ABSTRACT
This chapter moves beyond the classroom and school to consider the possibilities that emerge when teachers, schools, and districts welcome Indigenous knowledges and share power with Indigenous communities. First focusing on a classroom presentation by two Native educators, the story illustrates the ways colonial ideologies are often projected on Indigenous peoples, and how Indigenous peoples refuse such containment—in this case, the educators’ refusal to perform or present as Native informants, or their refusal to position Native artists and art as objects of study. The story then broadens the analysis from recognizing Native knowledge in the “community” to recognizing Native nationhood and sovereignty. Focusing on the process of consultation between a classroom, tribal liaison, and Native representatives from several nearby nations—a process institutionalized by the US Forest Service—this story points to the generative aspects of curriculum and pedagogy at the sociopolitical border between schools and Native nations. In particular, it draws attention to Indigenous peoples’ refusal to be represented as ecological Indians, and how these refusals, rather than subtractive, offer generative learning regarding respect and recognition of Native sovereignty. The survivance story ends by exploring other types of learning that could occur if Indigenous knowledges, desires, and sovereignty were more seriously invited into the educational process.
