Stop Talking: Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning and Difficult

stop talking Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning and Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education Ilarion (Larry) Merculieff and Libby Roderick UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA ANCHORAGE B Ground Rules s t o p talking Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning and Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education Ilarion (Larry) Merculieff and Libby Roderick Copyright ©2013 by the University of Alaska Anchorage Published by: University of Alaska Anchorage Thomas Case, Chancellor 3211 Providence Drive Anchorage, AK 99508 Quotes used by permission. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The editors and publisher have made their best efforts in preparing this handbook; however, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or inclusiveness of the contents. The contributors speak as individuals, not as representatives of a nation or a people. Readers are encouraged to use the contents as a source of ideas and fresh thinking, not as a prescription for a particular outcome, and to consult with other texts and professionals where appropriate. ISBN: 978-0-9702845-0-1 Produced by the University of Alaska Anchorage, 2013 Dedicated to the memory of Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley whose wisdom, dedication, and courage inspired him to forge some of the first and most important connections between indigenous ways of teaching and learning and western higher education E Edited by Kay Landis Contributing Writers Jack Dalton Martha Gould-Lehe Diane Hirshberg Claudia Lampman Paul Ongtooguk Oliver Petraitis Don Rearden With special thanks to Jeane Breinig Renee Carter-Chapman Jack Curtiss John Dede Trish Jenkins Susan LaBelle Jack Roderick Book design and original art David Freeman Published by University of Alaska Anchorage Sponsored by Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence University of Alaska Anchorage Difficult Dialogues Initiative Ford Foundation Table of Contents Introduction Foreword Who we are 1 Ground Rules ................................................1 2 Indigenizing Education ........................... 39 3 Difficult Dialogues....................................63. 4 One Day with Elders on the Land ........ 93 5 Into Our Classrooms ...............................119 6 Assessment ............................................... 141 7 Pausing for Reflection ............................ 157 References and Recommended Reading................174 G In.the.Beginning It was the end of spring semester here in Anchorage, Alaska. The snow was gone in all but the shadiest of places, but the trees were not yet in leaf, and a brown dust blew lightly over the still winter-flattened earth. It was a season of endings and beginnings. Finals were over, grades turned in, robes donned, commencement hats flung. Summer was on its way. Just before the faculty went off contract and scattered to the mid-May winds, we held the last meeting of our Ford Foundation-sponsored Difficult Dialogues project. We’d been working together for the past two years on strategies for engaging controversial topics in the classroom, including those especially difficult ones involving race, culture, and ethnicity. Everyone was exhausted: the sixteen faculty members around the table, the organizers and facilitators, the Ford Foundation representatives who had flown through the night to get here. Even the coffee pot was only half awake. We had this one last thing to do, and then we could all go home. We went around the room, each faculty member making a final report on what he or she had tried in the classroom and how it had gone. Some of the stories were exciting; others less so. But still the voices continued. Around two in the afternoon, we took a break, and the Ford Foundation evaluators asked to see our leadership team alone for a few final comments and questions. They told us they had seen enough. It was clear we had done what we said we’d done, had the effects on faculty that we had claimed. They were satisfied. Our project was one of the successful ones. We passed. It would have made a nice ending. But then, as everyone was just starting to relax, the Ford Foundation’s assessment expert leaned forward and said, “OK, off the record, what do you think you really accomplished here?” There was a moment of silence. The Vice Provost looked at the Psychology professor, the faculty development leader exchanged glances with both of them. Who would say what they all were thinking? It was Libby who broke the silence. Taking a deep breath, she said “I think, for the first time ever, we’re ready to begin.” i ii Introduction Early in 2006, the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) and Alaska Pacific University (APU) formed a partnership to improve the learning climates at our institutions. Our stated goal was to make our campuses more inclusive of minority voices and ways of knowing and safer places for the free exchange of ideas. Supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation’s national Difficult Dialogues initiative, we created faculty development, classroom practice, and Books of the Year models to support our faculty members to reach different kinds of learners, promote deeper kinds of learning, and lead more productive discussions of controversial issues they may have been avoiding in their classrooms. That work is described in Start Talking: A Handbook for Engaging Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education, published in 2008 and available online through the UAA Difficult Dialogues website (www.difficultdialoguesuaa.org). In May of 2009, we launched a second Difficult Dialogues partnership initiative, again with Ford Foundation support. This work was designed to break some difficult silences and begin to engage in some tough but necessary conversations between the academic and Alaska Native communities in our state. We introduced Alaska Native ways of teaching and learning as both a common interest and a vehicle for exploring cross-cultural differences and commonalities. We wanted to equip some of our most innovative faculty members to respectfully explore the tensions between these two communities, with hopes that we might begin to seek solutions satisfying to all. But there was a problem. Our urban campuses stand on the traditional lands of the Dena’ina Athabascan people. Although we have many individually successful initiatives and programs for Alaska Native students and many remarkable faculty, staff, and administrators committed to equity, our two universities do not have a deep awareness of Alaska Native cultures, histories, and issues. Neither do we have many Alaska Native faculty members or administrators. In this arena (as in many others), the imbalance in power and prestige between the two communities is so great that we first had to do something to try and even things out a little. Before we could meet in a place of mutual respect and understanding, the privileged voices of academia would have to yield some ground to indigenous voices that have long been silenced or ignored. This time we would turn the tables. This time Alaska Native people would be the teachers, and non-Native faculty members would be the learners. We would introduce our faculty members to difficult dialogues about science and racism, help them experience profoundly different ways of teaching and learning, and encourage them to explore these different strategies and issues in their classrooms. We hoped the experience would raise their awareness and appreciation of Alaska Native cultures, create a more balanced starting point for engaging difficult dialogues on issues concerning Alaska’s Native peoples, help prevent painful racism-related conflicts and situations on our campuses and in our classrooms, and transfer to other situations and relationships involving “difference.” iii Using models developed in our first project, we recruited participants from among those who had completed our first Difficult Dialogues training. We selected an interdisciplinary cohort of Faculty Fellows with an expressed interest in learning more about Alaska Native ways of teaching and learning. We developed and presented a week-long intensive experience in which they could explore indigenous pedagogies and issues together. The program was designed and presented by Alaska Native teachers, Elders, and community members in collaboration with a non-Native faculty developer. Our faculty participants experienced cultural differences, practiced pedagogies that teach to those differences, and worked together adapting strategies for their individual courses. For a year afterward, they experimented and conducted scholarly inquiries in their own classrooms, coming together for one last formal gathering in April 2010 to share posters of their individual projects and celebrate their experiences together. This book tells the story of our project: what we practiced, what we learned, what effect it had on our thinking and our classroom practices and—in some cases—our lives. We created it hoping that other universities could look over our shoulders, see what we have experienced, and take from it inspiration for their own dreams of transforming higher education. Although our experience is specific to our participants and peoples here in Alaska, the lessons we learned may be helpful to other colleges and universities and to other groups of indigenous or oppressed peoples, wherever in the world they may be. How to use this material The book’s structure roughly mimics the experience of our faculty intensive. Each of the first five chapters represents a day of programming, complete with conversations, pedagogies, guest speakers, and opportunities

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