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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