This qualitative study addresses teacher perceptions of indigenous peoples representation in United States history. This phenomenological study was conducted within a school district in East Tennessee. For the purpose of this study, teacher perceptions of indigenous representations in history were defined as teacher beliefs towards the inclusion and representation of indigenous peoples in United States history. To gather data, both one-on-one and focus group interviews were conducted from a purposeful sample of United States history teachers from the high schools in the school district. Through an analysis of data derived from interviews and qualitative documents the researcher was able to identify themes such as systemic challenges to multiculturalism within state course standards and textbooks, teachers’ perceived self-efficacy in teaching their students using indigenous perspectives, and the perpetuation of indigenous stereotypes. Furthermore, the qualitative data derived from the study reveals that U.S. history courses in the district perpetuate both the notion of indigenous peoples as historical bystanders and the racial stereotypes of Native Americans. Findings from this study will be useful in evaluating both teacher training and instructional practice in regard to indigenous representations in history.

The purpose of this story rug is to acquire a deeper understanding of 10 Navajo students' experiences as they journey toward college. Utilizing Indigenous theoretical frameworks including Tribal Critical Race Theory, Cultural Resilience, and Cultural Threads, this story rug centered attention on the systematic, structural forces and students' sources of strength that have shaped and continue to influence educational pathways for Navajo students. This story rug was guided by a qualitative mixed-method approach including Indigenous Storywork and narrative analysis. Through the assertion of the Navajo traditional oral story of the Twin Warriors, this story rug weaves in 10 Navajo students' experiences including the sociocultural and personal barriers, referred to as "monsters," that hindered their life and their college enrollment goals, how they internalized those "monsters," and then what were the sources of strength, referred to as "weapons," that guided them in life and toward college. The findings revealed systematic and personal monsters that intertwined within community, school, family, and self. The Financial Hardship Monster illustrated the struggles of poverty and its influence on students' educational aspirations. The Addiction Monster revealed how alcohol and drugs within community and family shaped students' pre-college journey. The Educational Deficit Monster uncovered Reservation schooling challenges that limited students' academic ability and college access. The final and more intimate monster, The Personal Struggles Monster, shed light on private and often unspoken challenges that students faced during a crucial time in the college-choice process. To overcome the monsters, students activated powerful weapons. The first set of weapons, Trusting Relationships and Vulnerability, entailed students' awareness of lessons learned during vulnerable moments and stories shared with mothers, grandmothers, and teachers. The Courage to Challenge Self weapons demonstrated that participation in college readiness opportunities and applying to high-stakes scholarships affirmed confidence that they were college material. The Transforming Obstacles to Positives weapons uncovered students' abilities to transform negative conditions into positive intentions, which motivated them to continue their journeys toward college. The final weapons, Faith in Spiritual Teachings, were spiritual and traditional teachings that reminded students that they were not alone and that they were unstoppable in proceeding toward college. This study underscored how context matters and penetrated in students' lives including systematic poverty, structural forces that fueled addiction, and systematic educational deficit and meritocracy ideologies. These stories have the power to transform discourses of deficiency to those of strength and honor for future Native student warriors and their educational attainment.

Purpose: Describe the Suquamish cultural influences on defining living a life worthwhile and to describe the compatibility of a culturally modified Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) with a Native American community's culture and context. Background: Native Americans experience serious psychological distress, suicide, and substance abuse at higher rates than other racial groups. Studies using DBT found a significant decrease in parasuicidal risk behavior and substance abuse. However, research has not demonstrated that DBT is efficacious or compatible within the Native American culture. Specific Aims: 1) Describe the Native American cultural influences on defining living a life worthwhile. 2) Describe the compatibility between Healthy and Whole, a culturally modified DBT intervention with Native American culture. Methodology: Critical ethnographic study with in-depth interviews (13) and participant observations (10 months) was conducted. Sample was tribal members and clinicians exposed to the Healthy and Whole and tribal members who are identified as knowledgeable regarding tribal tradition. Analyses included semantic domain, taxonomic, and theme analysis for aim1 and compared DBT curriculum to results of aim 1 to accomplish aim 2.Findings: An intergenerational cycle of relational trauma was initiated by structural cultural genocide with systematic abuse and neglect of Native Americans especially children. Relational trauma of abuse and neglect is the source of a variety of maladaptive behaviors. These maladaptive behaviors lead to relational trauma in the next generation. A dual process of maintaining and revitalizing Suquamish cultural values coupled with skills taught in a culturally modified DBT intervention, Healthy and Whole, help Suquamish members live more worthwhile lives and recover from intrapersonal trauma. Implications: Healthy and Whole is a community approach to healing from relational trauma. Healthy and Whole approach to DBT may help other indigenous people live more worthwhile lives and recover from relational trauma and break the cycle because Suquamish cultural values are collectivist and many indigenous peoples share similar values and histories of historical trauma.

