Copyright by Kayla Marie Price 2011 The Dissertation Committee for Kayla Marie Price certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: In school but not of it: the making of Kuna-language education Committee: Joel Sherzer, Co-Supervisor Pauline Strong, Co-Supervisor Elizabeth Keating Douglas Foley Anthony Woodbury In school but not of it: the making of Kuna-language education by Kayla Marie Price, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2011 Dedication To my son, Eduardo Jr. Acknowledgements I thank the Kuna community for aiding me in this project and permitting me to linguistic anthropological research in their homes and schools. I owe many thanks to the people of Koskuna, and my host family in particular, for all of their hospitality. To the Grimaldo and Pérez families in particular, who looked after my small family and let us in to their home and their hearts. Many thanks to my supportive professors, who encouraged me throughout the entire process and a directed me in helpful ways. Thank you to Joel Sherzer and his wife Dina, who always found a way to bring excitement and enthusiasm to any project, especially ones that dealt with the Kuna. Thank you to Polly Strong, whose guidance has kept me focused on the project at hand. Thank you to the rest of my committee and other influential professors in graduate school: Tony Woodbury, Elizabeth Keating, Douglas Foley, Nora England, Charles Hale, Richard Flores, John Hartigan. I would also like to thank the late Kathryn Josserand and her husband Nicholas Hopkins for giving me my first introduction to linguistic anthropology and connecting me with Joel Sherzer. A special thanks to my friends in graduate school that inspired great conversations and made the whole process fun: María Luz García, Simeon Floyd, Terra Edwards, Heather Teague, the Cruz family, and many others. I would also like to thank Wikaliler Daniel Smith and Lindsey Newbold, who also shared an interest in the Kuna language v and linguistics, and long-time friend Kelly Kilgore for her support over the years. A special thank you to those at the University of Houston, especially Jerome Crowder, and my small writing group, Jessica Wilson, for all of their help and encouragement. Another special thank you to my writing partner Linda Ho Peché, a fellow UT student in Houston who saw me through the final stages of my dissertation. A heartfelt thank you to my family, including my parents, Michael and Linda Price, and my sister Emily Price, for their continued support throughout, especially hours of babysitting that were crucial in writing this dissertation. I also thank my husband, Eduardo Guadian, and son, Eduardo Jr., for accompanying me to Panama to do fieldwork, where we were able to spend time as a family. This research was generously funded by various fellowships throughout my graduate school career: the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright Institute of International Education Fellowship and the Jacob Javits Fellowship. vi In school but not of it: the making of Kuna-language education Publication No._____________ Kayla Marie Price, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2011 Co-supervisors: Joel Sherzer and Pauline Strong This research concerns a Kuna-Spanish bilingual elementary school in Panama City, founded for Kuna children by Kuna teachers. Based on ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork, this research investigates the socio-cultural context for the emergence of the school and the ways that students, teachers and parents, together with Kuna elders, navigate the path of indigenous schooling. The process of negotiating linguistic and cultural meanings in Kuna-language education includes both ―traditionalized‖ Kuna forms of learning and informal education in and around the home. These various foundations of Kuna knowledge, from the use of Kuna oral history to eating Kuna food in the home, are incorporated into the curriculum in various ways, highlighting the potential of schooling as a place of knowledge production for indigenous peoples that is culturally inclusive. At the same time, the manner in which Kuna identity is indexed in the school is uneven. It is liberating in some moments while very restrictive in others, reflecting vii similar patterns, often in relation to state-sponsored notions of ―multiculturalism,‖ in the Kuna community and in the broader context of Panamanian society. In order to fully explore the complexities of the school and its workings, this research explores the Kuna experience in Panama City, where more than half of the Kuna population currently resides. This dissertation is a contribution to the fields of linguistic anthropology and the anthropology of education, analyzing the case of an urban Kuna school that employs both Western and indigenous pedagogy and content, with specific implications for studies of language socialization, bilingual education and educational politics for indigenous peoples. viii Table of Contents List of Tables ....................................................................................................... xiii List of Figures ...................................................................................................... xiv Chapter 1 – Introduction ..........................................................................................1 Chapter Overview ...........................................................................................3 Chapter 2 – The Cultural Politics of Language, Schooling and Education for Indigenous Peoples .........................................................................................7 Part 1: The Cultural politics of Language .......................................................7 Language Ideologies ..............................................................................8 Language Loss and Discourses of Language Endangerment ..............11 Language Socialization ........................................................................14 Situating Language in Social and Economic Inequalities....................17 Part 2: Problematizing Schools as Political and Cultural Sites ....................20 Schooling, Education and the State .....................................................21 Bilingual Education .............................................................................23 Multiculturalism, Interculturalism and Intraculturalism ......................30 Knowledge, Epistemology and Pedagogy ...........................................33 Writing systems, Books and Materials ................................................35 Part 3: Indigenous strategies in an global context ........................................39 On Movement and Migration...............................................................40 Indigenous Identity and Indigenism.....................................................43 On Self-Determination .........................................................................46 Chapter 3 – The Sites: Understanding the Kuna Yala continuum .........................49 Panama: People and Place ............................................................................50 History of Kuna Yala ....................................................................................54 A History of Kuna Schools and Educational Practices .................................60 Bilingual Education Policy ..................................................................64 Kuna or Guna: Writing Dulegaya ........................................................66 ix Linguistic Discrimination ....................................................................69 Migration to Panama City .............................................................................71 First Site of Research: Tupile in Kuna Yala .................................................78 Second Site of Research: Koskuna in Panama City......................................82 Third site of research: Fundación Trabajando por un Futuro Mejor ............88 Why these Sites .............................................................................................91 Chapter 4 – Fieldwork and Methodology ..............................................................97 At Home and in the Field in Panama ..........................................................100 Positioning ..................................................................................................106 Ethical Considerations ................................................................................108 The Discourse-Centered Approach to Culture ............................................111 Language in the Classroom .........................................................................114 Ethnography and Participant-observation ...................................................118 Data Collection ...........................................................................................120 Chapter 5 – Learning to be Kuna .........................................................................124 On ―Tradition‖ ............................................................................................124 Education and Schooling in Kuna Yala ......................................................128 Learning Kuna