TCURJ Volume 8 - Winter 2025

Tribal College and University Research Journal

Tribal College and University Research Journal

Volume 8, Winter 2025

The Tribal College and University Research Journal is published by the American Indian College Fund with generous funding from the Henry Luce Foundation. The College Fund believes it is critical to support Tribal college and university (TCU) faculty in conducting research that benefits Indigenous communities and disseminating research to both Indigenous communities and the wider research community. Lead authors on manuscripts conducted their research as faculty and staff at tribal colleges and universities. Manuscripts are reviewed anonymously by an editorial board of Indigenous scholars within a range of academic fields. The journal editors work with authors to prepare manuscripts for publication throughout the submission, review, and revision process.

American Indian College Fund Staff

President & CEO: Cheryl Crazy Bull

Vice President, Research, Evaluation, and Faculty Development: David Sanders

Sr. Program Officer, Faculty Development: Heidi Normandin

Editors, Tribal College and University Research Journal: Anna Lees and Natalie Youngbull

Editorial Board

Jodi Burshia, New Mexico Highlands University

Cheryl Crazy Bull, American Indian College Fund

Susan Faircloth, Independent Scholar

Phillip Stevens, University of Idaho

Belin Tsinnajinnie, WestEd Research Associate

Marco Hatch, Western Washington University

Michelle Montgomery, University of Washington Tacoma

Stephany RunningHawk Johnson, Washington State University

Kyle Whyte, University of Michigan

American Indian College Fund

8333 Greenwood Blvd. Denver, CO 80221

303-426-8900

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© 2025 American Indian College Fund

Cover Art

Jonathan Nelson (Diné), Badwinds Studio

The TCURJ cover and logo design embodies concepts of Indigenous knowledge, community, and place. The design intentionally incorporates symbols to reflect the mission of the journal. Tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are for the community and the research that comes from the TCU community is an act of strength and reclamation.

Tree - The trunk reflects the resilience and knowledge of the community. The leaves reflect the community being served by TCUs.

Land - The land reflects the place of higher education and TCUs. The land also resembles an open book for education.

Sweetgrass braids - The braids acknowledge language, songs, and dances.

WELCOME TO THE TRIBAL COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY RESEARCH JOURNAL

Mitakuyepi,

I frequently begin my remarks or letters by saying Mitakuyepi, usually with some other time-related phrase such as Anpetu Waste, Good Day, or Hihanni Waste, Good Morning. Whenever I do that, I ground myself in my traditional knowledge about the relationships among all of creation—knowledge given to us by our Creator and passed on through our teachings and stories.

When I read the research papers published in this edition of the TCURJ, I was reminded of my own learning over time about our knowledge and of the value of presenting teachings using modern approaches like publication.

In the 1980s when I was a faculty member and then later an administrator at Sinte Gleska University, I worked with Native mathematicians; individuals who at the time were on the leading edge of understanding the integration of modern math concepts with traditional Tribal knowledge.

TCUs were founded so that our people could use our traditional knowledge combined with contemporary and Western knowledge to manage and preserve our own resources, land, air, and water. We adapted so that our knowledge of sustainability can bring life-enriching approaches to development.

And we as Native people have always known how to be spiritually, mentally, and physically well. We have always had the means through our values, our kinship, and our sacred practices to take good care of ourselves and our families. TCUs were founded on prayer and ceremony, so we are places where healing happens and will continue.

Now, through publication, we share our knowledge with each other and with those who want to be our allies and supporters. Wopila, thank you for reading about the valuable work of our TCUs.

Cheryl Crazy Bull President and CEO

Introduction

Anna Lees, Editor

Natalie Youngbull, Editor Tribal College and University Research Journal

The Tribal College and University Research Journal (TCURJ), volume VIII, continues the effort and commitments of the College Fund to further educational sovereignty and capacity within Tribal colleges and universities (TCUs). The TCURJ remains a space for TCU faculty and researchers to publish their empirical studies, theoretical frameworks, conceptual models, pedagogical approaches, and program development across disciplines. This interdisciplinary publication aims to disseminate research across TCUs and into Tribal Nations and communities globally. As an open-access, online journal, these published works can be accessed by all those interested and, thus, hold the potential to inform the greater Tribal Nation community efforts to engage research-informed practices and decision-making processes.

Volume VIII publishes three articles that emphasize Indigenous knowledge specificity in TCU teaching and learning and efforts that promote healing and thriving today and into the future. In “Dakota/Lakota Math Connections: Results from Developing a Community-Based Math Resource,” Luecke provides insight into a process of designing math education from Dakota/Lakota knowledge systems and worldviews. Importantly, Luecke presents a model of community design through a collaborative effort between TCU faculty, language educators, and elders. The notion of opening curricular design spaces to community leaders is an act of resurgence and one that rejects generational or academic divides between faculty and community. With this, Luecke shares examples of math curriculum that connect to everyday lifeways and offer opportunities for TCU students to experience math education that is representative of their lived experiences.

