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Harvard Educational Review Vol. 84 No. 1 Spring 2014
Copyright © by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Critical Culturally Sustaining/
Revitalizing Pedagogy and Indigenous
Education Sovereignty
TERESA L. McCARTY
University of California, Los Angeles
TIFFANY S. LEE
University of New Mexico
In this article, Teresa L. McCarty and Tiffany S. Lee present critical culturally sus-
taining/revitalizing pedagogy as a necessary concept to understand and guide edu-
cational practices for Native American learners. Premising their discussion on the
fundamental role of tribal sovereignty in Native American schooling, the authors
underscore and extend lessons from Indigenous culturally based, culturally relevant,
and culturally responsive schooling. Drawing on Paris’s (2012) and Paris and
Alim’s (2014) notion of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), McCarty and Lee
argue that given the current linguistic, cultural, and educational realities of Native
American communities, CSP in these settings must also be understood as culturally
revitalizing pedagogy. Using two ethnographic cases as their foundation, they explore
what culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy (CSRP) looks like in these settings
and consider its possibilities, tensions, and constraints. They highlight the ways in
which implementing CSRP necessitates an “inward gaze” (Paris & Alim, 2014),
whereby colonizing influences are confronted as a crucial component of language
and culture reclamation. Based on this analysis, they advocate for community-based
educational accountability that is rooted in Indigenous education sovereignty.
We begin with the premise that education for Native American students is
unique in that it implicates not only issues of language, “race”/ethnicity, social
class, and other forms of social difference, but also issues of tribal sovereignty:
the right of a people to self-government, self-education, and self-determination,
including the right to linguistic and cultural expression according to local
languages and norms (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006; Wilkins & Lomawaima,
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2001). Tribal sovereignty is inherent, predating the U.S. Constitution, but is
also recognized within the Constitution and in treaties and case law. The cor-
nerstone of the tribal-federal relationship is a legally and morally codified rela-
tionship of trust responsibility that is both voluntary and contractual, and that
entails the “federal responsibility to protect or enhance tribal assets (includ-
ing fiscal, natural, human, and cultural resources) through policy decisions
and management actions” (Wilkins & Lomawaima, 2001, p. 65). Tribal sover-
eignty also inheres in international conventions that distinguish Indigenous
peoples as peoples rather than populations or national minorities, a status that
recognizes Indigenous rights to self-governance and to autochthonous lands
and lifeways (International Labour Organisation, 1989). Thus, although many
education issues facing Native Americans are similar to those of other minori-
tized communities, the experiences of Native American peoples have been
and are profoundly shaped by a unique relationship with the federal govern-
ment and by their status as tribal sovereigns. As Lomawaima (2000) writes,
“Sovereignty is the bedrock upon which any and every discussion of [Ameri-
can] Indian reality today must be built” (p. 3).
For education researchers working in Native American settings, culturally
based, culturally relevant, and culturally responsive schooling (all three terms
are commonly used in the literature) have long been tied to affirmations of
tribal sovereignty (Beaulieu, 2006; Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Lomawaima
& McCarty, 2006). This has been contested ground—a “battle for power”
(Lomawaima, 2000, p. 2)—as missionaries, federal employees within the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, and state departments of education have sought to
determine curricula, pedagogy, and medium-of-instruction policies for Native
American students. In this article we argue that tribal sovereignty must include
education sovereignty. Regardless of whether schools operate on or off tribal
lands, in the same way that schools are accountable to state and federal gov-
ernments, so too are they accountable to the Native American nations whose
children they serve.
With this as our anchoring premise, we take up Paris’s (2012) and Paris
and Alim’s (2014) call for culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), an approach
defined as having the “explicit goal [of] supporting multilingualism and multi-
culturalism in practice and perspective for students and teachers” (Paris, 2012,
p. 95). Building on foundational work on culturally responsive education by
Cazden and Leggett (1978) and on Ladson-Billings’s (1995a, 1995b) concep-
tion of culturally relevant pedagogy (see also Gay, 2010), Paris (2012) explains
that CSP goes beyond being responsive or relevant to the cultural experiences
of minoritized youth in that it “seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—
linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of
schooling” (p. 95). Paris further explains that CSP democratizes schooling by
“supporting both traditional and evolving ways of cultural connectedness for
contemporary youth” (p. 95).
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The notion of CSP affords the opportunity to extend this conversation to
new realms. Today, Native communities are in a fight for cultural and linguistic
survival in which Paris and Alim’s (2014) question—“What are we seeking to
sustain?”—takes on heightened meaning. As Brayboy (2005) notes, Indigenous
peoples’ desires for “tribal sovereignty, tribal autonomy, self-determination,
and self-identification” (p. 429) are interlaced with ongoing legacies of colo-
nization, ethnicide, and linguicide. Western schooling has been the crucible
in which these contested desires have been molded, impacting Native peoples
in ways that have separated their identities from their languages, lands, and
worldviews (see Reyhner & Eder, 2004). As a consequence, we argue that in
Native American contexts, CSP must be understood to include culturally revi-
talizing pedagogy.
We propose critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy (CSRP) as an
approach designed to address the sociohistorical and contemporary contexts
of Native American schooling. We define this approach as having three com-
ponents. First, as an expression of Indigenous education sovereignty, CSRP
attends directly to asymmetrical power relations and the goal of transforming
legacies of colonization. Smith (2013) points out that this involves a “knowing-
ness of the colonizer” as well as “a struggle for self-determination” (p. 8).
Second, CSRP recognizes the need to reclaim and revitalize what has been
disrupted and displaced by colonization. Since for many Indigenous com-
munities this increasingly centers on the revitalization of vulnerable mother
tongues, we focus on language education policy and practice. As Moll and
Ruiz (2005) observe, a core element of educational sovereignty is “the extent
to which communities feel themselves to be in control of their language” (p.