This dissertation examines the discursive and material terrain of urban Indigenous education in a public school district and Title VII/Indian Education program. Based in tenets of Tribal Critical Race Theory and utilizing counterstorytelling techniques from Critical Race Theory informed by contemporary Indigenous philosophy and methodological theory, this research takes as its focus the often-unacknowledged ways settler colonial discourses continue to operate in public schools. Drawing on two years of fieldwork in a public school district, this dissertation documents and makes explicit racial and colonial dynamics that manifest in educational policy and practice through a series of counterstories. The counterstories survey a range of educational issues, including the implementation of Native-themed curriculum, teachers’ attempts to support Native students in their classrooms, challenges to an administrator’s “no adornment” policies for graduation, Native families’ negotiations of erasures embedded in practice and policy, and a Title VII program’s efforts to claim physical and cultural space in the district, among other issues. As a collective, these stories highlight the ways that colonization and settler society discourses continue to shape Native students’ experiences in schools. Further, by documenting the nuanced intelligence, courage, artfulness, and what Gerald Vizenor has termed the “survivance” of Native students, families, and educators as they attempt to access education, the research provides a corrective to deficit framings of Indigenous students. Beyond building empathy and compassion for Native students and communities, the purpose is to identify both the content and nature of the competencies teachers, administrators, and policy makers might need in order to provide educational services that promote Indigenous students’ success and well-being in school and foster educational self-determination. This research challenges educators to critically interrogate taken-for-granted assumptions about Native identity, culture, and education and invites educators to examine their own contexts for knowledge, insights, and resources to better support Native students in urban public schools and intervene into discourses that constrain their educational experiences.

abstract: This case study explores American Indian student activist efforts to protect and promote American Indian education rights that took place during 2007-2008 at a predominantly white institution (PWI) which utilizes an American Indian tribal name as its institutional athletic nickname. Focusing on the experiences of five American Indian student activists, with supplementary testimony from three former university administrators, I explore the contextual factors that led to activism and what they wanted from the institution, how their activism influenced their academic achievement and long-term goals, how the institution and surrounding media (re)framed and (re)interpreted their resistance efforts, and, ultimately, what the university's response to student protest conveys about its commitment to American Indian students and their communities. Data was gathered over a seven-year period (2007-2014) and includes in-depth interviews, participant observation, and archival research. Using Tribal Critical Race Theory and Agenda Setting Theory, this study offers a theoretically informed empirical analysis of educational persistence for American Indian students in an under-analyzed geographic region of the U.S. and extends discussions of race, racism, and the mis/representation and mis/treatment of American Indians in contemporary society. Findings suggest the university's response significantly impacted the retention and enrollment of its American Indian students. Although a majority of the student activists reported feeling isolated or pushed out by the institution, they did not let this deter them from engaging in other social justice oriented efforts and remained dedicated to the pursuit of social justice and/or the protection of American Indian education rights long after they left the in institution. Students exercised agency and demonstrated personal resilience when, upon realizing the university environment was not malleable, responsive, or conducive to their concerns, they left to advocate for justice struggles elsewhere. Unfortunately for some, the university's strong resistance to their efforts caused some to exit the institution before they had completed their degree. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2014