Caldwell shares “The Sustainable Development Institute Model and Indigenous Approaches to Research,” telling the story of the College of the Menominee Nation’s (CMN) Sustainable Development Institute. Caldwell sheds light on his own journey as an educator and leader in a way that inspires others to consider their own roles and responsibilities as Indigenous community members. CMN has built a reputation for producing important research around education, environmental science, and environmental studies. This contribution offers an important framing for how the Sustainable Development Institute has developed over time and how Menominee values, knowledge, and ways of being can continue driving teaching and learning at CMN toward sustainable futures.

Importantly, Merry and Lindquist close this issue with their article titled, “The Tribal College as Institutional Site of Healing and Resilience.” Focusing on how TCUs can emphasize emotions of resiliency and overcome historical trauma, Merry and Lindquist help us all to see an approach to sustaining community wellness

through times of challenge. The recognition of historical trauma, continued settler colonial harm, and opportunities for positive futures is a powerful balance for TCU faculty and leaders working to support current students and engaged community members.

These three articles represent some of the powerful research and engagement happening across TCUs. We are inspired by the willingness for TCU faculty to fulfill their responsibility of research and engagement and are grateful to their willingness to share their stories with the TCURJ. We encourage others to continue this work and make time and space to further research developments with TCUs and communities. As editors, we thank the College Fund for entrusting us with this work and Heidi Normandin, faculty development program officer, and David Sanders, vice president of research, evaluation, and faculty development, for their continued collaboration and support. Néá’ésé, Chi miigwech to all who have made volume VIII possible.

Author Biographies

Anna Lees (Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, descendant) is editor of the Tribal College and University Research Journal and Ballmer Endowed Professor of Equity and Early Learning in Learning Sciences and Human Development at the University of Washington. She partners with scholars and communities to prepare teachers for the holistic needs of children, families, and communities by sustaining reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities.

Natalie Youngbull (Cheyenne and Arapaho/Assiniboine and Dakota) is editor of the Tribal College and University Research Journal and assistant professor of adult and higher education in the educational leadership and policy studies department at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include the experiences of American Indian Gates Millennium Scholars, Native/Indigenous student success, Native Nation Building, and intellectual leadership and capacity building within TCUs.

Dakota/Lakota Math Connections: Results from Developing

a Community-Based Math Resource

Danny Luecke

Turtle Mountain Community College

Abstract

Following an Indigenous research paradigm, the Dakota/Lakota Math Connections project at Sitting Bull College, a Tribally Controlled University (TCU), is a collaborative effort among TCU math instructors, language instructors, and fluent elders. Following an earlier paper on the D/Lakota Math Connections framework and course, this paper shares the process to develop a community-based math resource and examples of D/Lakota Math Connections. The full results can be found at www.othokahe.com, a web portal under the Standing Rock Iyápi program, a branch of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Department of Education.

Introduction

Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCUs) have and continue to seek out connections between the local heritage and culture and the mainstream education content (American Indian Higher Education Consortium, 2023). At Sitting Bull College in the Standing Rock Nation, a portion of the mission statement reads, “Guided by Lakota/Dakota culture, values, and language, Sitting Bull College is committed to building intellectual capacity through academics” (Sitting Bull College, 2023). This mission applies to all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses and specifically math. Across TCUs and Indigenous communities, there are efforts to connect STEM with place-based, communityspecific culture, language, and knowledge at the TCU as well as K–12 levels (American Indian Science and Engineering Society [AISES], 2020; Boyer, 2011; Lipka et al., 2005; Meyer & Aikenhead, 2021).

At the K–8 level, the Yup’ik in Alaska took major strides in developing a curriculum called “math in a cultural context” (Lipka et al., 2005). The decades of work within this project answered the call for math and local culture integration and were able to demonstrate its many benefits from increased cultural identity for students to increased math exam scores (Kisker et al., 2012; Lipka & Adams, 2004; Lipka et al., 2007).

At the college level, calls for culture to be more integrated into the math classroom have been met with epistemological challenges as well as a dearth of math and local culture resources (Garcia-Olp et al., 2019; Meyer & Aikenhead, 2021; Pfahl & Funkhouser, 2016; Ruef et al., 2020; Stevens, 2021; Webb et al., 2017).