299). While language education in Indigenous settings is informed by inter-
national research and practice in bilingual education (e.g., García, 2009), by
virtue of its revitalizing goals it requires novel approaches to second language
learning. Finally, Indigenous CSRP recognizes the need for community-based
accountability. Respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and the importance of car-
ing relationships—what Brayboy and colleagues (2012, p. 436) call “the four
Rs”—are fundamental to community-based accountability. To borrow from
Brayboy et al.’s (2012, p. 435) discussion of critical Indigenous research meth-
odologies, CSRP serves the needs of Indigenous communities as defined by
those communities.
Our ethnographic work with Native American–serving schools in the U.S.
Southwest serves as our lens into these processes. We begin with background
information on the demographic, educational, and sociolinguistic context
that frames the work of these schools. Then, using two case examples, we
explore the ways in which educators employ CSRP to destabilize dominant
policy discourses, even as these educators operate, in their words, “under the
radar screen” of dominant-policy surveillance. We selected these cases to illu-
minate the complexities and contradictions of practicing CSRP in schools that
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aim to exert educational control while confronting colonial influences embed-
ded in curriculum, pedagogy, standards, policies, and Indigenous communi-
ties themselves. We conclude with a vision for a democratic policy orientation
that resists reductive pedagogies and engages both the possibilities and the
tensions within CSRP.
Three key questions guide our discussion:
• What does CSRP look like in practice?
• What are its possibilities, tensions, and challenges?
• How can community-based CSRP work in service to the goals of Indig-
enous education sovereignty, which include what Paris (2012) calls “the
democratic project of schooling?” (p. 95)
Setting the Educational and Sociolinguistic Scene:
A “Race Against Time”?
In 2012, 5.2 million people in the United States self-identified as American
Indian or Alaska Native (1.7 percent of the enumerated population), and
1.2 million people self-identified as either Native Hawaiians or “Other Pacific
Islanders” (.4 percent of the enumerated population) (Hixson, Hepler, &
Kim, 2012; Norris, Vines, & Hoeffel, 2012). These figures represent 566 fed-
erally recognized tribes and 617 reservations and Alaska Native villages. How-
ever, the 2010 census also showed that 67–92 percent of American Indians
and Alaska Natives reside outside of tribally held lands (Norris et al., 2012, pp.
12–13). This demographic is significant because a growing number of Native
American children attend off-reservation public schools.
The more than 700,000 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawai-
ian students who attend K–12 schools in the United States are served by a
plethora of school systems: federal Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools;
tribal or community-controlled schools under BIE purview but operated by
local Native school boards; state-supervised public schools, including charter
schools; and private and parochial schools (National Caucus of Native Ameri-
can State Legislators, 2008). Nearly 90 percent of Native American students
attend public schools, and in more than half of these schools Native students
constitute less than a quarter of total school enrollments (Brayboy, Faircloth,
Lee, Maaka, & Richardson, forthcoming; Moran & Rampey, 2008). These
public and often off-reservation schools are much less likely to have Native
American teachers or teachers with Indigenous cultural competency (Moran
& Rampey, 2008), which complicates but does not vitiate the possibilities for
CSRP as an expression of Indigenous educational sovereignty.
Adding to the complexity of schooling for Native American learners is the
diversity of Native American languages spoken—170, according to recent esti-
mates (Siebens & Julian, 2011)—and the simultaneous threats to that diver-
sity. In the 2010 census, only one in ten young people ages five to seventeen
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reported speaking a Native American language (Siebens & Julian, 2011). The
causes of a community-wide shift from an Indigenous or minoritized language
to a dominant one are multiple, but in this case they are directly linked to
federally attempted ethnicide and linguicide—what Kenyan literary scholar
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (2009) describes as “conscious acts of language liquida-
tion” (p. 17). Beginning in the 1800s and lasting well into the twentieth cen-
tury, such policies were carried out through punitive English-only instruction
in distant boarding schools (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006; Reyhner & Eder,
2004; Skutnabb-Kangas & Dunbar, 2010). “While trust responsibility and sov-
ereignty were supposed to be the guiding principles of Indian education,”
writes Brayboy (2005), “‘appropriate’ education was . . . that which eradicated
Indianness or promoted Anglo values and ways of communicating” (p. 437).
These policies have had multigenerational impacts, one of which, say Hermes,
Bang, and Marin (2012), is that many Native children and their families “have
no choice about the language they use in everyday speech”; school, work, and
“routine daily practices occur in the English domain” (p. 398). This places
Indigenous communities in what some scholar-activists have called a “race
against time,” making language revitalization a paramount educational goal
(Benally & Viri, 2005; Sims, 2005).
Native American communities have taken a variety of approaches to their
language reclamation and revitalization efforts. For instance, many revitaliza-
tion programs operate outside of schools—in family homes, neighborhoods,
and communal settings (see Hermes et al., 2012; Hinton, 2013; Romero-Little,
Ortiz, McCarty, & Chen, 2011; Warner, 1999). Many programs are situated
within reservation settings, but as Hermes and King (2013) point out, “there
is active demand for and interest in language revitalization” (p. 127) in diverse
urban areas as well. Indeed, some of the most successful Native American lan-
guage and culture revitalization programs (e.g., Hawaiian) have operated
for decades in large urban settings. Each revitalization effort must be under-
stood according to locally defined needs, goals, and available material and
human resources. What is shared among these projects and their personnel
is a strongly held sentiment that Indigenous languages constitute invaluable
repositories of distinctive knowledges that children have a right to and need
for full participation in their communities, and that “are central to self-deter-
mination and sovereignty” (Sims, 2005, p. 105). To explore these issues in
greater depth, we turn now to our cases.
Introducing the Cases
We developed the two case studies in this section based on our individual
research at each of these study sites. Both cases need to be understood in
light of persistent disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes for
Native American learners. Biennual national studies of American Indian and
Alaska Native schooling continue to document ongoing and even widening
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gaps between the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) per-
formance of Native American students and their White mainstream peers
(NCES, 2012). Similar disparities are found in graduation rates, postsecond-
ary completion, and disproportionate representation in special education
(Castagno & Brayboy, 2008). This national database also documents limited
instruction in Native language and culture content (NCES, 2012). Further,
although Native students increasingly enter school speaking English as a first
language, they often speak varieties of English influenced by their Native lan-
guages and are subjected to school labeling practices that stigmatize them as
“limited English proficient” (McCarty, 2013).
