Solidarity Necessitates Reciprocity

Indigenous movements for sovereignty are central to the work of liberation. And integral to the sovereignty of Indigenous Nations and their identification as a people is their maintenance of their  Indigenous Languages Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Worldviews, traditions, beliefs, our culture... that which makes each and every tribe who they uniquely are.

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There are a number of movements happening across Indian Country. These movements are guided by core beliefs about why we fight for water, for our women and children, and why we fight to be represented in an honest, truthful, and respectful way.  Within, around, and beyond those movements, attention must be paid to the education of Indigenous children. The Black Lives Matter movement has once again reminded us of the ways in which our liberation is bound together. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery have led to an awakening, especially among white Americans, to the continued reality of racism in the United States. As a result, many educators are exploring or recommitting to the need for Anti-Bias, Anti-Racist education. As we do so, we must ensure that we do not replicate the same systems of oppression that cause racialized harm, including the erasure of Indigenous peoples.

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There cannot be reconciliation until there is truth

“Until the educational community, including those of us striving for antiracist practice, wrestle with the truth of the violence that Indigenous students continue to experience at the hands of the current US schooling system, there can be no reconciliation.

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Anti-Bias, Anti-Racist Education must center and uplift Indigenous Educators and Indigenous Children. If it does not, it is not Anti-Bias, and it is certainly not Anti-Racist.  The exclusion of Indigenous educators in racial justice organizing spaces, whether intentional or unintentional, is an act of further marginalization which makes one complicit in our erasure. To counter this legacy of invisibilization, we must intentionally center IBPOC children and educators and trust that white children and teachers will be taken care of.

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By centering the most marginalized children, we ensure that all children will be uplifted. For far too long, educators have strived to center “the universal child,” an act that has unintentionally centered white children and has left IBPOC, especially Indigenous/Native children at the margins.

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As Illuminatives shares:

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“Invisibility and erasure remain profound barriers facing Native individuals, families and communities. These barriers are perpetuated by K-12 public education systems and have created hostile learning environments for Native children and negatively impact both Native and non-Native students by continuing to further invisibility and false narratives about Native peoples’ past and present. The failure of K-12 education systems to teach accurate history about Native peoples or about our contributions and issues in today’s society, promotes an inaccurate history of this country and erases the continued importance of Tribal Nations and peoples to the fabric of American society. False narratives and invisibility have harmful, long-term impacts by shaping federal and state policies, determining court decisions that affect tribes and Native peoples, furthers inadequate funding of programs impacting Native communities, and normalizes bias, discrimination and racism towards Native peoples.”

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When IBPOC come together in community, relationship and to be in solidarity, a value deeply held by many Indigenous Tribal Nations, the potential to meet the specific needs of our children becomes stronger. But solidarity necessitates reciprocity. Even in communities explicitly committed to racial justice and liberation, there is a pattern of silencing, invisibilizing, and forgetting to uplift, center or even simply include Indigenous educators, organizers, and, most importantly, children.

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Every Fall, this erasure continues across the United States, as well-meaning non-Indigenous teachers excitedly invite their students to paste technicolor feathers to paper strips in preparation for reenactments of the Thanksgiving myth. Children are taught to make paper plate dream catchers, coffee tin drums or make sacred masks and create necklaces from colorful macaroni as a means of “honoring” Indigenous cultures. One can visit Teachers Pay Teachers and find a plethora of harmful, disrespectful and inaccurate materials (made by non-Indigenous educators who profit off of this racialized harm) that are meant to be used in the classroom. These seemingly small acts of erasure illuminate a legacy of violence against Indigenous peoples, one which stretches back to the first appearance of colonizers on Indigenous land. Tuck and Guishard (2013) emphasize that the type of colonization that has defined the United States  is called Settler Colonialism, a form of colonialism in which colonizers continue to occupy the land which they have stolen.

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The harmful narratives of invisibility embedded in these well-meaning activities function as tools which justify the continued occupation of stolen land. For this reason, Tuck and Guishard (2013) remind us that Settler Colonialism is a structure, a system, and an on-going reality rather than a single event. This perpetual occupation requires the displacement, erasure, and brutalization of Indigenous nations-people with lived experiences- through a variety of methods, including schooling-settler colonial schooling. Originally representing 100% of the population of what is now called the United States, Settler Colonialism and the violent realities it brings with it have diminished the population of Indigenous Peoples to 1.6%.