Western math is often incorrectly assumed to transcend culture and contain all

mathematical knowledge. This widespread myth presents a challenge to TCU math classrooms seeking to follow the TCU mission of connecting math with Indigenous culture (Aikenhead, 2017, 2021; Bishop, 1990; Ernest, 2021). More specifically, in what ways can Sitting Bull College math classrooms connect with D/Lakota culture, values, and language? The D/Lakota Math Connections (DLMC) research project addresses both challenges of epistemological misalignment and the scarcity of college-level D/Lakota math resources.

This paper specifically introduces a math resource guided by D/Lakota culture, values, and language. The research to develop the DLMC resource specifically builds upon Oglala Sioux Nation tribal citizen David Sanders’ (2011) dissertation, which brought together both the idea of a Lakota view of mathematics and the action of a math curriculum designed to follow local community control and selfdetermination in (math) education. In an earlier paper, Luecke and Sanders (2023) focus on the first challenge of epistemological misalignment between place-based (context-specific and not universal) and holistic (including mind, heart, body, and spirit) ways of knowing with Western assumptions of mathematics as universal and objective (isolated from spiritual and personal connection). This work is in alignment with other Indigenous researchers who “...posit improved educational outcomes for Native and non-Native students result when STEM instruction is culturally relevant, rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing, linked to place, and embedded in community” (AISES, 2020, p. 12).

The DLMC project was initiated as part of my doctoral program. The first paper in my three-paper dissertation, titled “Circulating Conversations Methodology: Co-Connecting Knowledge to Develop Research Questions at Sitting Bull College” (Luecke et al., 2022), dives deeply into what an Indigenous research paradigm is and how it can be applied to research in undergraduate math education. The Circulating Conversations Methodology laid the groundwork and literature review for this research and led to the DLMC framework and course (Luecke & Sanders, 2023). The three research questions are as follow:

• In what ways can Western higher order math concepts be identified within Dakota/Lakota space, place, and language to inform possible Sitting Bull College math curricular/pedagogical adjustments?

• In what ways can Dakota/Lakota culture and language be identified within Western higher order math concepts to inform possible Lakota Language Immersion Nest curricular adjustments?

• In what ways can Dakota/Lakota space, place, and language represent nonWestern higher order math concepts?

The DLMC community-based math resource answers these three questions. The structure of this paper presents the research context, methods/development, and results for the community-based math resource.

Methods

In following an Indigenous research paradigm, this section covers not just a predetermined method(s), but a broader scope of considerations that guided the research process. The “Methods” section is organized into four subsections about the community-based math resource including research context, determining the product, determining the content, and data sovereignty.

Research Context

The Circulating Conversations Methodology (Luecke et al., 2022) lays out the process for collaboratively developing the research questions. This process is based on Wilson’s (2008) description of an Indigenous research paradigm, emphasizing relationships forming reality, being accountable to all our relationships, and valuing the process as the product. The research that began through the professional society Research in Undergraduate Math Education needed to shift into alignment with an Indigenous research paradigm. Validity came not from an outside source developed for another context (Wilson, 2008), but through relational accountability with TCU math instructors and Lakota language immersion instructors. Together, we experienced the Circulating Conversations Methodology (Luecke et al., 2022), which led us to stronger relationships among ourselves as well as the development of the four research questions and the method to answer the research questions.

The DLMC course, a week-long course held in summer 2021, was the method to answer the research questions. The course brought together math instructors (pre-K immersion through college level), language instructors at every level and fluent elders to discuss math connections within D/Lakota culture and language. Sanders’ (2011) dissertation on Lakota perspectives of Bishop’s (1991) six universal math activities (counting, designing, locating, measuring, playing, and explaining) was both the framework of content development and the beginning for course conversations. All course interactions were recorded and became the main data sources used to answer the research questions, and they eventually became the content for the DLMC resource. Furthermore, as the researcher, I asked three additional process questions to increase accountability to participants/ collaborators: (a) Does this course benefit TCU math instructors in connecting to D/Lakota language, culture, and values? (b) Does this course benefit language instructors at any level teaching math concepts? (c) Do the fluent elders approve of the approach and project in general?

The course followed and was evaluated by the DLMC framework (Figure 1). Sanders and I cofacilitated the course and codeveloped the framework from the research questions. Qualitative and quantitative methods based in an Indigenous research paradigm/methodology confirmed the development and use of the framework. The framework is a four-circle Venn diagram in which each circle is distinct, self-sufficient, equivalently valuable, and fully interconnected with each circle. A central tenet is that math fluency and language fluency can grow together (Luecke & Sanders, 2023).

