xvi, 307 p. : ill., maps. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / In California, third and fourth grade social science curriculum standards mandate an introduction to Native American life and the impacts of Spanish, Mexican, and "American" colonization on the state's indigenous people. Teachers in the state use museums to supplement this education. Natural history and anthropology museums offer programs for teaching third graders about native pre-contact life, while Missions and regional history museums are charged with telling the story of settlement for the state's fourth graders. Clearly, this fact suggests the centrality of museums and Missions to education in the state. Since only one small tribe on the central coast has federal recognition, non-tribal museums are the only public voice about Indian life. These sites however, rarely address hardships experienced by native people, contributions over the past 150 years, the struggles for sovereignty in their homelands, and a variety of other issues faced by living Indian people. Instead, these sites often portray essentialized homogenous notions of Indiamless which inadvertently contribute to the invisibility of coastal Native peoples. This dissertation analyzes visual museum representations in central coast museums and Missions and the perspectives oflocal Native American community members about how their lives and cultures are portrayed in those museums. Using methods of critical discourse analysis, the dissertation seeks to locate discontinuities between the stories museums tell versus the stories Indian people tell. It addresses these ruptures through a detailed analysis of alternative narratives and then offers suggestions to museum professionals, both in California and elsewhere, for incorporating a stronger native voice in interpretive efforts. / Committee in charge: Dr. Lynn Stephen, Co-chair; Dr. Brian Klopotek, Co-chair; Dr. Jon M. Erlandson; Dr. Shari Huhndorf; Roberta Reyes Cordero

The creation of universidades interculturales (intercultural universities, UIs) in Mexico at the start of the 21st century was not only a policy response to the need for more accessible higher education for historically underrepresented students, but also to the call for more culturally and linguistically relevant education and development made by the Indigenous rights movement. However, because of the history of colonialism in Latin America and the use of state schooling to assimilate citizens into a homogenous Mexican nation, the goal of supporting cultural and linguistic diversity through public education presents tensions and contradictions. For some, UIs promise the possibility of revalorizing subaltern knowledges, promoting Indigenous activism, and protecting the human and cultural rights enshrined in international and national law. For others, they represent a continuation of top-down polices dominated by policymakers who are not intimately familiar with Indigenous experiences and goals. More research is needed at the level of implementation, where teachers and students make meaning out of policy, to clarify whether and how intercultural higher education models can accomplish the various possibilities they are ascribed in theory. Research on programs to support Indigenous linguistic and cultural maintenance must attend to the colonial histories undergirding the material and social realities of the communities they are meant serve. As such, this case study used a decolonial lens and ethnographic methods, including interviews, classroom observations, and accompaniment of participants in their daily lives, to investigate how professors, students, and local community members were enacting an intercultural higher education at the Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural-Huasteca (La UVI-H), an intercultural university campus created in 2005 as part of an intercultural subsystem of the larger and autonomous state University of Veracruz. The purpose of this study was to critically examine the teaching and learning taking place in and through La UVI-H to find out whether and how participation in intercultural higher education was influencing youths’ beliefs and perspectives about local languages, knowledges, and their views of the meaning(s) and purpose(s) of the bachelor’s degree it enabled them to pursue. Findings showed that most students initially enrolled at La UVI-H because it was their only accessible higher education option. Yet over time, they found ways to appropriate aspects of their intercultural education, often coming to revalue the cultural and linguistic practices of their local communities, even if they did not plan to or end up staying in them upon graduation, as the UI model expects. A central role of professors at La UVI-H beyond formal language teaching was creating space for students to question the colonial logics of education and development that surrounded them in larger society, including those they had internalized before arriving at university. Community leaders and members in the nearby towns were key to this pedagogical process, sharing their ways of life with UVI-H students through participation in their action research projects, thereby reengaging the cross-generational transmission of knowledge. Finally, students benefited not only from local community-linked interactions but also from interactions with regional and international networks and actors that being a part of the larger UV system afforded them. Together UVI-H professors, students, and local and international community members were enacting intercultural education in decolonial ways that recognized Indigenous languages and ways of living as resources that can and should be used to inform knowledge production and the creation of more desirable and self-determined futures.