Thus, despite the shift to English, Native students are not, as a group, expe-
riencing greater success in school. “Schools are clearly not meeting the needs
of Indigenous students,” Castagno and Brayboy (2008) conclude, “and change
is needed if we hope to see greater parity in these (and other) measures of aca-
demic achievement” (p. 942). The cases here represent schools and educators
that have determinedly embarked on this path of needed change.
Since 2005, Tiffany Lee has been a researcher, coordinator, parent, and gov-
erning council member at the first case study site, the Native American Com-
munity Academy (NACA).1 In this capacity she has observed and been involved
in the successes and challenges of NACA to fulfill its mission while adhering
to state mandates and regulations for operations. Her research at NACA took
place between 2008 and 2010 and involved in-depth interviews, focus groups,
and recorded daily observations of language teaching. Lee undertook one com-
ponent of this research, and she and her colleagues undertook another as part
of a larger statewide study of American Indian education (Jojola et al., 2011).
Between 2009 and 2011, Teresa McCarty conducted research at the second
case study site, Puente de Hózhǫ́ (PdH). This research was part of a larger
national study undertaken in response to Executive Order 13336, which called
for research to evaluate promising practices for enhancing Native American
students’ academic achievement, including the role of Native languages and
cultures in successful student outcomes (Brayboy, 2010). Data for the PdH
study included extended ethnographic observations of classroom instruction
and Native teachers’ monthly curriculum meetings; individual and focus group
interviews with key program personnel, parents, and youth; document analy-
sis (e.g., school mission statements, teachers’ lesson plans, and student writing
samples); and photographs intended to capture how the local Native language
and culture were represented in the visual environment of the school.2
In both cases, our methodology was ethnographic and praxis driven, with
the specific intent of collaborating with local stakeholders in their efforts to
effect positive change. As a guiding research ethic, we foregrounded com-
munity interests based on respect, relationship building, reciprocity, and
accountability to participants’ communities (Brayboy et al., 2012). We regu-
larly shared qualitative data and our interpretations of them with program
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participants. We also collected state-required achievement data to supplement
our qualitative data.
NACA: Sustaining “the Seeds”
Someone planted the seed for me to start learning my language, or
something did that for me, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to try
and do that for these students.
—Mr. Yuonihan, NACA Lakota language teacher
The Native American Community Academy is a state-funded public charter
school serving middle and high school students in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
a city of approximately 500,000 in a state that is home to twenty-two sovereign
Native American nations. Charter schools have played a growing role in Native
peoples’ efforts to gain control over their children’s education (Ewing & Fer-
rick, 2012; Fenimore-Smith, 2009; Kana‘iaupuni, 2008). NACA is an example
of this trend as it embodies Indigenous education sovereignty and CSRP. The
school’s founders opted to propose NACA as a charter school because charter
status afforded greater autonomy and flexibility than a typical public school
and enabled the school to provide an academic focus tailored to community
needs and interests. Although NACA gained some degree of control, it must
still adhere to many state regulations, including state-determined monolin-
gual norms monitored by English standardized tests. Schools like NACA offer
state-mandated courses, including three years of math and two years of lan-
guage, and their teachers must be state certified. The challenge for charter
schools whose missions are connected to community, culture, and wellness is
to implement an educational approach that simultaneously meets their own
goals and the requirements of the state.
Approximately 5,500 Native American students are served by the Albu-
querque public schools. These students represent Native nations within and
outside of New Mexico. Additionally, many students are of mixed ethnic and
racial heritage (e.g., Navajo/Cochiti Pueblo; Lakota/Anglo; Isleta Pueblo/
Latino/a). The student body at NACA represents diversity within communities
of color. Overall, NACA students come from sixty different Native nations and
sixteen various non-Native ethnic and racial backgrounds. Ninety-five percent
of the student body identifies as Native American (Anpao Duta Flying Earth,
NACA associate executive director, personal communication, December 17,
2013). As more Native people move outside their Native nation’s boundaries,
this population of school-aged children continues to grow, making schools
such as NACA particularly noteworthy sites to look for examples of CSRP and
Native American educational sovereignty in action.
In the fall of 2006, NACA opened its doors to approximately sixty students
in sixth and seventh grades. Today it serves approximately four hundred stu-
dents in grades 6–12. With the goals of serving the local Native communities
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and offering a unique approach to Indigenous education, the school inte-
grates an academic curriculum, a wellness philosophy, and Native culture and
language. NACA’s mission is to provide a holistic or well-rounded education
focused on “strengthening communities by developing strong leaders who are
academically prepared, secure in their identity and healthy” (NACA, 2012a).
The school’s wellness emphasis follows Indigenous educational philosophies
of holistic attention to students’ intellectual, physical, emotional, and social
development within a community and cultural context (Cajete, 2000).
In their effort to attend to the mission of the school, teachers and staff
have identified core values related to the mission—respect, responsibility,
community/service, culture, perseverance, and reflection—and expressed an
expectation that students and staff will display behavior and attitudes that rep-
resent each core value. These core values reflect those held in NACA students’
tribal communities. NACA staff members have designed activities to integrate
those values into their curriculum and teaching methods. Such practices are
intended to instill a foundation for students’ cultural identity and are part of
the implementation of CSRP. As one example, a community member, Carrie,
discussed a weekly morning ritual that draws on Native songs and communal
gathering practices to incorporate this custom into the school: “They gather
in a circle on Monday mornings, and they begin with the drum. They actually
sing together . . . And that’s so important to have and so I think that . . . makes
it feel like it’s a community and it’s unified.”
The challenge for teaching values such as respect at NACA has been to con-
front generalizations and stereotypes of those values. Native American people
have often been portrayed as one culture and one people (Diamond, 2010),
essentializing the diverse beliefs and traditions practiced by Native peoples.
NACA students come from diverse Indigenous and other ethnic backgrounds.
