Discusses the steps taken by Bay Mills (Michigan) and Salish Kootenai (Montana) Colleges in developing online educational opportunities for tribal virtual colleges. Defines the asynchronous/synchronous learning environment that underpins the new approaches to distance education. Asserts that the tribal virtual college's uniqueness lies in defining…

Current psychometric and testing practices are inadequate for assessing the intelligence of American Indian students, due to complicating factors of culture and language. These deficient methods are then used to make educational decisions, resulting in improper special education placements. The benefits of alternative methods of testing, including…

Every component of traditional indigenous life is influenced by the natural world, but indigenous studies programs exclude the natural sciences. To wrest indigenous studies programs from the Eurocentric worldview of the typical American university, the natural sciences should be incorporated into what must necessarily be an integrated,…

Observed Hindi-speaking Indian caregivers and their children to examine how caregivers use language to create diverse conceptions of personhood. Distributional analyses examined the proportion of person references and class-based patterns of co-occurrence between particular social acts and person references. Discussion explored ways in which…

Participatory research by the State University of New York at Potsdam and the Mohawk Nation involved community discussion groups, which established needs for bicultural education for Indian students, the use of Mohawk culture as the arena for curriculum development, development of Mohawk cultural standards, and teacher training in Mohawk culture.…

Leadership, like diversity, is often used in education as an all-encompassing notion, applied to a wide variety of situations, or at times, used rather loosely. The danger with such an approach is the lack of specificity. Yet, specificity can set the boundaries so narrow that one is led to believe one approach is better than another or that "one…

Over the past 20 years, higher education has seen significant growth in the numbers of both associate's and bachelor's degrees conferred on students in the United States, particularly women and minorities. For example, the number of associate's degrees conferred on African American women between 1980 and 2000 nearly doubled, tripling for American…

This article, focuses on the experiences of two Ivy League graduates to examine the notion of transformational resistance. Combining data from a two-year ethnographic study with follow-up interviews over a decade, the author analyzes how students acquired skills and credentials that enabled them to serve their tribal communities. Strategies of…

This article describes a unique approach to Indigenous community development through community-based education partnerships between First Nations and postsecondary institutions in Canada. Using a "generative curriculum model," Indigenous knowledge is brought into the process of teaching and learning by community Elders, and this is…

One of the most common misunderstandings about the composition of the teaching profession, and hence, educational administration, is that it is merely a professional choice: someone chooses to be a teacher rather than a business person, a lawyer, a food service worker, a nurse, a truck driver. In reality, many decisions are made for young people…

On December 12, 2000, one of the top three headlines on the front page of the "Anchorage Daily News" ("ADN") read, "Student Attacks Professor's Poem." The subtitle read, ""Indian Girls" described as racist, insulting." One of the two primary photos on the front page that garnered attention was the…

A few years ago, while interviewing for a tenure-track position at a large, public institution in the Midwest, the author was informed that several faculty members suspected him of being "an activist posing as an academic" because the faculty thought that his research lacked "objectivity." Based on subsequent conversations the author had during…

Purpose: Although implementation fidelity is an important component in the evaluation of school health promotion programs, it assumes that teaching is the most relevant teacher role. To understand the social context of program implementation, a qualitative study was undertaken with the aim of identifying the schoolteacher's role in implementing…

This paper discusses a range of issues concerning the idea of "brain drain" within the context of recent thinking on transnational mobility. It argues that the traditional analyses of brain drain are not sufficient, and that we can usefully approach the topic from a postcolonial perspective concerned with issues of identity, national…

Australia's indigenous population is made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who each have distinctly different cultures. The former can be found in cities and towns and across the vast reaches of rural and remote Australia. The latter generally inhabit the coastal islands off the northeast coast and adjacent mainland areas.…