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. His work focuses on Indigenous educa-
tion, Indigenous knowledge systems, and the experiences of students, staff, and faculty of
color in institutions of higher education.
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