FIGURE 1 DLMC framework

Determining the Product of a Community-Based Math Resource

The Circulating Conversations Methodology and DLMC course followed a set of values from Wilson’s (2008) description of an Indigenous research paradigm. The values were set, and the process was determined, but the specific product was revealed through the process. The course included a Friday Talking Circle, post-surveys, and post-interviews. The Friday Talking Circle was an open-ended, public (within the course) closing statement from each participant about any aspect of the course. The postsurvey asked participants/contributors specific questions about many aspects of the course, including the perceived value of each course activity, the course structure, and products/next steps. Each post-interview followed the conversational interview approach (Kovach, 2010) and specifically asked two questions: What do you (as a TCU math instructor, immersion instructor, fluent elder) suggest for next steps for the DLMC project? What product would you (as a TCU math instructor, immersion instructor, fluent elder) want to see come out of this work?

During the Friday Talking Circle, the post-survey, and the post-interviews, not a single response suggested research articles for a next step or product. As a doctoral student, I knew that I would have to write research articles, but now, it was clear that these articles were for my benefit. To remain accountable to the relationships developed through the research, the need to develop a community

product/resource emerged. I cannot progress in my doctoral responsibilities without equivalently reciprocally pursuing community accountability with the TCU math instructors, language instructors, and fluent elders.

Synthesizing the data from the sources led to the next step of additional summer courses and the product of the DLMC resource. Three summer courses were planned for summer 2022, including a course focused strictly on traditional D/ Lakota math, a course focused on developing Lakota words for math terminology, and a course for teachers to implement the results more easily into their curriculum (see “DLMC Process” on Otȟókahe).

The product desired by research participants/collaborators was synthesized through conversational interviews (Kovach, 2010). The outcome of these interviews was a desire for a reference guide that teachers could utilize to look back on and be reminded of all the D/Lakota math connections discussed throughout the week. There was a general recognition that curriculum could not be developed for such a wide array of teachers (math and language teachers from pre-K immersion to college-level mathematics). Further, some expressed that, even if a curriculum was developed by an outside researcher, there would be skepticism of it and unlikely implementation. Thus, a codeveloped resource was more likely to overcome community skepticism. A community-developed math resource would allow the variety of teachers to connect to their specific standards, lesson plans, and courses as desired while ensuring the content is accessible beyond the contributors to instructors across all D/Lakota communities.

Determining the Content of the Community-Based Math Resource

After the community product of a math resource was confirmed, what to include and how to organize it were the next key questions. Conversations within the DLMC course did not follow a linear path, talking about one isolated topic at a time. Rather, conversations filled with story and laughter meandered through many mathematical ideas, making a variety of connections along the way. For example, when small groups were prompted to discuss nested sets, many interweaving topics were articulated. For the nested set discussion, this included examples in nature, such as buffalo circling up and a bird within an egg within a nest within a tree, along with negative numbers, odd and even, intersection and union, and the whole number system, and finally with family structure (tiwáhe, tióšpaye, oyáte). After the recorded discussions, I saw direct connections with Western math through nested sets of numbers (integers are within the rational numbers) all the way up to ring theory (principal ideal domains are within unique factorization domains).

The rich interactions/conversations are modeled as a nonlinear web (Figure 2). The connections (lines of the web) between topics attempt to match some of the multiple topics discussed in a particular conversation. Further, the web matches the nature of math as a web of knowledge and the cyclical/nonlinear process of writing the reference pages. Each reference page has a “writing history” section to help demonstrate that. Finally, the DLMC resource represented as a web diagram allows readers to self-select any start and end point.

FIGURE 2

D/Lakota Math Connections web

The topics currently part of the DLMC resource all originated in the summer 2021 DLMC course conversations. These topics/pages were synthesized through a variety of inputs and sought to remain accountable to all the project’s relations. On each reference page, there is a section about the reasons for writing that page.

Data Sovereignty of the Community-Based Math Resource

The community-based math resource was developed by guidance from the translation/editing team made up of a smaller group of fluent elders and language instructors from the community. Along with the content, our key question became with who and how should the resource be shared to align with community values of tribal self-determination and data sovereignty. The DLMC resource was collaboratively determined among course and project stakeholders to be hosted on the Standing Rock Iyápi program’s (a branch of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s Department of Education) web portal called Otȟókahe, which means

#Struct, Polynom One

Fraction Contexts

Met: Add Fractions

Sun Wave

Shapes, Designs Angles

Big Dipper

Game

#s as Verbs

#s as Verbs

Ref Pages Diagram

DLMC Framework

DLMC Process

“a beginning” and “taking the lead.” Otȟókahe was designed to support D/ Lakota language revitalization efforts within Standing Rock, including the summer language courses. The resource being hosted by the Standing Rock Iyápi program allows the language leaders in the community to have final authority on what and how the DLMC resource is shared. This contrasts with putting all the reference pages in a public dissertation in which the authority is held by North Dakota State University, my PhD-granting institution. Standing Rock Iyápi determined, via their priorities and the course consent forms, that the DLMC resource would be accessible to everyone who created an Otȟókahe user account and completed the data sovereignty quiz/consent form. The data sovereignty quiz emphasizes relational accountability to the D/Lakota people, language, and knowledge. This allows D/Lakota people, educators in D/Lakota communities, and Indigenous peoples more broadly to have easy access to the content while challenging anyone who may use this content for personal profit over D/Lakota people.