Anthropocentric climate change is a defining issue of the twenty-first century. Considering the severity of the effects, a more appropriate term may be climate crisis. Further, the intensity of the climate crisis, whether it is more frequent natural catastrophes or record-setting heat, puts societies and ecosystems at risk. Even classrooms and students must endure rising temperatures within schools. Yet educators also play an inimitable role in preparing students for a world living in a climate crisis. This requires extensive work to promote understanding and work toward solutions. Over the past twenty years, climate change education has evolved from a topic covered primarily in science classes to a subject covered in all content areas. In social studies, educators focus on the intersection between the climate crisis and issues such as justice, migration, and economics. Yet one of the primary methods for getting people to care about climate change is often missing from social studies curricula. The role of place is usually left unaccounted for in social studies despite place playing an important role in changing individuals’ mindsets about climate change. In addition, the voices that need to be heard most, including those living in locations most susceptible to climate change, are often marginalized. This qualitative study explores how educators in a vulnerable locale account for place when teaching climate change by asking the following question: How/where do social science educators in vulnerable locales form a sense of their place, and in what ways is that sense of place used accounted for when teaching climate change? The sub-questions for this study include: What ecological and cultural experiences and learning inform conceptions of place? How do teachers’ conceptualizations of climate change engage with local and global discourses of land, people, and society? How do teaching contexts (such as place-based education or predominant native schools) create variation across these research questions? This study used various methods, including semi-structured interviews, sensory ethnography, and visual elicitation, to understand how teachers incorporated place into their teaching and how different perspectives of place can inform a more holistic approach to teaching climate change. The study took place in Hawai‘i, a state and former sovereign kingdom with one of the most unique ecosystems in the world. It is a Pacific Island that faces unique challenges from climate change. Moreover, Hawai‘i has a strong understanding of the importance of place that is present through its Indigenous roots and its educational systems. The findings suggest that through a network of embedded and embodied knowledge, participants developed a relationship with land that affected not only who they were as individuals but also how they taught climate change.

This case study examines the introduction of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) in the Consumer Studies curriculum of Further Education and Training (FET). The research is centred on the use of enquiry methodologies involving learners observing parent demonstrations of the making of ‘amarewu’ and other activities centred on the propositional knowledge dealing with fermentation in the Consumer Studies curriculum. The research involved a review of curriculum documents, participant observation of a demonstration of local food practices related to ‘amarewu’ and learner research activities and interviews to review the developing learning interactions. The learning activities were focused on the learners’ researching the cultural and nutritional value of ‘amarewu’ and included an audit of food consumed in the community. What transpired from this study was that working with IK in the curriculum is possible. The inclusion of IK is not only possible but desirable and has exciting possibilities for relevance in contemporary education. The active involvement in parent demonstration engaged the learners in IK in their mother tongue, therefore indigenous knowledge has relevance. The curriculum concepts also enhanced the engagement by giving rise to more relevant knowledge and a respect for cultural matters. Intergenerational capital and subject concepts also enabled learners to engage with local nutritional problems and to come up with practical solutions. This study demonstrates how IK intergenerational capital in combination in combination with curriculum concepts (subject knowledge capital) can enhance relevance and the learners’ real engagement with local health and nutritional problems. Not only did the learners have culturally valued knowledge, but also knowledge that has a practical grasp of the problem and that they could use to engage relevant issues. These two views of knowledge join in learning and can be used to address health issues. I therefore recommend connection of cultural knowledge and conceptual knowledge to strengthen the revitalisation of cultural heritage, thus equalising it to the modern patterns of life and enhancing meaningful curriculum orientation.

Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Comparative Education)

Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Comparative Education)