The vision of this doctoral project was to document Native educational leaders who center their school leadership in ancestral knowledge and the cultural practices of their communities as they lead from the middle. Leading from the middle acknowledges a cultural lens to compare that approach to the indigenous. Leading from the middle acknowledges…

Literacy engagement for Indigenous peoples is a practice embedded in lived experience as thoughtful ways to communicate with and make sense of the world around us. Indigenous literacies involve the melding of Indigenous ways of knowing with contemporary educational pedagogies. Indigenous authors and teachers have long used Indigenous pedagogies in…

The article reports on the dispossession of indigenous knowledge in the public education system in Mapuche territory in La Araucanía, a southern region in Chile. The methodology is qualitative, 18 people were interviewed including Mapuche wise men and women, fathers, and mothers who experienced schooling processes in their younger years. The…

We, four teachers in Ojibwe or majority-Ojibwe schools and three teachers in teacher preparation at a small ecologically focused liberal arts college, tell stories to reorient ourselves, centering place in ways accessible to our emerging practice. In these narratives, anchored in the seasons, we describe our challenges and successes in adapting…

The Johnson-O'Malley (JOM) program provides academic and cultural supports to meet the specialized and unique educational needs of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students enrolled in public schools and select tribal schools. The Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), within the Department of the Interior, contracts with Tribes, tribal…

The Cheyenne and Arapaho Department of Education (CADOE) functions as a tribal education department (TED) in western rural Oklahoma, situated within a tribal government that has a total membership of 13,212; 3,160 of whom are ages 3-18 years. CADOE has supported and advocated for equal opportunity and access for Cheyenne and Arapaho families and…

Background/Context: Indigenous communities of the "Americas" have a long history of exercising sovereignty over and self-determination in the education of their children that predates colonial invasion. This was disrupted by the advent of colonial education and its assimilationist aims, and Indigenous communities have been in an ongoing…

This article offers a sampling and critique of the history of education in North America, including Canada, the United States and Mexico. Being Black and Indigenous academics, respectively, the authors' scholarship centres on community relationships, considering activism around #BlackLivesMatter and Indigenous Peoples, especially with the news of…

Based on an ethnographic research study, in an Ecuadorian Amazonian Kichwa territory, I use the notion of 'translation as controlled equivocation' as an analytical tool to explore the making sense of difference. Occurring in the same territory, I analyse these encounters with difference, read in relation to a classroom dialogue between teacher and…

In this theoretical article, I examine various conceptions of focused listening--including those held by specific First Nations communities--to determine how each conception might offer insights for listening while conducting cross-cultural music education research. First, I discuss the notion of "Big Ears," as it is understood by the…

In this case, readers will learn how the University of New Mexico educational leadership program intentionally created a doctoral cohort that is Indigenous based and focused that included Indigenous and tribal community narrative and feedback in its development. The NALE doctoral cohort program included these same communities as sites for…

What should an educational leader passionate about all students do when they are told educational equity is not allowed in their district? What does a director of Indigenous education do when funding earmarked for Indigenous students is redirected to other school priorities? What should be done when the very teachers who need training in cultural…

Despite the recent anti-CRT (Critical Race Theory) movement within U.S. education, teachings of Native histories and perspectives have never been accurately taught, or even taught. From their perspectives as teacher educators in predominantly white institutions (PWI), the authors share counterstories from their existing IRB-approved research…

Michael Pitblado and Agnieszka Chalas, history teacher and art teacher respectively, describe how and why they responded to a call by Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission to engage students with difficult aspects of Canada's past, including the forced cultural assimilation of Indigenous peoples through the Indian Residential School System.…

Coloniality in education and language policies continues to impact Indigenous communities in implicit and complex ways. In this article, we describe the case of Colombia where, like in many other countries in the Global South, educational policy messages are contradictory. While ethno-education policies purport to sustain Indigenous languages and…