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This brutal history continues to shape the realities of schooling in the United States. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2011, only 18% of educators were Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, while 50% of US students are Children of Color. Of that 18%, only .5% of teachers nationally are Indigenous. These statistics don’t occur in a vacuum. Systemic issues such as oppressive K-12 schooling environments, poverty as the result of ongoing settler colonial occupation of ancestral lands create barriers to IBPOC becoming educators. White educators, buoyed by racial privilege, are able to more easily access pathways to the teaching profession, leading to continued domination of the teaching profession. The dominance of white educators is a systematic replication and upholding of settler colonialism (in which whiteness is inherent) that perpetuates what our colleague Mario Benabe names “ritualized violence.” This pattern leads to the continued establishment of classrooms that reflect settler colonial dynamics of invisibilization, exploitation and erasure.

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As Bryan Stevenson reminds us, there cannot be reconciliation until there is truth. Until the educational community, including those of us striving for antiracist practice, wrestle with the truth of the violence that Indigenous students continue to experience at the hands of the current US schooling system, there can be no reconciliation. This is also a truth with which anti-bias, anti-racist organizing leader, educators, and communities must struggle. Yes, even the most radical groups often fall into the pattern of erasing and invisibilizing Indigenous leaders, educators and children. Ultimately,  uplifting, centering and honoring Indigenous children will create a more true pathway towards liberation for all children, all communities. Indigenous movements for sovereignty are central to the work of liberation and we MUST NOT leave the education of Indigenous children out of those movements.

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A Legacy of Harm

““What is the purpose of schooling? In the context of the United States and other nation-states living out the legacies of genocide, land theft, enslavement, and various forms of colonialism, the answer for communities of color has been rather clear: The purpose of state-sanctioned schooling has been to forward the largely assimilationist and often violent White imperial project, with students and families being asked to lose or deny their languages, cultures and histories in order to ‘achieve’ in schools.”

— Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, Alim and Paris, 2017, p. 1

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In 1879, Richard Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School with the motto “kill the Indian, save the man.” The boarding school era marked a new approach in the settler-colonial erasure of Indigenous peoples. Separation from Indigenous languages, physical and sexual violence, forced removal, and stolen children began a trajectory of even deeper violence through the displacement of children from their Tribal Nations and families, physically, linguistically, spiritually.

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This era of Boarding Schools also propelled the deficit based approach of settler colonial education which dominates educational approaches today, described by Lorena Germán as a “damage centered narrative [which] offends the deepest sense of our humanity.” This approach is made obvious through the curriculum utilized in most public schools which uplifts settler colonial narratives, delivered solely in colonizing languages like English.

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Such curricular decisions validate the narrative of settler colonialism which allowed boarding schools to exist at all. Settler Colonialism uplifts whiteness, claiming that in order to be fully human one must submit to dominant white culture. This same narrative animates current assimilationist schooling policies aimed at erasing Indigenous children, educators, and communities. The celebration of the Thanksgiving myth is not the problem - it is a symptom of the problem. The problem is the pervasive Manifest Destiny, white supremacist, settler colonial ideology that saturates curriculum in the United States. Schooling has historically, and continues currently to operate as the liberal, “friendlier” counterpart to ritualized violence - still categorized by the UN as falling within the definition of genocide.

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State mandated schooling has functioned as a tool for violent assimilation, inextricably tied to land theft and attacks on tribal sovereignty in a variety of ways. One less recognized way is through the erasure of place-based language and culture education which enables the US government to continue undermining Indigenous land rights and expand settler occupation. Laws and policies dictating what schooling must look like in order to access federal and state funding undermine educational sovereignty. This forces many Indigenous led schools to seek out funding from independent philanthropic organizations, many of which perpetuate the same kind of harm and lack of trust in Indigenous leaders, wielding stolen money as a weapon to force submission.

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We must truly reflect upon and act in accordance with Article 14 of the United Nations Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) which states:

1. Indigenous Peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.
2. Indigenous individuals, particularly children, have the right to all levels and forms of education of the state without discrimination.
3. States shall, in conjunction with Indigenous peoples, take effective measures, in order for Indigenous individuals, particularly children, including those living outside their communities, to have access, when possible, to an education in their own culture and provided in their own language.”

Current schooling and funding practices betray the rights named so clearly by the United Nations. This blatant disregard for Indigenous children is evident in the educational and life outcomes that systems of schooling in the United States produce.

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The Reality of Schooling

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The violent legacy of forced assimilation continues today, leading first to poor academic outcomes and then, more importantly, to outcomes in life that do not allow Indigenous children to meet their fullest potential because their early lives are so tainted by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) which are exacerbated through schooling.

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Today, over 90% of Indigenous students attend public schools and roughly 8% attend schools run by the Bureau of Indian Education (National Congress of American Indians). In New Mexico, 10% of the student population in public schools is Indigenous, while only 3% of teachers in those same schools are Indigenous. Data currently is not collected regarding the racial demographics of educators working in Bureau of Indian Education schools, which further speaks to the institutionalized invisibilization of Indigenous peoples.