Teaching to each respective student’s community’s values is unfeasible. Con-
sequently, maintaining the integrity of new school-based rituals and traditions
for exemplifying school values becomes a complex and constantly negotiated
endeavor. In some cases, the teachers, staff, and parents utilize specific tra-
ditions of particular communities. In other instances, school-based practices
are jointly created by teachers, students, and staff, who are mindful of avoid-
ing any essentializing and stereotyping of Indigenous peoples. For example,
the morning circle that Carrie described is an adapted practice based on tra-
ditions of many Native communities. The school’s associate executive direc-
tor discussed it in this way: “The morning circle is an extension of traditional
protocols for openings/closings where blessings, songs, and information dis-
semination happens in a circle” (Anpao Duta Flying Earth, personal com-
munication, December 11, 2013). CSRP at NACA requires careful attention
to the diversity of Indigenous peoples and fostering practices that build and
strengthen community, including the NACA community.
Building community through NACA’s core values occurs in the classroom as
well. Some teachers report using assessment practices that respond to a holis-
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tic view of students and their performance as a way to create meaningful con-
nections to the school’s core values. Lakota language teacher Mr. Yuonihan
describes assessing more than students’ content knowledge. He also focuses
on their development as caring and empathetic human beings and on the
quality of relationships they have with one another. He said, “Another way
that I evaluate if they’re receiving some of the things that I’m teaching them is
how they treat each other out here when they’re not in class.” He looks for his
students to demonstrate respect, compassion, and helpful behavior with oth-
ers, as these are also attributes associated with the way the Native language is
used and how Native people treat one another. Likewise, he strives to create a
reciprocal and respectful relationship with his students. He described how he
explains this to his students:
The relationship that we’re gonna have in this classroom—I’m gonna treat you
like one of my nieces or nephews, so that it does not end once we are out of this
class. It does not end once you’ve graduated from NACA. We’re always gonna
have that relationship, and I expect you guys to acknowledge me and I will
acknowledge you like that.
Indigenous languages are inseparable from this educational approach. Lan-
guage is vital to cultural continuity and community sustainability because it
embodies both everyday and sacred knowledge and is essential to ceremonial
practices. Language is also significant for sustaining Indigenous knowledge
systems, cultural identifications, spirituality, and connections to land (Benally
& Viri, 2005; Benjamin, Pecos, & Romero, 1996). Additionally, strong Native
language and culture programs are highly associated with ameliorating per-
sistent educational inequities between Native students and their non-Native
peers by enhancing education relevancy, family and community involvement,
and cultural identity (Arviso & Holm, 2001; Lee, 2009, 2014; McCardle &
Demmert, 2006a, 2006b; McCarty, 2012).
Reflecting students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds, NACA offers
three locally prevalent Native languages for middle and high school students:
Navajo, Lakota, and Tiwa. While students want more local languages to be
taught (such as Keres and Tewa, languages spoken in nearby Pueblo com-
munities), NACA respects the sovereign authority of the local communities
and takes seriously its commitment to community accountability. Hence, the
school seeks permission from local communities to teach their languages.
Keres, for example, has seven dialects representing seven different Pueblo
nations. Teaching Keres involves collaborating and gaining permission from
each of those communities.
Teaching Native languages to students is a culturally sustaining and revital-
izing practice. NACA language teachers make clear the importance of hav-
ing autonomy and flexibility for teaching cultural values that instill cultural
identity through language-based methods. Mr. Awanyanke stated that these
teachings “set a spark inside of [students] to have them want to learn more.”
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Teaching the language is also associated with creating a sense of belonging for
students—a way to strengthen their cultural identities, pride, and knowledge
of the cultural protocols associated with being Navajo or Lakota or Isleta (Tiwa
language). As Navajo mentor teacher Ms. Begay noted, through this pedagogy
educators are able to teach students
the etiquette of when someone comes to visit you, how you tell them come in,
wóshdéé’, and they shake your hands, and you also address them by who they are
to you. If it’s an aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa, then you always ask them to have
a seat and offer them a drink and something to eat.
This aspect of teaching Native languages connects deeply to local cultural
communities. The teachers engage in CSRP as they teach the protocols of
using the language, rather than simply language mechanics, and empha-
size the connections among language, culture, and identity. NACA teachers
believe it is their responsibility to pass on the language. They share the view
that schools must be able to accommodate, respect, and value this high level
of community-oriented education. Ms. Tsosie, for instance, discussed the value
of using Native-language immersion as a community-oriented and more natu-
ral process for learning Navajo: “When you say immersion, it ties back to your
homeland, your environment. And it makes more sense when you do it in that
type of a setting/environment, than, like, in a classroom.”
Language and culture revitalization also requires adapting to nontradi-
tional teaching methods and practices. For example, the Navajo language
teachers use teacher/mentor pairing where two teachers co-instruct. They also
utilize Situational Navajo teaching methods, which were developed specifically
for language education and involve teachers in creating everyday situations
(i.e., cooking, cleaning) to foster conversations in the language that require
verb use and physical responses (Holm, Silentman, & Wallace, 2003). Both
the Navajo and Lakota NACA teachers received training in these methods.
Teaching Native languages is particularly challenging in a language immer-
sion environment where students may not have strong Native-language sup-
port at home; as a consequence, when students do not comprehend what the
teacher is saying, it is difficult to “stay in” the Native language. NACA teach-
ers have found the teacher/mentor pairing extremely helpful in surmounting
this challenge. As Ms. Tsosie commented, “I think it’s nice if you co-teach with
another teacher; it’s so much easier just to stay in the language. But if it’s just
you, you feel like . . . I mean sometimes I feel like I’m talking to myself.” Simi-
larly, Ms. Begay believes collaborative language immersion teaching strength-
ens teachers’ language abilities: “I think we can get frustrated easily, staying
in the languages if you’re all by yourself. But if you co-teach with someone, I
think it’s a little easier. At least you can bounce ideas off of one another.”
