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Teachers must carefully attend to how to help students heal (Allen, 2021). The
                             key to success in that vein is what many may attest is the key to good teaching:
                             building relationships. Students who feel in community with their teachers and peers
                             have better academic and social-emotional outcomes (Suarez-Orozco et al., 2009;
                             Tong, 2014). As Tomlinson aptly stated (1999):
                                                               • Each kid is like all others and different than
                                                               all others.
         Teachers can support Indigenous                       • Kids need unconditional acceptance as human
                                                               beings.
               students through strong,                        • Kids  need  to  believe  they  can  become

        culturally supportive pedagogical                      something better than they are.
                                                               • Kids need help in living up to their dreams.
             practices by adhering to the                      • Kids  often  make  their  own  sense  of  things
                                                               when adults collaborate with them.
         framework provided and staying                        • Kids need action, joy, and peace.
                                                               • Kids need power over their lives and learning.
          current on trends in Indigenous                      • Kids need help to develop power and use it

                          education.                           wisely.
                                                               • Kids need to be secure in a larger world. (p. 29)
                                                               These  observations  are  strong  frameworks
                                                               for  a  healthy  and  productive  classroom  that
                             encourages identity development and community support between and among all
                             learners, including those with Indigenous identity.
                                Furthermore, another way to support Indigenous students is through the lens
                             of the Community Cultural Wealth Theory (Yosso, 2005), which states that each
                             student experiences life through his or her personal cultural, linguistic, navigational,
                             familial, aspirational, social, and resistant-capital (a form of resiliency by which an
                             individual resists negative stereotypes) perspectives. By activating those Community
                             Cultural  Wealth  attributes,  students  are  able  to  take  ownership  in  their  learning
                             by adding their understandings and ways of knowing to the class experience and
                             community (Habig et al., 2021).

                             Partnerships
                                A  rebirth  of  cooperation  and  expression  is  occurring  among  tribal  leaders
                             in unifying toward land and water stewardship programs as a means of cultural
                             preservation (von der Porten et al., 2019; Wildcat et al., 2014). Governing bodies,
                             stakeholders, and community members have begun advocating to create and maintain
                             a space for Indigenous peoples in advocacy groups relating to the land and water.
                             For example, recent UNESCO meetings (2021) have discussed that all humans have
                             a social contract with nature, and in some countries, Indigenous people have been
                             appointed as the preservers of natural phenomena that have been personified (i.e., in
                             India, the Ganges and Yamuna rivers have been granted personhood).
                                Still other partnerships provide opportunities for advocacy and growth within and
                             among tribes and non-Indigenous peoples. Representatives have continued to bring
                             forth ideas about how to conduct ethical studies among Indigenous communities
                             by creating a checklist to help researchers better understand how to partner more
                             appropriately with such communities (Huria et al., 2019).  Using these considerations
                             in constructing instructional models can benefit, support, and empower Indigenous
                             students.


        18                                            The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators
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