This dissertation examines eight 21ˢᵗ century high school U.S. history textbooks for content and omission concerning American Indians. The focus of the inquiry is on the Marshall Trilogy cases and other federal Indian law cases. The Marshall Trilogy cases are three cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court over 180 years ago that remain the foundational legal principles that guide governmental relations with Native peoples. The treatment afforded these cases is evaluated in light of a master national narrative for the United States. The Marshall Trilogy cases and the master national narrative have had and continue to have global consequences. The way federal Indian law is presented in textbooks impacts the way citizens treat American Indian peoples and their support for various foreign policy options. In addition, the content of high school history curriculum can affect the way students perceive history, Native America, and schooling. By examining history curriculum critically and establishing a truly inclusive narrative, the hope is that schooling and history become legitimate for all students. The primary approach is to use both a quantitative and qualitative critical content analysis using an indigenized critical discourse approach. Generally, the analysis will move from the focused text within each textbook, to other text within each textbook, to text across the textbooks, and finally to larger socio-cultural phenomena. The APPRAISAL analysis (Coffin, 2006) allows a discerning of linguistic attributes that allows for the exposition of the narrative of the specific text concerning the Marshall Trilogy. The general content analysis is given a critical lens by Brayboy's Tribal Critical Theory (2005) and Grande's Red Pedagogy (2004). The curriculum work of Apple (2004) and Hall's (1986) exposition of Gramsci's hegemony add to our understanding of the nature of textbooks and the knowledge that counts for society. Fairclough's (1995) Dialectic-Relational Approach guides the study to determining whether there is a social wrong, and if so, what it is. The wrong is then examined to determine what obstacles are in the way of addressing the wrong and whether the society needs the wrong. Finally, various ways of correcting the social wrong are addressed.

This study examines whether Tribal Colleges and Universities impact hope and pride within their surrounding communities. As part of the investigation, data was gathered through the distribution of a ten question survey to three participants at both Diné College and Comanche Nation College: the president, a student, and a community member. Further data was collected through testimonials gathered from articles within the Tribal College Journal from the past six years (2008-2013). The goal of the study is to broaden the understanding of Tribal College and University impacts within their communities, and to provide valuable information for the college-community relationship throughout Indian Country.

The Blackfoot Confederacy Keepers of the Rocky Mountains provides a first hand account of the Blackfoot intimate relationship with their mountain landscape now known as Glacier National Park, Bob Marshall Wilderness, Badger Two Medicine Unit of the Lewis and Clark Forest Service, and the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. The animals shared the traditional ecological knowledge of the mountains with the Blackfoot Confederacy so they could survive through the "transfer of knowledge" in their elaborate ceremonial bundles made up of plants, animals, and rocks from the landscape. The Blackfoot agreed to share the minerals of copper and gold with the United States government through a lease agreement in 1895 following the policy of the time under the Dawes Act that allowed Indians to lease their land allotments to non-Indians. Although, the Agreement was written as a land cession with explicit reserved rights for the Blackfeet to hunt, gather, and fish upon the land, the Blackfeet have continued to maintain their ties to the mountain in secret to avoid persecution and publicly when asserting their rights. These rights have been limited, denied, and recognized depending on who is making the decision--Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and/or tested in the court of law. Despite the turmoil, the Blackfoot People have managed and preserved the area through resource utilization, ceremony, and respect for their mountain territory mapped out by Napi (Creator). Blackfoot know their status when it comes to their landscape as illustrated through the annual renewal of the bundles: "When we begin the ceremony, we call upon the water and the water animals, the sky people, the animals of the land, the plants, the rocks and so forth with the humans being the last to be called upon until all have arrived and taken their place in the lodge. Without the environment and its beings, we could not have this ceremony"