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While Indigenous children make up approximately 1% of the student population nationally, they account for 2% of all school arrests, and  3% of all incidents referred by staff to law enforcement. In the 2016-2017 school year, only 10% of Indigenous children were proficient in math, while 18% were proficient in English Language Arts. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results, only 20% of Indigenous students were proficient in reading nationally. Additionally, Indigenous Students are overrepresented in Special Education Referrals.

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As anti-racist educators, disparate school outcomes are important to us because they contribute more importantly to life outcomes. One example is the story of Selena Not Afraid of the Crow Nation - a tragic story of the ways in which systemic racism, which manifests in all systems including schooling, plays out in life outcomes across Indian Country. Selena was a beautiful, vibrant 16 year old high school student who died in January 2020. Selena’s death was not the first tragedy that her family had experienced: her brother was shot 17 times by the Billings police department in 2017, her twin sister died by suicide at age 11, and her older sister passed away in a hit and run. Of 5 five children, only one sibling is still alive.

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We understand that certain choices were made by these individuals and family, but had these children and their families been affirmed and visibilized throughout their schooling, would these life outcomes be the same? Each of these deaths can be directly tied to the ways in which racism, erasure and ongoing Settler Colonialism impacts Indigenous communities today.

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Schooling has functioned to maintain Settler Colonialism through epistemicide - the attempted killing of knowledge systems. Boarding schools sought to separate children from their families, their languages, and their ways of knowing in order to assimilate them into whiteness. The legacy of Boarding Schools lives on, as systemic shaming and punishment for speaking Indigenous Languages disrupted patterns of intergenerational learning. Shame and punishment led parents to decide not to rear their children in their Indigenous languages, leading to language shift in most tribal communities. This language shift to English has devastated many communities by displacing them from their languages which serve as the ultimate bridge and connection to ancestors, culture, land, and so much more.

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Radical Imagination - Liberation in Action

As co-teachers at Keres Children's Learning Center (KCLC) Trisha, the founding Keres Speaking Elementary guide, and Katie Kitchens, the English speaking Elementary guide, decided to reimagine a central component of the Montessori elementary classroom: the Great Stories.

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The Great Stories function as doorways to each area of study by offering children a holistic introduction to the expanse of human knowledge. In speaking to Elementary educators, Dr. Montessori wrote “let us give [them] a vision of the whole universe. The universe is an imposing reality and an answer to all questions. We shall walk together on this path to life where all things are part of the universe and connected to each other to form one whole unity” (To Educate the Human Potential).

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While inclusive in theory, in practice each of these Great Lessons as presented by Dr. Montessori and taught in Montessori training programs today center Eurocentric understandings of the universe, of life, and of humanity. As a way of de-centering whiteness and committing instead to culturally sustaining curricular decisions, Trisha and Katie decided to introduce the Story of the Pueblo Revolt as a Great Lesson, thereby centering the history of Pueblo people - a legacy of resistance, resilience, rebellion, and love for future generations.

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The Great Story of the Pueblo Revolt is being delivered first by Trisha through Keres language immersion, and then will be touched upon in English by Katie. As Trisha first told this story, the children were enthralled, inspired and emboldened. At the end of that day, when children were sharing what they were grateful for, one student excitedly proclaimed “I’m glad our people won the Pueblo Revolt!” This spirit of resistance and resilience that is part of the cultural intuition (Delgado Bernal, 1998) of Indigenous peoples continues to manifest through the existence of schools (like KCLC) centered around the reclamation of Indigenous children’s education. We need more schools like KCLC where language and culture are at the heart of the educational practice. It has been well researched and documented that  language and culture serve as protective factors (Dr. Monica Tsethlikai) against poor life outcomes.

Seeking to contribute to national and international movements promoting educational sovereignty for Indigenous peoples, KCLC established a Montessori teacher training program called the Indigenous Montessori Institute (IMI). IMI is the first Montessori training center to center Indigenous knowledge ways through their anti-bias, anti-racist Philosophy of Indigenous Education track.

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During the first module titled Reclaiming the Education of Our Children, one of KCLC’s founding board members and one of IMI’s facilitators, Dr. Joseph Suina remarked, “just think, KCLC was once something we were talking about and now it is real. NOW, we have IMI.”  Dr. Suina is an example of a beautiful mentor who supported the younger generations in what he calls, “reclaiming the education of our children '' and what Dr. Bettina Love names “freedom dreaming”.  Every Indigenous child has the right to learning environments like KCLC that sustain, nourish, uplift and center their language and culture.