One of the prime tensions in implementing CSRP at NACA is the need to
address monolingual, monocultural norms embedded in standardized testing
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teresa l. mccarty and tiffany s. lee
while prioritizing community-based values (Paris & Alim, 2014). As is well doc-
umented in the literature, in the era of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), scores
on English standardized tests can have life-altering consequences (Valenzuela,
Prieto, & Hamilton, 2007). At NACA, students take the state-required courses
in math, English reading and writing, science, and social studies. Teachers and
administrators create a curriculum that integrates Native perspectives through
these and other courses while attending to state standards. The Navajo Govern-
ment course, for example, meets social studies requirements, the Native Lit-
erature course enhances reading and writing skills, and a required course on
New Mexico history emphasizes Native people’s experiences and perspectives.
School data indicate that NACA is making progress according to dominant-
society standards: in 2011–2012, eighth graders demonstrated a 21 percent
increase in their math scores, a 20 percent increase in reading scores, and
a 9 percent increase in their writing scores from the previous year (NACA,
2012b). The student retention rate is above 95 percent (Kara Bobroff, NACA
executive director, personal communication, July 29, 2012), and students in
the first graduating class of 2012 were admitted into a multitude of Ivy League,
private, and public universities (NACA, 2012c).
Measuring outcomes defined by its mission and community interests is a
challenge for NACA. Standardized tests do not assess students’ levels of well-
ness, the strength of their cultural identity, and their commitment to their
communities. Additionally, the NACA community recognizes that the state
does not use the school’s goals to determine whether or not NACA remains
open. The tension between community and dominant-policy goals is a source
of continued debate and discussion among the NACA school community, and
a topic of frequent discussion during professional development days (Kara
Bobroff, NACA executive director, personal communication, April 24, 2013).
When asked how NACA is doing at providing an Indigenous education as they
define it, one staff member remarked,
It’s what we strive for, but I think we aren’t there yet; too hard to figure out
how to do both an Indigenous education and a college prep education, espe-
cially when they are at odds, like by defining students by test scores and grades.
(NACA, 2013, p. 11)
In citing NACA as one of our cases, we recognize the perils of valorizing
charter schools as a panacea and the urgent need for public reinvestment in
underresourced noncharter public schools. In light of the achievement dis-
parities for Native American students, and for Indigenous communities that
have experienced centuries of educational malpractice, Native-operated char-
ter schools represent one option for reversing that history (Lomawaima &
McCarty, 2006). As we see in this case, schools such as NACA can open new
spaces for experiential and collaborative teaching and learning by integrating
Native American languages and knowledges throughout the curriculum and
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by honoring community decision-making power in the languages taught at
the school. This exemplifies community-based accountability. One crucial out-
come at NACA has been the self-empowerment of teachers—their recognition
and assertion of their inherent power as Indigenous education practitioners—
as they make a difference in revitalizing Native languages through culturally
sustaining practices. The significant factor here is that NACA honors teachers’
ideas and supports strategies that often fall outside of mainstream schooling
practices.
Puente de Hózhǫ́: “Fighting for Our Kids”
We’re fighting for our kids to have the right to learn their language and
culture! —PdH teacher
In Flagstaff, Arizona—a city of modest size near the western border of the
Navajo Nation—a trilingual public magnet school, Puente de Hózhǫ́, serves
Native and non-Native students in grades K–5. Like New Mexico, Arizona is
home to twenty-two Indigenous nations and is a state in which more than a
quarter of the population is Latino/a. Unlike New Mexico, Arizona is one of
thirty-one U.S. states with an English-only statute in place. The Arizona law
requires that students identified as English language learners be instructed
solely in English. PdH explicitly aims to provide a multilingual, multicultural
alternative to state-level monolingual, monocultural policies.
The name Puente de Hózhǫ́ signals the school’s vision to connect and val-
orize the three predominant ethnic and linguistic groups of the local com-
munity—Spanish and Mexican American traditions, Navajo (Diné) language
and culture, and English and Anglo American traditions (Fillerup, 2011). As
described by school founder Michael Fillerup (2005), in a district in which 26
percent of students are American Indian (primarily Navajo) and 21 percent
are Latino/a, “local educators were searching for innovative ways to bridge the
seemingly unbridgeable” equity gap experienced by poor children and chil-
dren of color (p. 15).
Begun in 2001 as a kindergarten program housed in three vacant high
school classrooms, PdH has grown into a separate public elementary school
serving approximately 450 students. As a public magnet school, PdH enrolls
students across a range of ethnic and social class backgrounds. Most of the
school’s approximately 120 Native American students, who comprise 27 per-
cent of the school enrollment, are Navajo, although, like students at NACA,
many come from racially and ethnically mixed family backgrounds. One bilin-
gual teacher described this diversity:
They are half Navajo/half White, half Navajo/half Hispanic, half Navajo/half
Black, half Hopi/half Navajo. You know, they come in all kinds and it’s life—it’s
real. That is how life is. That is the way society is. We are all intermixed and inter-
mingled, and that is the way the real world is and that makes it beautiful.
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Virtually all of the Native students at PdH speak English as their primary
language. While many come from the local urban area and reservation border
areas, Native teachers note that some come from the “heart of the [Navajo]
reservation,” seeking the “language-rich, Navajo-English instruction” that the
school provides. As one recent graduate explained, “My parents really wanted
me to learn Navajo so I can just know how it’s spoken and talk to my grand-
mother and grandfather while they’re still around, and the elders.” Hence,
the school’s voluntary and enrichment-oriented program is designed to add
an additional language and cultural perspective to students’ existing cultural
and communicative repertoires.
PdH students enroll in one of two programs: a conventional Spanish-English
dual-language program for native English- and native Spanish-speaking stu-
dents or a Navajo immersion program for English-dominant Native American
students. In the Navajo-medium program, kindergartners receive approxi-
mately 80 percent of their instruction in Navajo, with English instructional
time increased until a fifty-fifty balance is attained in grades 4 and 5.
Language often plays a different role with distinct meanings for members
of various cultural communities. This reality is reflected in the school’s lan-
guage programming, which in turn reflects the expressed desires of Diné and
Latino/a parents for a culturally sustaining and revitalizing educational alter-
native. As Fillerup (2011) explains, “Spanish-speaking parents wanted their
children to not only learn English but to become literate in Spanish and con-
tinue to develop their Spanish language skills”; Diné parents “wanted their
children to learn the Diné language” as a heritage (second) language (p.
