Indigenous students learn and retain more when teachers value the language and culture of the students’ community and incorporate them into the curriculum. This is a principle enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) and borne out both by the successes of Indigenous-language immersion schools and by the failures of past assimilationist practices and the recent English-only policies of the No Child Left Behind Act in the United States. Teaching Indigenous Students puts culturally based education squarely into practice. The volume, edited and with an introduction by leading American Indian education scholar Jon Reyhner, brings together new and dynamic research from established and emerging voices in the field of American Indian and Indigenous education. All of the contributions show how the quality of education for Indigenous students can be improved through the promotion of culturally and linguistically appropriate schooling. Grounded in place, community, and culture, the approaches set out in this volume reflect the firsthand experiences of teachers and students in interacting not just with texts and one another, but also with the local community and environment. The authors address the specifics of teaching the full range of subjects—from learning literacy using culturally meaningful texts to inquiry-based science curricula, and from math instruction that incorporates real-world experience to social studies that blend oral history and local culture with national and world history. Teaching Indigenous Students also emphasizes the importance of art, music, and physical education, both traditional and modern, in producing well-rounded human beings and helping students establish their identity as twenty-first-century Indigenous peoples. Surveying the work of Indigenous-language immersion schools around the world, this volume also holds out hope for the revitalization of Indigenous languages and traditional cultural values.

Teaching Indigenous Students

History

Reyhner

Americas

Before Europeans arrived in North America, Indigenous peoples spoke more than three hundred languages and followed almost as many distinct belief systems and lifeways. But in childrearing, the different Indian societies had certain practices in common—including training for survival and teaching tribal traditions. The history of American Indian education from colonial times to the present is a story of how Euro-Americans disrupted and suppressed these common cultural practices, and how Indians actively pursued and preserved them. American Indian Education recounts that history from the earliest missionary and government attempts to Christianize and “civilize” Indian children to the most recent efforts to revitalize Native cultures and return control of schools to Indigenous peoples. Extensive firsthand testimony from teachers and students offers unique insight into the varying experiences of Indian education. Historians and educators Jon Reyhner and Jeanne Eder begin by discussing Indian childrearing practices and the work of colonial missionaries in New France (Canada), New England, Mexico, and California, then conduct readers through the full array of government programs aimed at educating Indian children. From the passage of the Civilization Act of 1819 to the formation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1824 and the establishment of Indian reservations and vocation-oriented boarding schools, the authors frame Native education through federal policy eras: treaties, removal, assimilation, reorganization, termination, and self-determination. Thoroughly updated for this second edition, American Indian Education is the most comprehensive single-volume account, useful for students, educators, historians, activists, and public servants interested in the history and efficacy of educational reforms past and present.

American Indian Education, 2nd Edition

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Books by Reyhner

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Teaching Indigenous Students

American Indian Education, 2nd Edition