Indigenous peoples worldwide are engaged in the process of rebuilding and re-empowering their communities. They are faced with challenges emerging from a history of physical, spiritual, emotional, and economic colonization, challenges including a degraded resource base, lack of infrastructure, and consistent pressure on their land tenure and ways of life. These communities, however, continue demonstrating profound resilience in the midst of these challenges; working to re-empower and provide for the contemporary needs of their people in a manner grounded in supporting bio-cultural integrity; the interconnected relationship of people and homeland. At the same time, in response to contemporary environmental degradation, the fields of resilience science, adaptive management, and ecological engineering have emerged, the recommendations of which bear remarkable similarity to Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, and governance structures. The relationship between these fields and Indigenous epistemology, underscored by experience in the field, has led to the conceptualization of bio-cultural engineering design; design that emerges from the inter-relationship of people and ecology. The biocultural engineering design methodology identifies the unique cosmological relationships and cultural underpinnings of contemporary Indigenous communities, and applies this specific cultural lens to engineered design and architecture. The development of resilience principles within the fields of architecture and engineering have created avenues for biocultural design to be translatable into engineering and architectural design documents, allowing access to large scale financial support for community development. This method is explored herein through literature and analysis of practical application in several different Indigenous communities and nations. This method lends itself to future research on biocultural design processes as a source of technological and design innovation as Indigenous communities practice placing their values and cosmologies at the center of development decisions, as well as comprehensive start-to-finish documentation of the methodology applied to diverse engineered applications, including water systems, energy systems, and building construction.

"Traditional Navajo Culture is a Protective Factor" is intended for those who have a stake in Indigenous spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional health. Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians are Indigenous minorities in the USA that tend to consistently top the charts in deficient measures like depression, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, domestic violence, substance use/abuse, and suicide. The West does not offer any explanation as to the cause but is trying to fight these diseases and disorders by allocating federal funds for tribes, urban Indians, and Native groups to devise ways to minimize negative health effects by employing prevention practices that respect and are informed by the local Native cultures. This thesis examines these public health issues from a modern Indigenous perspective that use Navajo specific examples that combine both Western and Indigenous philosophies and paradigms to propose a solution that is strength-based, culturally-informed, and locally-driven.

The Theory of Regulation and the Economic Theory of Regulatory Constraint have not yet been adapted by American Indian Studies scholars to explain and analyze the federal regulations connected with Federal Indian Law and Policy. It is the intention of this thesis to prove the applicability of these theories to the law and policy concentration of American Indian Studies. The adaptation of these two theories could impact how federal regulations affecting Indian Country are viewed and interpreted. An examination of Federal Indian policy, specifically the regulations (43 CFR 10) promulgated for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) Section 106 tribal consultation processes (36 CFR PART 800) can provide a case study for understanding the applicability of the Theory of Regulation and the Economic Theory of Regulatory Constraint to a common regulatory process in Federal Indian Law.

Intelligence and creativity are concepts used to describe the efforts of human beings to achieve the highest aspirations of the human brain-mind-spirit system.Howard Gardner, intelligence and creativity researcher, applied his Multiple Intelligence theory to case studies of creative masters from seven intelligence domains developing a template for research: Life Course Perspective: A Framework for Creativity Analysis. The framework consists of four sections: Child and Master, Creation of a Work, an Analysis of Creativity, The Creator and the Field, and Fruitful Asynchronicity. This case study uses Gardner's framework in examining cognition and creativity in a Navajo/Dineh university student creating in fine arts and nominated in bodily-kinesthetic and intra-personal intelligence. This explorative case study reveals that he also excels in other intelligence domains: linguistic and spatial. Meta-cognitive interviews with the case study subject, and his notebooks provide the data sources concerning his cognition and his creativity.Indigenous educators and researchers assert that there is a discernible difference in perspectives concerning western science conceptions and Indigenous experience. This research discovered points of resonance as well as tangential trajectories of cultural difference from Gardner's research conclusions. Discoveries in this exploration confirm the importance of culture and zeitgeist in knowledge development, pedagogy, schoolingand the creativity process. Emerging themes emanating from these discoveries areChild of the Holy People, Sacred Geography, and Fruitful Asynchronicity from an Indigenous Perspective.Conclusions from this inductive research support Gardner's framework in the cultural study of cognition and creativity, underscores the value of Multiple Intelligence theory, and provide examples of praxis consonant with Indigenous learning processes for Gifted & Talented Education. The American Indigenous symbiotic and synergetic perspectives are novel in the examination of intelligence and creativity in the American education system. The American Indian perspectives are possibly prophetic as they proceed beyond culture and Gifted education intersecting and informing other fields: psychology, educational anthropology, philosophy, and Indigenous studies both in American populations as well as Indigenous gifted students worldwide.