148). Following a series of community meetings, the district established an
experimental program designed to respond to the expressed needs and aspi-
rations of its multi-ethnic constituency.
In practice, students in both programs interact regularly in art, physical
education, music, and a host of school activities designed to cultivate their
multilingual, multicultural competence, such as song, dance, and theatrical
performances for the community and science and art fairs. As one PdH edu-
cator explained:
We merge multiple worlds in our school. You have Navajo kids going to a [school]
meeting and introducing themselves [in Navajo], but we also prepare them for
the larger culture. Since we have native Spanish- and English-speaking students,
they are all being prepared for a further world, the global world. We are prepar-
ing them for this. Many people live in the world and view it differently. They have
many languages, and students don’t feel threatened [about their own].
Like other Native American language revitalization efforts, PdH grows out
of a larger Indigenous self-determination movement. In particular, its ped-
agogic approach has been influenced by Māori-medium schooling in Aote-
aroa/New Zealand and Hawaiian-medium schooling in Hawai‘i (Hill & May,
2011; Wilson & Kamanā, 2011; Wong, 2011). The goal has been to develop
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an instructional program that “harmonizes without homogenizing”—a school
“where each child’s language and culture [are] regarded not as a problem to be
solved but as an indispensable resource, the very heart and soul of the school
itself” (Fillerup, 2008, para 3). In the Diné program, Navajo content and ways
of knowing are integrated throughout the curriculum. “At Puente,” Fillerup
noted in an interview, “culture is a daily experience integrated throughout the
day.” This is signaled at the school entrance, where expansive student-created
exterior wall murals depict the Navajo girls’ puberty ceremony (Kinaaldá) and
the red-rock canyon lands of Diné Bikeyah (Navajo Country). Throughout the
school, the print environment displays vivid images of academic content in
Navajo, Spanish, English, and other languages reflected in students’ multicul-
tural studies. As one educator noted, “There is a whole feeling about the place
when you come here . . . It’s a place that feels like home.”
For many PdH educators, the approach to language and culture at the
school, which we suggest exemplifies CSRP, opened “ideological and imple-
mentational space” (Hornberger, 2006) whereby their heritage language and
culture could be reclaimed. One teacher reflected:
I think working as a bilingual teacher here at PdH really opened my eyes to how
important my language and culture are . . . I started to realize I have a beautiful
culture . . . and I finally started to see the person that I am . . . and it just opened
up a whole new world for me. And I think that is when I fell in love with my cul-
ture and my language.
Navajo culture is integrated into the school curriculum in several ways.
Four overarching themes organize curriculum content: earth and sky, health,
living things, and family and community (Fillerup, 2011). A Navajo teacher
described what the family and community theme looked like in her classroom:
[We] have monthly themes, we incorporate sciences . . . social studies . . . math
. . . So our first month will be about . . . self-esteem—it is more of your clan-
ship, your kinship, who you are, where you come from . . . “You are of the Diné
[Navajo] people, you should be proud of who you are and how you present your-
self as a Navajo person.” That’s all intertwined with [cultural] stories as well.
Another teacher stated:
The culture is embedded in the social studies; we learn about the types of dwell-
ings, and a big part of that is the hooghan [a traditional home and ceremonial
dwelling] . . . and there are stories about it; what do you see in a hooghan, what
does a hooghan look like . . . There are many activities that go along with the sea-
sons . . . [and] Navajo songs.
During the period of study described here, the song Shí Naashá—liter-
ally “I Walk About” but translated culturally and historically by teachers as
“I’m Alive”—was prominent in every classroom. The song is both a constant
reminder and a commemoration of the Navajo people’s survival and return to
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teresa l. mccarty and tiffany s. lee
Diné Bikeyah from a federal concentration camp where thousands were incar-
cerated and perished between 1863 and 1868. Teachers incorporate the song
script into social studies and language arts lessons centered on Navajo history.
Reflecting a critical pedagogical stance, one teacher remarked, “The song tells
the story of how our people actually survived.”
As this example suggests, PdH educators understand their work as counter-
ing what López (2008) calls the “subaltern” condition of Indigenous school-
ing, a reference to the repressive, compensatory focus of colonial language
policies. This critical decolonizing stance also characterizes CSRP. Teachers
speak of their practice as a reversal of past pedagogic practices, including
their own. For example, when asked if her children spoke Navajo, one Navajo
teacher explained her choice to socialize them in English, her second lan-
guage: “When I was a young parent, I really didn’t know what it meant . . . to
value the language that you were raised in . . . we were just barely getting over
the shame of being Native American . . . that we were minorities and we were
not of value.” PdH represents a significant change in this approach. One edu-
cator stated:
This school is predicated on [the assumption] that learning more than one lan-
guage is a good thing . . . We know English is the dominant language, but philo-
sophically we believe that all three languages should be on equal terms . . . This
is what we strive for.
“We have to tell the parents, this is not what they were used to in their own
schooling,” said another PdH educator.
PdH teachers’ experiences testify to the painful self-critique out of which
culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy is born. In their own school-
ing, all five Diné teachers in the study had experienced the forced severing of
their heritage language. “I was raised during the time . . . when the Navajo lan-
guage was suppressed,” one teacher recalled. “You couldn’t speak that in the
boarding school.” Another teacher related the experience of being mocked
for using Navajo in school as a child: “So from then on I was like, okay, I’m just
going to stop . . . using [Navajo] . . . because it’s not something that [White
teachers] want to hear.” Yet another teacher related that she studied Spanish
and French in high school, even though her school offered a Navajo-language
elective: “I didn’t even take Navajo because I didn’t want people to know that
I could speak Navajo.”
Like parents at NACA, PdH parents want their children to do well in
school by dominant-language and -culture standards. As one Diné teacher
explained, “If we are only emphasizing bilingualism, that is just part of the
picture and we are not doing our jobs. We want our kids to do well academi-
cally, too.” This is also part of the school’s efforts to be accountable to the
community it serves. Given the present education policy environment, this
means that the school must address high-stakes federal accountability man-
dates; keeping test scores “respectable,” Fillerup (2005) observes, “keep[s]
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the NCLB wolves from the door” and enables PdH educators to fulfill the
school’s mission (pp. 15, 16).