This dissertation walks the balance between the western structures of academia and Indigenous ways of storytelling and knowing. Stories are how knowledge is shared and passed down in many Indigenous cultures. This study utilizes Indigenous Storywork methods, alongside western case study methodology, to explore how colonialism and the structures of public, non-Native higher education institutions and engineering programs impact the lived experiences of Indigenous STEM students. Using Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit), this study also connects individual student experiences through stories to systemic structures of universities and engineering programs in a way that honors and amplifies Indigenous ways of thinking and doing. The study was situated at a university in the eastern U.S. and had three primary forms of data: public documents such as university historical documents and program policies and structures, focus group discussions with a university Council of Elders from the Indigenous community, and individual interviews with Indigenous STEM students from the Lumbee and Coharie nations. The findings demonstrate the ways that the Indigenous STEM students at North Carolina State University hold community as a cultural value from their Tribal backgrounds that is paramount to their success at the university. The students utilize community to access knowledge and build power for themselves as well as for the whole university Indigenous community. NC State's Indigenous engineering students perceived the structures and policies of their engineering programs to be disconnected from community and relationality and thus did not utilize or connect to these structures as designed. This work also provides an example of a framework for engaging with university Indigenous communities to co-create meaningful and impactful research and demonstrates the differences in the experiences of Indigenous students in the eastern U.S. from those in the west, specifically in terms of their invisibility in the larger community, both on and off campus. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation walks the balance between the western structures of academia and Indigenous ways of storytelling and knowing. Stories are how knowledge is shared and passed down in many Indigenous cultures. This study centers Indigenous methodologies and theories to explore how colonialism and the structures of public, non-Native, higher education institutions and engineering programs impact the lived experiences of Indigenous STEM students. This study also connects individual student experiences to the systemic structures of universities and engineering programs. The study focuses on a university in the eastern U.S. and used three forms of data: public documents such university historical documents and current policies, a group discussion with a Council of Elders from the Indigenous community, and individual interviews with Indigenous STEM students. The students were members of the Lumbee and Coharie nations. The findings highlight the way they hold community as a cultural value deeply tied to their Tribal backgrounds. This community is key to their success at the university and used community to access knowledge and build power for themselves as well as for the whole university Indigenous community. In particular, the Indigenous engineering students perceived the structures and policies of their engineering programs to be disconnected from community and relationships, and thus they did not use or connect to those structures in the intended ways. Instead, they went outside the system to gain the knowledge the needed. This work also provides a framework, grounded in Indigenous value of respect, reciprocity, responsibility, reverence, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy, for engaging with university Indigenous communities to co-create meaningful and impactful research and demonstrates the differences in the experiences of Indigenous students in the eastern U.S. from those in the west, specifically in terms of their invisibility in the larger community, both on and off campus.

abstract: Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribCrit) as a theoretical framework, this dissertation analyzes a contemporary cinematic film directed by an American Indian filmmaker about American Indians and answers the question of whether the visual texts are unmasking, critiquing, confronting, and/or reinforcing reductive and stereotypical images of American Indians. Using Critical Thematic Analysis as a process, this dissertation interrogates Drunktown’s Finest (2014) to understand ways a contemporary American Indian filmmaker engages in counterstorying as a sovereignist action and simultaneously investigates ways the visual narrative and imagery in the film contributes to the reinforcement of hegemonic representations—the static, constrained, White-generated images and narratives that have been sustained in the hegemonic culture for over a century. With an increase in the number of American Indian filmmakers entering into the cultural elitist territory of Hollywood, moving from the margins to the center, I believe Natives are now in a better position to apprehend and reconstruct a multidimensional and complex American Indian identity. I posit that the reshaping of these mass-mediated images can only be countered through the collective and sustained fostering of a more complex imagery of the American Indian and that authorship of the representation is crucial to changing the hegemonic imagery of American Indians. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Curriculum and Instruction 2017

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Several studies have indicated that American Indian students in the United States higher education system confront unique challenges that derive from a legacy of colonialism and assimilationist policies (Huff 1997). Several scholars, American Indian and non-Native alike, have explored the effects of this history upon students in higher education (Brayboy 2004; Guillory and Wolverton 2008; Waterman and Lindley 2013). Very few, however, have explored the role of the educators of American Indian students, and most of the literature focuses on K-12 educational settings (McCarty and Lee 2014; Yong and Hoffman 2014). This thesis examines exploratory user research conducted to generate a foundational understanding of educators of American Indian students in higher education. Utilizing methods from design anthropology and user experience, semi-structured interviews and think-aloud sessions were conducted, almost exclusively virtually, for 17 participants. This research was conducted for a client, Fire & Associates, as part of the applied thesis process. Findings revealed a complex web of needs for educators of American Indian students in higher education related to teaching diverse students, the use of media and technology in the classroom, and the process of networking among other educators. The research culminated in content and design implications for the Fire & Associates website as well as suggestions for further research based on best practices in the field of user experience.

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