Matching Items (6)
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- All Subjects: Native American Studies
- Creators: Lomawaima, K. Tsianina
Description
This dissertation focuses on traditional arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) as a form of place-based education by asking the question, what is the role of traditional arts at IAIA? Through a qualitative study students, faculty, staff, and alumni were interviewed to gain their perspectives on education, traditional arts, and the role of traditional arts at IAIA. Through analysis of these interviews, it was found that participants viewed traditional arts as a form of place-based education and that these practices should play an important role at IAIA. This study also looks at critical geography and place-based practice as a form of anti-colonial praxis and an exercise of tribal sovereignty. Colonization restructures and transforms relationships with place. Neo-colonialism actively seeks to disconnect people from their relationship with the environment in which they live. A decline in relationship with places represents a direct threat to tribal sovereignty. This study calls on Indigenous people, and especially those who are Pueblo people, to actively reestablish relationships with their places so that inherent sovereignty can be preserved for future generations. This study also looks at the academic organization of IAIA and proposes a restructuring of the Academic Dean and Chief Academic Officer (AD&CAO) position to address issues of transition, efficiency, and innovation. The extensive responsibilities of this position cause several serious concerns. The policy paper proposes that the academic programs be divided thematically into 2 schools that will allow greater flexibility and adaptive practices to emerge out of the academic division at IAIA. The combination of restructuring the academic division at IAIA, my theoretical argument promoting place-based praxis as anti-colonial practice, and my research into the application of place-based programming at IAIA all support my overall goal of supporting Pueblo communities through my own work.
ContributorsSwentzell, Porter (Author) / Sumida-Huaman, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Lomawaima, K. Tsianina (Committee member) / Chhetri, Netra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This dissertation explores how historical changes in education shaped Diné collective identity and community by examining the interconnections between Navajo students, their people, and Diné Bikéyah (Navajo lands). Farina King investigates the ongoing influence of various schools as colonial institutions among the Navajo from the 1930s to 1990 in the southwestern United States. The question that guides this research is how institutional schools, whether far, near, or on the reservation, affected Navajo students’ sense of home and relationships with their Indigenous community during the twentieth century.
The study relies on a Diné historical framework that centers on a Navajo mapping of the world and earth memory compass. The four directions of their sacred mountains orient the Diné towards hózhǫ́, the ideal of society, a desirable state of being that most translate as beauty, harmony, or happiness. Their sacred mountains mark Diné Bikéyah and provide an earth memory compass in Navajo life journeys that direct them from East, to South, to West, and to North. These four directions and the symbols associated with them guide this overarching narrative of Navajo educational experiences from the beginning of Diné learning in their home communities, to the adolescent stages of their institutionalized schooling, to the recent maturity of hybrid Navajo-American educational systems. After addressing the Diné ancestral teachings of the East, King focuses on the student experiences of interwar Crownpoint Boarding School to the South, the postwar Tuba City Boarding School and Leupp Boarding School to the West, and self-determination in Monument Valley to the North.
This study primarily analyzes oral histories and cultural historical methodologies to feature Diné perspectives, which reveal how the land and the mountains serve as focal points of Navajo worldviews. The land defines Diné identity, although many Navajos have adapted to different life pathways. Therefore, land, environment, and nature constituted integral parts and embeddedness of Diné knowledge and epistemology that external educational systems, such as federal schools, failed to overcome in the twentieth century.
The study relies on a Diné historical framework that centers on a Navajo mapping of the world and earth memory compass. The four directions of their sacred mountains orient the Diné towards hózhǫ́, the ideal of society, a desirable state of being that most translate as beauty, harmony, or happiness. Their sacred mountains mark Diné Bikéyah and provide an earth memory compass in Navajo life journeys that direct them from East, to South, to West, and to North. These four directions and the symbols associated with them guide this overarching narrative of Navajo educational experiences from the beginning of Diné learning in their home communities, to the adolescent stages of their institutionalized schooling, to the recent maturity of hybrid Navajo-American educational systems. After addressing the Diné ancestral teachings of the East, King focuses on the student experiences of interwar Crownpoint Boarding School to the South, the postwar Tuba City Boarding School and Leupp Boarding School to the West, and self-determination in Monument Valley to the North.
This study primarily analyzes oral histories and cultural historical methodologies to feature Diné perspectives, which reveal how the land and the mountains serve as focal points of Navajo worldviews. The land defines Diné identity, although many Navajos have adapted to different life pathways. Therefore, land, environment, and nature constituted integral parts and embeddedness of Diné knowledge and epistemology that external educational systems, such as federal schools, failed to overcome in the twentieth century.
ContributorsKing, Farina (Author) / Fixico, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Lomawaima, K. Tsianina (Committee member) / Iverson, Peter (Committee member) / Osburn, Katherine M.B. (Committee member) / Tohe, Laura (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This dissertation examines a long-term activist effort by American Indian educators and intellectual leaders to work for greater Native access to and control of American higher education. Specifically, the leaders of this effort built a powerful critique of how American systems of higher education served Native individuals and reservation communities throughout much of the twentieth century. They argued for new forms of higher education and leadership training that appropriated some mainstream educational models but that also adapted those models to endorse Native expressions of culture and identity. They sought to move beyond the failures of existing educational programs and to exercise Native control, encouraging intellectual leadership and empowerment on local and national levels. The dissertation begins with Henry Roe Cloud (Winnebago) and his American Indian Institute, a preparatory school founded in 1915 and dedicated to these principles. From there, the words and actions of key leaders such as Elizabeth Roe Cloud (Ojibwe), D’Arcy McNickle (Salish Kootenai), Jack Forbes (Powhatan-Renapé, Delaware-Lenape), and Robert and Ruth Roessel (Navajo), are also examined to reveal a decades-long thread of Native intellectual activism that contributed to the development of American Indian self-determination and directly impacted the philosophical and practical founding of tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) in the 1960s and 1970s. These schools continue to operate in dozens of Native communities. These individuals also contributed to and influenced national organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), while maintaining connections to grassroots efforts at Native educational empowerment. The period covered in this history witnessed many forms of Native activism, including groups from the Society of American Indians (SAI) to the American Indian Movement (AIM) and beyond. The focus on “intellectual activism,” however, emphasizes that this particular vein of activism was and is still oriented toward the growth of Native intellectualism and its practical influence in modern American Indian lives. It involves action that is political but also specifically educational, and thus rests on the input of prominent Native intellectuals but also on local educators, administrators, government officials, and students themselves.
