Schooling Stories: Native and Indigenous Narratives of Settler Colonialism and Dislodgement

Abstract

Dissertation Advisor: Professor Jarvis R. Givens Kemeyawi Wahpepah Schooling Stories: Native and Indigenous Narratives of Settler Colonialism and Dislodgement Abstract Settler colonialism is a system of domination which has received little attention in educational research. This study explores how settler colonialism is reproduced and resisted in United States schools from the perspective of Native and Indigenous students. Guided by theories of reproduction and resistance, settler memory, and Indigenous refusal, this study draws on 133 in-depth interviews conducted with 45 Native and Indigenous students to explore how they make meaning out of their experiences in school from kindergarten through college. Part I: Curriculum finds that they regularly encounter Indigenous erasure, misrepresentation, disavowal and dysagency at school, and that they resist these reproductive mechanisms of settler colonialism through a strategy of ‘shifting’ the curriculum. Part II: Commemoration finds that students regularly encounter hegemonic forms of commemorative pedagogy at school, and that they resist these reproductive mechanisms of settler colonialism through calls for a counter-commemorative pedagogy. It argues that ‘shifting’ the curriculum and counter-commemorative pedagogy are both examples of dislodgement, a flexible set of practices designed to disrupt settler colonialism in United States schools. It calls educators to develop their own contextually specific practices of dislodgement in order to bring more just and equitable systems of schooling into being.