The low number of California Native American students, both rural and urban, graduating A through G ready prompted this study. Using a qualitative and Indigenous research approach, the research questions that guided this study were: (1) What are the perspectives and beliefs about postsecondary education among a group of Native American students at…

Indigenous people of the world fight to maintain our lifeways, culture, and more specifically our languages. Speakers have endured waves of violence and persecution and in the face of that still fought to preserve and bring back languages. Language loss has been observed by communities and linguists and each figures out ways to document and…

There is a significant diaspora of Mixtec people residing along California's Central Coast, mostly working in the agricultural sector. The new realities in the diaspora have brought Mixtec varieties in contact in new contexts where they co-exist with other Mexican Indigenous languages, as well as with Spanish and English. We urgently need more…

Indigenous students in the United States experience disproportionate outcomes in school, including high rates of special education identification, suspension, and chronic absenteeism. Despite the systemic inequities that affect Native students, state educational agencies (SEAs) employ few staff who specialize in the education needs of these…

A chemical engineering degree offers the possibility of a variety of career paths including food and beverage industry. However, chemical engineering students are rarely exposed to food processing examples during their education. Therefore, a new elective food processing course was developed and offered for the first time in the department of…

This dissertation argues that indigenous language revitalization and reclamation projects are best understood as multigenerational and multi-participant conversations, which I will frame as language conversations. Language revitalization and reclamation relies on relationships, access, and accountability within indigenous frameworks. This model of…

Leadership toward excellence is vital in shaping human and ecological life, but who defines and benefits from excellence? In religious and educational communities, visions of excellence can serve to support the flourishing of life, and also to critique perspectives that reinforce individualism and hierarchical systems. This paper explores…

This study addressed Native American students' perceptions of their educational experiences, 142 years after the first federally-run, off-reservation Indian Boarding School opened, and their perceptions of how university staff, faculty, and administrators could better serve Native students. Qualitative interviews were conducted with five Native…

Using a socio-ecological and an intersectionality framework, this cross-national study examined the perceived discrimination experiences of U.S.-based diasporic Yucatec-Maya Mexican students (n = 66), U.S.-based non-Yucatec-Maya (non-indigenous) Latinx students (n = 65), and Mexico-based Yucatec-Maya students (n = 70). U.S.-based Yucatec-Maya…

American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth exhibit multiple health disparities, including high rates of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use, violence and delinquency, and mental health problems. Approximately 70% of AI/AN youth reside in urban areas, where negative outcomes on behavioral health and well-being are often high. Identity development…

Formal schooling in the U.S. has a long and violent history towards Indigenous peoples, today morphing into exclusion and erasure. Using a novel longitudinal dataset of U.S. textbooks (n = 193) from California and Texas, published from 1850 to 2019, we seek to shine light on the issue through a comprehensive analysis of depictions of Indigenous…

Increasingly, speakers of minoritized languages around the world are becoming uprooted due to economic pressures, political forces, and environmental destabilization. As communities leave their traditional homelands, they often experience accelerated language shift. Although youth are in a critical position to further transmit their languages to…

Colleges and universities across the United States are recognizing the public memory function of their campus spaces and facing difficult decisions about how to represent the ugly sides of their histories within their landscapes of remembrance. Official administrative responses to demands for greater inclusiveness are often slow and conservative…

Educators are often unaware of assets Mexican Indigenous children possess that originate from their cultural practices. Using Critical Latinx Indigeneities and Indigenous Heritage Saberes, our studies focus on three unique Indigenous learning communities that provide opportunities of empowerment for these students. We examine the experiences of…

Indigenous students often see higher education as a means by which they can meet their familial, community, and cultural responsibilities. Unfortunately, many collegiate institutions emphasize values and social protocols, a way of understanding, and a way of knowing that are unfamiliar and even hostile to Indigenous worldviews. To better…