Results

The full results of the DLMC resource can be accessed at https://othokahe. com. Anyone who creates an Otȟókahe user account and completes the data sovereignty quiz can view the DLMC resource. The results section of this paper shares a few examples from the reference pages as exemplars in answering the three research questions. Additionally, limitations to the project are discussed.

Research Question 1: In what ways can Western higher order math concepts be identified within Dakota/Lakota space, place, and language to inform possible Sitting Bull College math curricular/pedagogical adjustments?

This research question, described in terms of the DLMC framework, fits in the intersection of multiple circles. Obviously, it is interconnected to the English circle as this is written in English and English is currently the medium for math instruction at Sitting Bull College. Further, the following two examples are interconnected with both the Western math and D/Lakota math circle. The first example also interconnects with the D/Lakota language circle. These two examples and all exemplars in this paper demonstrate the interconnection of all four circles: D/ Lakota math, D/Lakota language, English language, and Western math.

Further, the research questions go beyond understanding the connection and interconnection between the four circles of the DLMC framework and ask for what purpose these interconnections may be applied in a school setting. Within the first two reciprocal research questions, the end goal of curricular adjustments at Sitting Bull College math classrooms and Wahóȟpi (Lakota Language Immersion Nest) are specifically stated.

Example 1: Series/Partial Sums Connected to D/Lakota Number System

One way that higher order mathematical thinking by the D/Lakota people can be demonstrated is through the expression of large numbers in the D/Lakota language. The number structure stands on its own as higher order mathematical thinking and needs no justification from Western math. However, there are strong connections between the pattern for expressing large numbers in the language and Western math concepts, such as polynomials (ubiquitous throughout Western math) and partial sums (part of mathematical series often first introduced in Calculus II). These ideas are all connected but not one-to-one or a direct translation of one another. Teaching the D/Lakota number structure for the sole purpose of teaching Western math is appropriation (Abtahi, 2022) and is something to be avoided. The D/Lakota number structure does not need to be taught in connection to Western math concepts to be considered worthwhile. As the DLMC framework asserts, the D/Lakota number structure is valuable on its own and worth learning in the math classroom apart from Western math connections. The DLMC framework encourages one to break away from thinking that Western math is the only way to think mathematically. That being stated, this example demonstrates how the pattern/structure of expressing large numbers in the D/Lakota language can be a culturally relevant teaching tool to understand polynomials and partial sums/series. The Dakota/Lakota number system. Expressing large numbers in the D/Lakota language has a clear structure. To express the number 402,016, it would be said as 402,016 kȟoktá opáwiŋǧe tópa sáŋm kȟoktá núŋpa sáŋm wikčémna sáŋm šákpe (1,000) (100) (4) (more) (1,000) (2) (more) (10) (more) (6)

The following connections can be seen between the number structure and polynomials (i.e., x2 + 4x - 11) and series/partial sums (i.e.,

a r k = ar0 + ar1 +ar² +ar³).

The use of terms forming an additive structure. The word “term” has a specific definition in polynomials and series/partial sums to mean variables and/or numbers multiplied together separated by addition. Each term is separated by sáŋm. The base-10 number system separates each term by a multiple of 10 in contrast to a polynomial separated by the exponent on the variable and index of a partial sum. For example, 4×105 + 2×103 + 1×10¹ + 6×100 has a similar structure to x4 + 3x² +7x+ -4. Large numbers in D/Lakota are expressed by term in contrast to numbers in English expressed through grouping (“four hundred two thousand sixteen”). Grouping-based expression of large numbers in English may be fewer syllables in pronunciation but hides the underlying structure. Term-based expression of large numbers can be used as a teaching tool for polynomials and partial sums and series—all expressed without grouping.

Assumed multiplication. Large numbers expressed in D/Lakota (term-based expression), large numbers expressed in English (grouping-based expression), polynomials, partial sums, and series are all similar in their use of assumed multiplication. Kȟoktá núŋpa literally reads “thousand two” and means “two

multiplied by a thousand.” Similarly, 3x4 literally reads “three x to the 4th power” and means “three multiplied by x4.” Further, large numbers expressed in D/ Lakota and English, polynomials, partial sums, and series all assume that, when no coefficient/digit is explicitly stated before the term name, it is one. For example, kȟoktášiča which means “million” assumes that it is one million when stated as a number just as x6 assumes one multiplied by x6 when seen in a polynomial. The same goes for omitting terms that have coefficient/digit zero as in zero times opáwiŋǧe (hundred) in the preceding example.