PdH has consistently met state and federal academic standards. In 2008,
Native students at PdH surpassed their Native American peers in Eng-
lish mainstream programs by 14 percent and 21 percent in grades 3 and 4,
respectively. In 2009, fifth-grade Native students outperformed their peers in
English mainstream programs by 11 percent in reading and 12 percent in
mathematics. Sixth-grade Native students outperformed their peers in English
mainstream programs by 17 percent in mathematics, and PdH students “out-
performed their English-only peers across all grade levels in writing” (Fillerup,
2011, p. 163). In recent years, PdH has ranked among the highest-performing
schools in the district, surpassing schools serving more affluent, native Eng-
lish-speaking student populations (Michael Fillerup, personal communica-
tion, April 30, 2012). Importantly, and reflective of international research
on second-language acquisition (Cummins, 2000; García, 2009; Holm, 2006;
Hornberger & McKay, 2011; May, Hill, & Tiakawai, 2004), the students with
the strongest performance on English assessments began attending the school
in kindergarten and had the longest experience in the Navajo language and
culture program.
But members of the PdH community view the school’s impacts as extend-
ing well beyond the scores on English-language tests. As one teacher noted,
“Hearing parents comment on how much their kids have learned or that their
child may be the only one of all the cousins that [is] speaking to their grand-
parents [in Navajo]—this tells us that we are doing something [worthwhile].”
“Most parents don’t speak Navajo,” another teacher explained, and “I may be
it,” the only source for learning the Navajo language. “Parents trust us to teach
their children the language that is so valuable to them,” yet another teacher
reflected; “the trust that they have in us to be able to teach their children . . .
that is very valuable.”
Like NACA, the case of PdH illuminates both the promise and the ten-
sions in implementing CSRP in an off-reservation, public school setting. By
offering two distinct but organizationally integrated bilingual education pro-
grams, PdH administrators and teachers make themselves accountable to the
linguistically and culturally diverse community they serve. At the same time,
the school affirms the sovereignty of the Native American nation in which a
significant number of its students are enrolled citizens. PdH has been able to
do this by using alternate institutional arrangements—in this case a voluntary
public magnet school—and by adhering to state requirements for teacher cer-
tification, curriculum, and testing. Like NACA, the PdH community has man-
aged to work around and through these systemic constraints by emphasizing
high academic expectations, a robust content-rich curriculum, and children’s
heritage language and culture as foci and essential resources for learning.
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Projecting an “Inward Gaze” and Problematizing Essentialisms
We have examined two ethnographic cases in an effort to illuminate the com-
plex contours of CSRP. We recognize that each is a “special” case of public
schooling; these are relatively small schools serving small minoritized student
populations via charter and magnet structures. However, we propose that cul-
turally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy requires precisely this kind of non-
homogenizing attention to local communities’ expressed interests, resources,
and needs. This responsiveness exemplifies community-based accountability.
These cases offer a glimpse into CSRP in practice—its possibilities, con-
tradictions, tensions, and challenges. In each case the desire to heal forced
linguistic wounds and convey important cultural and linguistic knowledge
to future generations anchors the school curriculum and pedagogy. This is
a deeply felt responsibility on the part of these educators—in their words, a
“tie back to [students’] homeland” and a bond of “trust that [parents] have
in us to . . . teach their children.” Sustaining linguistic and cultural continuity
and building relationships are central CSRP goals, premised on respect and
reciprocity. The specific strategies for accomplishing these goals are locally
defined: teaching three Native languages at NACA and offering multiple
strands of bilingual education for different groups of learners at PdH. The
desire to support “both traditional and evolving ways of cultural connected-
ness” (Paris, 2012, p. 95) unites each school’s efforts.
Through these cases, we also emphasize the importance of acknowledging
the emotional dimensions inherent in these pedagogies. Love, loss, empathy,
compassion, and pain run throughout teachers’ accounts as they confront
personal histories of linguistic shame and exclusion and attempt to reconcile
those histories with the goals of emancipatory practice. As one PdH teacher
shared, “For most of us, somewhere in our past we got beyond the shame and
came to see our first language as a gift. I think that’s why we’re here.”
Engaging the emotions that arise from and shape CSRP is integral to what
Paris and Alim (2014) call an inward gaze—a loving but critical stance that
counters colonization within and outside the school setting. Paris and Alim
remind us of the importance of this work as they note that colonizing influ-
ences are often internalized by youth whose understanding of their heritage
may be shaped by lenses other than their own. For example, in the statewide
research project of which the NACA case study was part, one youth expressed
dismay at not wanting to be regarded as a “fake Native” because of her limited
Native-language abilities (Jojola et al., 2011). In her view, being Native required
speaking her heritage language and knowing her people’s history and culture.
Similarly, in a recent large-scale study by McCarty and her colleagues (2013),
youth with limited Native-language exposure expressed linguistic insecurity
and concern for loss of identity; knowing the Indigenous language, said one
youth, “is a big important part of my life if I’m going to be a Native” (p. 170).
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The practice of CSRP has the potential to transform these expressions of
Indigenous longing into powerful resources for language reclamation, thereby
helping students connect meaningfully with their cultural communities (Lee,
2014; Wyman, McCarty, & Nicholas, 2014). Yet such expressions become prob-
lematic when they are essentialized or taken at face value. The youth state-
ments above, for instance, may be uncritically interpreted as implying that
one cannot be regarded as an “authentic” Native person without the ability
to speak a Native language, or without knowledge of tribal history. Certainly
these abilities and this knowledge are important goals, and we have sought to
show how they might be achieved through the implementation of CSRP. Yet
we have observed many Native youth whose indigeneity is dismissed or deni-
grated within the larger society and even within the youths’ communities if
they do not possess those skills or that knowledge. The discursive markers
of “speaker/nonspeaker,” so common in the scholarly literature, fortify these
injustices, while pitting monolithic notions of urbanity and modernity against
rurality and reservation life. From this view, one cannot be simultaneously
“urban” and “Native” (Lee, 2009; Littlebear, 1999; Meek, 2010).