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Moving Forward:Truth Telling and Working Toward Reconciliation

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Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006) defines a moral debt as “what human beings owe to each other in the giving of, or failure to give, honor to another when honor is due” (p. 8). The moral debt that the United States owes to Indigenous peoples, Dr. Ladson-Billings writes, is one of the largest moral debts that the country has incurred. As we consider how we are addressing this debt, we must reckon with the reality that even in the most radical spaces, Indigenous children and educators are invisibilized. ABAR education must center and uplift the Indigenous child. Solidarity necessitates reciprocity. As we work toward universal liberation, may we work together.

From: Lifting Hearts of the Ground: Declaring Indigenous Rights in Poetry (UNDRIP):

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“On any given day you
can find Trisha Moquino working in the classroom,
cultivating little seeds with
bright brown eyes, smiles
so wide, open minds, open hands.
They speak their dreams to the daylight in the Keres language.

She is nourishing their minds, their bodies,
their speech. Linguistic diversity in the age of extinction.
Like the cottonwood trees, like the
rare desert rivers, prayer births the
sustainability of genes and languages.

Those who seek conquest have their
back turned to her. They are lost in
business, busy-ness, busy building a
cemetery for the unborn. When will
they stop and help her plant seeds?
When will they see it is time to nourish
what their grandparents worked so
hard to destroy. Even dead soil can be
revived when we work together.

—  Lyla June Johnston

For Reflection

Below are some suggested questions to reflect upon in considering how to show up in solidarity with Indigenous children, educators, families and nations.

• In our antiracist organizing spaces, how often are Indigenous folks uplifted beyond an obligatory opening or closing statement? Non-Indigenous people of color also participate in the continued erasure of Indigenous folks by leaving them out of numerous conversations...especially in education. How am I ensuring that Indigenous voices are involved in organizing work?
• How have I failed to build relationships with Indigenous partners in the past?
• How have I taken responsibility to undo the miseducation that I have received about Indigenous Peoples?  
• What are the narratives that I’ve consumed, and how do they contribute to the invisibilization of Indigenous children?
• How have I actively contributed to the erasure of Indigenous children in my own classroom?
• How am I using financial privilege to redistribute resources to Indigenous led organizations?
• How I am I holding the national organizations that I belong to accountable for not perpetuating the erasure of Indigenous peoples?
• Where am I investing my time, money, and other resources? Am I:
• Purchasing materials on Teachers Pay Teachers about Indigenous peoples made by non-Indigenous creators?
• Buying books, materials, attending workshops about Indigneous people with no presence of Indigenous peoples?
• Participating in anti-racist workshops run solely by white individuals?
• Centering myths such as the Thanksgiving myth, or Columbus myth?

Indigenous-Led Organizations to Support:

• The Keres Children’s Learning Center
• Mukayuhsak Weekuw: The Children's House, a Wampanoag Language Immersion Nest
• Illuminatives
• Tewa Women United
• American Indian College Fund
• Lakȟóta Immersion Montessori
• Lakȟól’iyapi Wahóȟpi and Wičhákini Owáyawa
• Native American Community Academy
• Hearts Gathered Immersion School
• Montessori American Indian Childcare Center
• Wakanjeya Tokeyahchi Wounspe Tipi of the Rosebud Reservation

Unlearning and Relearning:

• American Indians in Children’s Literature
• Critical Indigenous Literacies: Selecting and Using Children’s Books About Indigenous Peoples by Dr. Debbie Reese
• America Is Still a Colony and the Reemergence of Native Nations by Jaquline Keeler
• Indigenous Cheerleader

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About the Authors

‍Trisha Moquino is the Co-Founder/Education Director/Guide at Keres Children’s Learning Center (KCLC) which serves Cochiti Pueblo. She is from the Tribal/Pueblo communities of Cochiti, Kewa, and Ohkay Ohwingeh in New Mexico. Trisha completed her Montessori Elementary I certification at the Montessori Education Center of the Rockies and her Primary training with United Montessori Association.  Her master’s thesis laid out the vision for what would eventually become the KCLC. Her daughters were her inspiration for wanting to start KCLC.

Katie Kitchens (they/them/she/her) has worked in public, private and non-profit Montessori environments for the past decade as an instructional coach, teacher trainer and primary and elementary guide. Currently, Katie is pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Studies, researching racial identity development in young white children. Katie is also grateful to be the English Speaking Elementary Guide at the Keres Children’s Learning Center, and a facilitator for Embracing Equity. Katie strives to work in partnership to uproot racist ideology within themself and their community, and work in coalition toward what Dr. Montessori called universal liberation.