ContributorsGoodwin, John A (Author) / Fixico, Donald L (Thesis advisor) / Osburn, Katherine MB (Committee member) / Lomawaima, K. Tsianina (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Reproductive Justice is defined as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children (or not), and parent children in safe and sustainable communities (Ross & Solinger, 2017). Reproductive politics in settler nations like the United States are based on gendered, sexualized, and racialized acts of oppression (Gurr, 2014). Among the Indigenous communities in New Mexico, reproductive sovereignty is synonymous with tribal sovereignty and is intimately tied to connections to their land base. A central question guides this work: How have the rules of tribal enrollment impacted dating, child rearing, and family structures within Pueblo communities? Pueblo communities have been subject to centuries of settler colonial rule, then under the Spanish, Mexican, and currently U.S. jurisdictions, each of which shaped enrollment policies. Those policies reflect external normative systems (the Catholic church) and governmental structures (tribal constitutions based on the U.S. model), and membership rules based on settler notions of blood quantum. In particular, strict blood quantum rules threaten the continuity of families, land tenure systems, and Native nations themselves. Blood quantum and other forms of tribal enrollment practices must be understood as reproductive justice issues. This research draws on 89 interviews with 24 Pueblo people (15 women, 5 men, 4 non-binary) over the span of 11 months in 2021. Interviewees represent the Pueblos of Acoma, Cochiti, Isleta, Jemez, Laguna, Pojoaque, San Felipe, San Ildefonso, Taos, and Zuni. This research found that Pueblo people conceptualize the term “reproductive nation building” in two ways: (1) they correlate tribal enrollment requirements with reproductive expectations placed on Pueblo women, and (2) Pueblo people feel a sense of belonging that transcends enrollment via concepts such as responsibility, accountability, permission, and protocol. Current tribal enrollment practices (especially blood quantum and lineal descent) significantly impact Pueblo women’s reproductive choices. Both positive and negative impacts have generational legacies that hold long-lasting implications for the future of tribal nations. Reimagining enrollment is necessary to reclaim kinship, clanship, and other forms of belonging that have been used within Pueblo communities since time immemorial.
ContributorsLucero, Danielle Dominique (Author) / Brayboy, Bryan M (Thesis advisor) / Lomawaima, K. Tsianina (Thesis advisor) / Guevarra, Rudy (Committee member) / Shabazz, Rashad (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This dissertation explores complex representations of spiritual, social and cultural ways of knowing embedded within engraved ivory drill bows from the Bering Strait. During the nineteenth century, multi-faceted ivory drill bows formed an ideal surface on which to recount life events and indigenous epistemologies reflective of distinct environmental and socio-cultural relationships. Carvers added motifs over time and the presence of multiple hands suggests a passing down of these objects as a form of familial history and cultural patrimony. Explorers, traders and field collectors to the Bering Strait eagerly acquired engraved drill bows as aesthetic manifestations of Arctic mores but recorded few details about the carvings resulting in a disconnect between the objects and their multi-layered stories. However, continued practices of ivory carving and storytelling within Bering Strait communities holds potential for engraved drill bows to animate oral histories and foster discourse between researchers and communities. Thus, this collaborative project integrates stylistic analyses and ethno-historical accounts on drill bows with knowledge shared by Alaska Native community members and is based on the understanding that oral narratives can bring life and meaning to objects within museum collections.
ContributorsChan, Amy (Author) / Duncan, Kate (Thesis advisor) / Toon, Richard (Committee member) / Parezo, Nancy (Committee member) / Serwint, Nancy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
What are possibilities for transforming the structural relationship between Indigenous peoples and settlers? Research conversations among a set of project partners (Indigenous and settler pairs)—who reside in the Phoenix metro area, Arizona or on O’ahu, Hawai’i—addressed what good relationships look like and how to move the structural relationship towards those characteristics. Participants agreed that developing shared understandings is foundational to transforming the structural relationship between Indigenous peoples and settlers; that Indigenous values systems should guide a process of transforming relationships; and that settlers must consider their position in relation to Indigenous peoples because position informs responsibility. The proposed framework for settler responsibility is based on the research design and findings, and addresses structural and individual level transformation. The framework suggests that structural-level settler responsibility entails helping to transform the structural relationship and that the settler role involves a settler transformation process parallel to Indigenous resurgence. On an individual level, personal relationships determine appropriate responsibilities, and the framework includes a suggested process between Indigenous persons and settlers for uncovering what these responsibilities are. The study included a trial of the suggested process, which includes four methods: (1) developing shared understandings of terms/concepts through discussion, (2) gathering stories about who participants are in relationship to each other, (3) examining existing daily practices that gesture to a different structural relationship, and (4) using creative processes to imagine structural relationships in a shared world beyond settler colonialism. These methods explore what possibilities unfold when settlers center their relationship with Indigenous peoples.
ContributorsKong, Lilian (Author) / Lomawaima, K. Tsianina (Thesis advisor) / Swadener, Beth Blue (Committee member) / Quan, H. L. T. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020