abstract: In 2005 the Navajo Nation Tribal Council passed the Navajo Sovereignty in Education Act (NSEA). The NSEA has been herald as a decisive new direction in Diné education with implications for Diné language and cultural revitalization. However, research has assumed the NSEA will lead to decolonizing efforts such as language revitalization and has yet to critically analyze how the NSEA is decolonizing or maintains settler colonial educational structures. In order to critically investigate the NSEA this thesis develops a framework of educational elimination through a literature review on the history of United States settler colonial elimination of Indigeneity through schooling and a framework of decolonizing education through a review of literature on promising practices in Indigenous education and culturally responsive schooling. The NSEA is analyzed through the decolonizing education framework and educational elimination framework. I argue the NSEA provides potential leverage for both decolonizing educational practices and the continuation of educational elimination. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Social Justice and Human Rights 2015

abstract: Indigenous students have not been achieving their educational goals similar to other racial and ethnic groups. In 2008 Native American students completed a bachelor's degree at a rate of 38.3% the lowest rate of all racial and ethnic groups and lower than the national average of 57.2%. The high attrition rate of Native students in post-secondary education, nationally, suggests that on-going colonization may be to blame. Much of the research exploring retention strategies found culturally sensitive institutions, family and peer support, supportive relationships with faculty and staff, skill development, and financial aid knowledge were consistent factors for student retention. No studies have examined the effects of cultural workshops as decolonizing practices, however. This action research examined the influence of a series of cultural workshops to address Native student and college community needs. Employing a mixed-methods design, this project framed the cultural workshops within decolonization and historical trauma. Five student participants attended five cultural workshops and completed questionnaires to offer insight into their college behaviors while journals were used to learn about their experiences within the workshops. The results of this study are consistent with the literature. There was no change in relationships as a result of the intervention, but relationships with faculty and staff that mimicked family were reported as important for student success. Participating students were at early stages in the decolonization process but were further along when they had experiences in college with American Indian Studies or faculty. Students felt that colonizing practices at the college must be challenged and Indigenous traditional practices must be integrated to create a culturally competent institution. Additional sessions are recommended to increase data collection and allow participants to develop and share their rich feedback with the college. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2018

This dissertation examines the process of domestication of American Indian children in government-controlled schools through art education. At the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas J. Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1889-1893), and Estelle Reel, Superintendent of Indian schools (1898-1910), brought changes to the curriculum of Indian schools by introducing the teaching of elementary art and instruction in "Native industries" such as pottery, weaving, and basketry. I claim that art education was as an instrument for the `colonization of consciousness,' that is, for the redefinition of Indigenous peoples' minds through the instilment of values and ideals of mainstream society and thus for the maintenance of a political, economic, social, and racial hierarchy. Art education served the needs of the late-nineteenth century assimilationist agenda. I consider Morgan's and Reel's national mandates at the turn of the twentieth century and examine their rationales for including drawing and Native crafts in the Indian schools' curriculum. This knowledge of educational programs crafted at the bureaucratic level is applied to an analysis of art instruction in two selected institutions, the Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico and the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, from 1889 to 1917. I examine local responses to government policies and daily practices of Indian education at the micro level in order to provide specific information as to the organization, structure, and pedagogy of art instruction within a school day in these particular localities. Finally, I discuss how students' artworks were displayed in the context of exhibitions and national conventions as exemplary evidence of the progress toward civilization, but also of the instrumentality of an Anglo education in reaching this goal. As Indian policy changed, so did the art curriculum of Indian schools; while drawing continued until the mid-1910s Native arts and crafts began to disappear and were eventually discontinued. As activities that promoted independence and individual creativity, they began to undermine the government's agenda. From the early 1890s when it was first introduced into Indian schools to the mid-1910s when it lost its significance, art education was a tool for the assertion of America's hegemonic power.