Ordering of terms. Both partial sums and the expression of large numbers in D/Lakota have a specific order to the terms. Once a partial sum is identified from an infinite series, the terms can be rearranged without changing the value. Similarly, the terms to express a large number in D/Lakota can be moved around without changing the value, but numbers are not customarily expressed in this way. They follow a descending order and similarly for polynomials.

Overall, the term-based additive structure with assumed multiplication within expressing large numbers in D/Lakota can be an option for culturally relevant instruction of polynomials, partial sums, and series. More importantly, though, the additive structure of expressing numbers demonstrates higher order mathematical thinking in the D/Lakota language.

Example 2: Conditional Probability Within Hand Game

Another way higher order mathematical thinking by the D/Lakota people can be demonstrated is through playing strategic games. Haŋpápečhuŋpi (Hand Game) stands on its own as higher order mathematical thinking and needs no justification from Western mathematical descriptions of probability. However, there are multiple connections between basic probability and the results from a single guess in Hand Game. Hand Game is a team game that involves the community, pattern recognition, reading people, ignoring distractions, spirituality/medicine, and song. During the summer 2021 DLMC course, it was described as a game of patterns. Each player has a pattern for guessing and for hiding. Some players claim to guess based on the hiding pattern of their opponent, and others claim to hide based on the guessing pattern of their opponent. Either way, everyone has a pattern. A major compliment to an opponent would be hiding the bones randomly, that is, hiding without knowledge of how you hid the bones. This is a concession that your opponent knows your pattern even better than you know yourself. Hand Game is not a guessing game that insinuates being trivial or random, but rather is a game of skill. Some players and teams are better at Hand Game than others. As in poker, it is not just the random deal of the cards that determines the winner. It’s a game of skill, reading people, and intuitively recognizing and applying patterns in real time.

Even though Hand Game is not simply a guessing game, the sample space (Figure 3) for a single guess can be described through the Western math concept of conditional probability, which is often a challenging topic for math students.

FIGURE 3

Sample space for a single guess in Hand Game

S² and S¹ stand for two sets or one set of bones in play for that guess, respectively. C2, C1, and C0 stand for the number bones correctly guessed as 2, 1, 0, respectively. The probability of two, one, or zero correct guesses can be described through Western mathematical symbols. P(C1) = 3/6 and describes the probability of three possibilities of one correct guess for six total options in the sample space. P(C2|S2) = 1/4 and describes the conditional probability of the one possibility of correctly guessing both sets of bones that are in play. Along with probability, the hand signals to guess outside, middle, left, and right can be connected to the foiling of binomials. In conclusion, learning and playing Hand Game in math class can be an experiential teaching tool for unconditional and conditional probability.

Research Question 2: In what ways can Dakota/Lakota culture and language be identified within Western higher order math concepts to inform possible Lakota Language Immersion Nest curricular adjustments?

The first research question demonstrates the interconnection of all four circles with the purpose of potential curricular adjustments for TCU math instructors. The second reciprocal research question is similar but for the purpose of curricular adjustments at Wahóȟpi (Lakota Language Immersion Nest). In early conversations at Wahóȟpi, an instructor shared a story of being told “math is in everything, including the culture,” but when she asked the person to articulate a specific example, they were not able to (Luecke et al., 2022). One of the goals of this research question is to articulate the mathematical concepts/thinking embedded within D/Lakota culture and language to strengthen the math curriculum at Wahóȟpi.

First, the previous two examples of number structure/expression and Hand Game can both be examples of Western math and D/Lakota math being interconnected for use at the immersion school and in the language revitalization movement in general (Hauff et al., 2024). The previous two examples and all the examples of this paper seek to go beyond surface-level connections, such as using the tipi as a cone to teach surface area and volume.

Example 3: Adding Fractions Metaphor

Multiple fluent speakers during the summer 2021 DLMC course discussed the use of analogy to describe precise Western math concepts. Though the analogy and the concept are not identical, together they can bring better understanding. The following metaphor for adding fractions using realized/unrealized vocabulary had mixed reactions from the translation/editing team for the DLMC resource. At best, the presented metaphor demonstrates a naïve understanding of the language. At worst, the presented metaphor is an unethical misuse and appropriation of the language. The metaphor of realized and unrealized D/Lakota vocabulary is still shared because of its significance in the beginning of the DLMC process, its previous use in the public presentation at the Lakota Language Summit, and its potential for connecting the language with the sometimes challenging topic of adding fractions. Further, it can encourage everyone to self-reflect on the ethics of when and how to connect the D/Lakota language with Western math concepts. Finally, the questionable connection of realized/unrealized vocabulary with adding fractions does not negate the notable higher order mathematical thinking embedded within the language (realized/unrealized pattern) that has been passed down for generations.