By employing a decolonizing critique to deconstruct essentialisms that
reduce the multidimensionality of human experience, CSRP fosters and
reflects an inward gaze. As Santee Sioux author, poet, activist, and artist John
Trudell once proclaimed, Native people were human beings before they were
“Indians,” a term coined by lost European seafarers in search of the Indian
subcontinent and often associated with romanticized, popular, stereotypical
images of Native peoples (Diamond, 2010). As illuminated by the accounts
presented here, an inward gaze confronts those practices as part of the lan-
guage and culture reclamation project. Enos (2002) characterizes this as the
exercise of “deep” sovereignty, in which Indigenous communities move to pro-
tect their core values, knowledges, and ways of being. The work under way at
NACA and PdH emanates from such a perspective—a place of deep sover-
eignty, which “is where education is then grounded” (Enos, 2002, p. 9).
Critical CSRP, Community-Based Accountability, and Indigenous
Educational Sovereignty
So how can CSRP work in service to the goals of Indigenous education sov-
ereignty implied by Paris’s (2012) conception of the “democratic project of
schooling”? We note first that no sovereignty is totalizing or limitless; Indige-
nous educational sovereignty operates in constant interaction with the overlap-
ping sovereignties of states, provinces, national governments, and a multitude
of international entities (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006). The efforts by NACA
and PdH to balance state and federal requirements with accountability to
local communities and Indigenous nations are evidence of this interaction.
That these overlapping sovereignties and expectations are well understood by
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Indigenous educators and parents is reflected in their concerns for high aca-
demic standards. As one PdH educator insisted, “The goal is that our students
are achieving. We want them to know, ‘You have all the right tools. You will
come out of this [school] with a top-notch education. You can be the best of
the best—you have what it takes.’”
In their meta-analysis of research on culturally responsive schooling, Bray-
boy and Castagno (2009) find “no evidence that [Native] parents and commu-
nities do not want their children to be able to read and write [in English] or
do mathematics, science, etc.” (p. 31). Instead, they note that parents rightly
insist “that children’s learning to ‘do’ school should not be an assimilative
process” but “should happen by engaging culture” (p. 31). Similarly, in an
examination of language and tribal sovereignty among the New Mexico Pueb-
los, Blum Martinez (2000) points out that “Native American parents want their
children to do well in school,” but this does not negate the fact that they “also
recognize that their children will need to lead their communities” in the future
(p. 217). This requires that children have access to local knowledges, including
the language through which those knowledges are acquired. Schools can play a
critical role in fostering these multiple community-desired competencies.
The educators in our two cases recognize that balancing academic, linguis-
tic, and cultural interests requires direct accountability to Indigenous com-
munities. Educators from PdH and NACA have even consulted each other for
support and guidance in these efforts. After a recent visit to PdH by NACA
teachers, for instance, NACA’s executive director noted that one highlight of
their visit was that it “confirms and served as an example that Native students
are in great need of enriching and culturally relevant school models that sup-
port high academic performance and identity development” (Kara Bobroff,
personal communication, November 11, 2013).
The approaches taken by NACA and PdH stand in contrast to the focus on
high-stakes accountability in current federal education policy, which privileges
a single monolingual and monocultural standard. As a consequence, CSRP
can become a perilous balancing act that operates, in the words of one PdH
educator, “under the radar screen” of state surveillance. As with many schools
serving minoritized youth, this remains an unsettled and well-recognized ten-
sion that educators at these schools negotiate every day in ways that affirm the
identities and strengths of their students. This emphasis places these schools
on the frontlines of the fight for plurilingual and pluricultural education—
defining features of “the democratic project of schooling.”
The fight for plurilingual and pluricultural education has not yet been won,
but that does not mean it should be abandoned. The testimony of Indigenous
educators, parents, and youth demands relentless commitment to community-
based accountability in support of such an approach. This is the heart of
Indigenous education sovereignty, and, as we see in these cases, the promise
of critical CSRP.
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Notes
1. Each site gave us permission to use its actual name. All names of research participants
are pseudonyms. Some names represent terms in the Native language that exemplify
the character of the individual. For example, at NACA, Mr. Awanyanke can be trans-
lated simply as Mr. Protector, and Mr. Yuonihan as Mr. Respectful.
2. The national research project of which the Puente de Hózhǫ́ case study was part was
led by Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy of Arizona State University and included Teresa
McCarty along with Angelina Castagno, Amy Fann, Susan Faircloth, and Sharon Nelson-
Barber as team members. The research team for the PdH portion of the larger study
consisted of McCarty, Brayboy, and graduate assistants Erin Nolan and Kristin Silver.
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Acknowledgments
We wish to express our sincere appreciation to the educators, parents, and students at the
Native American Community Academy and Puente de Hózhǫ́ Trilingual Magnet School for
their support of the research presented here. Tiffany Lee would like to thank Kara Bobroff
(executive director), Anpaoduta Flying Earth (associate executive director), and NACA’s
language teachers for their help in preparing this manuscript and their support of its pub-
lication. She would also like to thank her colleagues in the Indigenous Education Study
Group who supported the research reported here that was commissioned by the Public
Education Department of the State of New Mexico. Teresa McCarty would like to thank
PdH founder Michael Fillerup, principal Dawn Trubakoff, and the Diné teachers who par-
ticipated in the study; she also thanks Flagstaff Unified School District superintendent Bar-
bara Hickman for support of this publication, and Irene Silentman for sharing her Navajo
linguistic expertise. The PdH case study was undertaken through a contract from the U.S.
Office of Indian Education with Kauffman and Associates (KAI), Inc.; for their support of
that work, Teresa McCarty thanks the principal investigator of the national working group,
Bryan Brayboy, and the KAI staff. The PdH research was also funded by a generous endow-
ment from Alice (Dinky) and Richard Snell of Phoenix, Arizona.
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