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…

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…

Federal law defines English learner (EL) eligibility differently for Indigenous, compared to non-Indigenous, students, allowing for broader entry into the EL category, along with its accompanying resources and services. We interviewed EL leaders from 25 state departments of education to learn about their level of understanding of the…

Written by the SECEIJ Special Forum editorial team, this Project Report summarizes the interdisciplinary, collaborative, and inspiring research journey and theoretical background leading to the creation of a strategic plan for the 'IKE Alliance for Transforming STEM Education. 'IKE, which stands for Indigenous Knowledges, Encouragements,…

What does it take to develop an asynchronous curriculum for social work students, with attention to precision, policy accuracy, and community accountability? We attempt to answer the question by documenting our process of community collaboration and partnership to develop a gamified case study on the Indian Child Welfare Act. The curriculum was…

Over the last decade, The California Endowment (TCE) has invested in 14 communities that have historically been marginalized and denied opportunities for their residents to thrive. The initiative, known as Building Healthy Communities (BHC), focuses on creating places where children are healthy, safe, and ready to learn. Del Norte and Tribal Lands…

The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the symbiotic relationship between Native nation-building and higher education in California (CA)--an understudied topic in Indian education. The aim was two-fold: 1) understand how, and whether, educational achievement and nation-building are tied together, and 2) extend current literature…

Wielding degrees of influence within educational organizations, university leaders are critical in determining how institutions enact their espoused missions and support severely marginalized campus communities. How do universities address and improve educational outcomes for the most severely underrepresented communities? This article presents…

The presence of urban Indian communities and American Indian tribal nations in and near metropolitan areas creates tremendous potential for expanding campus-community collaborations regarding teaching, research, and service. However, many challenges must be addressed, including acknowledging the colonial context of relations between indigenous and…

This article describes a learning program of the Tohono O'odham or "desert people" of the Southwestern United States and Mexico. Their culture and knowledge on both sides of the border is for them a special way of life known as "himdag," where science is built into everyday life of gathering, hunting, farming, artistry, and…

"On Indian Ground: California" is the first in a series of ten books on American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian education. The focus of this text is the 110 tribes in California and the best practices available to educators of native students in K-16. This volume explores the history of California Indian education as well as…

In 1953 California Indians watched as the U.S. Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 108 to effectively terminate federal trust protection of American Indian reservation lands. Included in the wording of the Termination Act is the following: It is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to make the Indian within the ... territorial…

Arming themselves with "manifest destiny" rhetoric, which claimed divine Anglo-Saxon superiority as justification for the conquest of Indigenous and Mexican peoples and the land they occupied, white settlers forcefully pushed into California territory. The two-year-long Mexican-American War resulted in the acquisition of the present-day…

This exploratory study took a post-colonialist lens to record, examine and document schooling experiences of California Indian people across several generations representing three Central Valley tribes: the Mono, the Tachi Yokuts of Santa Rosa Rancheria, and the Tule River Tribe. Past and present perceptions of Indian schooling were elicited…

In this article we examine the socialization of respect in a racially integrated science classroom in Northern California that employed a character education program called Tribes. We focus on the ways scripts derived from this program are enacted during Community Circle activities and how breaches to these scripts and the norms of respectful…