Within the D/Lakota language, there is an emphasis placed on if something is realized or not. Different vocabulary is used for when an event has/is certainly happening and for when an event is not certain yet. Relating to adding fractions with different denominators, the crux of the problem is determining the “special expression” of one to multiply to each term.

The transition from unrealized vocabulary to realized vocabulary is when the event actually happens. The transition from wanting (and not knowing) the expression of one to having in hand (precisely knowing) the exact expression as 5/5 and 4/4, respectively, in Equation (1) is the central component to solving any fraction addition problem. Further, the problem-solving technique of multiplying by a special expression of one to change the expression (but not the value) of the fraction is also seen in rationalizing the denominator, in multiplying by the conjugate more broadly, and in a variety of upper level proofs.

Incorporating this realized/unrealized metaphor to teach fractions allows the emphasis of language learning to be present in the math classroom and, therefore, encourages language learning overall. Instead of rote memorization of a mathematical algorithm to add fractions, emphasizing and learning about realized and unrealized vocabulary in the math classroom prompts conceptual understanding of adding fractions, critical thinking, and language learning. However, there are multiple and serious concerns, as well, in connecting adding fractions (finding the special expression of one) with realized/unrealized vocabulary. One of the concerns brought up by the editing team was that this metaphor is too abstract and grammar-focused and does not directly connect

to the physical world as many analogies do (such as the nested set analogies mentioned earlier). Further, the distinction between realized/unrealized vocabulary is not as clear cut and straightforward as this metaphor describes. In conclusion, this metaphor continues to emphasize Western math (i.e., symbolic, decontextualized) over D/Lakota math (i.e., embodied, contextualized). Thus, connecting the language with adding fractions in this way can easily be seen as inappropriately using the language as a smokescreen to teach the “more important” Western math content. This metaphor overvalues Western math with its assumptions of math as abstract, symbolic, and decontextualized over and above the values and perspectives of D/Lakota math as wholistic, embodied, and in context.

Example 4: Process Continuation Through D/Lakota Math and Neologism Development

When participants were asked about next steps for the DLMC project in the postinterviews, strengthening the D/Lakota math circle and developing neologisms (new words) for math concepts were two major themes. In response, two courses continued during the summer of 2022 and 2023. One course focused on centering and holding space for D/Lakota math without connection/justification from Western math and one course on math neologisms for math concepts. For the math neologisms course, fluent speakers from across D/Lakota country gathered to discuss math terminology in Lakota, including negative numbers, subtraction, fractions, decimals, multiplication, and division. For the D/Lakota math course, topics such as horse racing, caring for horses, flute playing, and tahokmu (a traditional art composition strategy) have all been highlighted thus far through the summer 2022 and 2023 courses. The discussions and outputs from both the D/Lakota math courses and the math neologisms courses inform possible curricular adjustments at Wahóȟpi. To learn more about these examples, the full results of the DLMC resource can be accessed at https://othokahe.com.

Research Question 3: In what ways can Dakota/Lakota space, place, and language represent non-Western higher order math concepts?

This question could be rewritten in terms of the DLMC framework as “in what ways do Dakota/Lakota language, land, and culture describe the D/Lakota math circle as distinct from the Western math circle?” During the closing talking circle in the summer 2021 DLMC course, an instructor at Wahóȟpi questioned whether we can even connect to D/Lakota math if we don’t strengthen and further understand that circle first. With the constant pressure of colonial thinking to overvalue Western math (see Example 3), we need a space to center D/Lakota math distinct from colonial pressures to evaluate all mathematical knowing through Western math (Aikenhead, 2017, 2021; Bishop, 1990; Stevens, 2021). As already shared, the D/ Lakota math course is designed to do just that. The examples of horse riding, flute playing, flute making, and tahokmu are all activities that embed and employ D/Lakota mathematical thinking. The remainder of this section shares two final examples of D/Lakota math.

Example 5: The Sun Cycle

During the summer 2021 DLMC course, Tom Red Bird, a fluent elder and instructor at Wahóȟpi, shared a story of his grandpa marking the sunrise each day on his log home windowsill. Throughout the year, the sunrise location moves up and down (left and right, north and south) the eastern horizon. As the sun moves north (up), the days get longer until it slows down, appearing to stop, and then changes directions back to the south (right). This marks the summer solstice, a significant time for ceremony. Sun, as well as star, observations follow annual cyclical patterns that determine a cyclical pattern of movement for D/Lakota people as well as the timing of certain ceremonies. Many other cycles and patterns were and are understood through nature as well. Even though all these annual cyclical patterns directly connect to the sine wave, especially the location of the sunrise on the horizon, connecting to Western math and the sine wave is not the goal. Rather, place-based observations are valuable in understanding the time of year and timing of certain ceremonies.

Example 6: Numbers as Verbs

In general, within the D/Lakota language, numbers can be seen as both nouns and verbs, depending on the context. This contrasts with English and Western math that views numbers as only nouns, adjectives, or abstract quantifiers but never as action words. Those fluent in Western math, like myself and the math faculty on my committee, almost certainly have never seen or thought of numbers as verbs. In English, this may sound like saying “two-ing.” Before sharing some examples, a significant language note is that the notions of nouns and verbs weren’t introduced to the D/Lakota language until English was used to describe the D/Lakota language. In general, a single D/Lakota word can be a noun, verb, adjective, etc., without any change to the word, depending on the sentence context. For example, the word tȟaspáŋ in the following table is both a noun and verb.

TABLE 1

Example of Noun/Verb Flexibility

Lakota

English (Literal)

English (Equivalency)

Hé tȟaspáŋ That / is being apple That is an apple

Hé tȟaspáŋ tȟózi That / apple / is being green That apple is green

Numbers follow this similar structure of noun/verb flexibility as shown in the following first two rows. The next three rows give examples of numbers being conjugated with common affixes and suffixes in verb conjugation marking the number as the verb of the sentence.

TABLE 2

Examples of Numbers as Nouns and Verbs

Lakota

Tópa wačhípi

English (Literal) English (Equivalency)

Four / are dancing Four are dancing

Čhiŋčá tópa Her children / are being four

She has four children

Waníyetu matópa Year / I being four I am four years old

Záptaŋpi

They are being five

There are five of them

Oyáte niwáŋžipila People / you one all only You are one people

Limitations

There are strengths and concessions inherent in all research paradigms and methodologies, including an Indigenous research paradigm. Limitations can describe both the concessions of one methodology compared with another as well as describe oversights in the implementation of the desired methodology. As it relates to Indigenous research paradigms within academia, “Indigenous epistemologies challenge the very core of knowledge production and purpose. While this is not a matter of one worldview over another, how we make room to privilege both, while also bridging the epistemic differences, is not going to be easy” (Kovach, 2009, p. 29). To not privilege one worldview over another, I attempt to share some of our assumptions made from the start:

• All cultures do math, and it is exemplified in Lakota through exploring the activities of counting, designing, measuring, locating, playing, and explaining (Sanders, 2011).

• Higher order math concepts are embedded within D/Lakota language and culture.

• Math fluency and Dakota/Lakota language fluency can grow together.

• Discussion among fluent elders, language instructors, and math instructors will illuminate/articulate examples of D/Lakota math connections.

A limitation according to some critics is the localized nature of the results to Standing Rock Nation. But, “as with most researchers, those operating under an Indigenous paradigm recognize patterns that transcend the local and particular. However, the difference is that those ascribing to tribal methodology will likely return to the particular and local to validate claims because our truths are found in our places” (Kovach, 2009, p. 140). The results of this project are validated by local fluent elders and community, and the themes and processes can be shared with other D/Lakota communities and/or Indigenous communities.

Another limitation of this project comes from me as the researcher. I am not Lakota nor did I grow up in the Standing Rock community. I do not currently live

in Standing Rock. I am a learner to both research and to ceremony (Wilson, 2008). I am a beginner in learning the D/Lakota language. I have a long way to go in embodying my Choctaw identity as a person and a scholar.

The last limitations to be discussed are from data collection. A 1-week course for discussions among fluent elders, language instructors, and math instructors as well as only having a handful of fluent elders participating are certainly limitations of this study. For example, some small groups only had one fluent elder, which could not foster dialogue in Lakota about math. Many more topics could have been discussed if we had more time.

Discussion

The goal of this paper was to share the DLMC resource available on Otȟókahe. A few examples from Otȟókahe were provided to answer the research questions and further understand the DLMC framework. Some details about the process and limitations were also discussed.

In the future, more work with fluent speakers is needed to articulate more examples of D/Lakota math and discuss math terminology in the D/Lakota language. Further, this research does not look at how the DLMC resource can be implemented by math and language teachers nor its impact on student learning of math and language as well as student identity. All these areas need further research at the K–16 level. Personally, I believe that the process and themes of this study are generalizable as they have been implemented at Turtle Mountain Community College to develop Ojibwe math courses as another approach toward Indigenous math revitalization (Luecke, 2023).

Overall, the results from developing a community-based math resource have been shared as an example of self-determination in math education. However, all further details remain under Standing Rock ownership and authority through their web portal. A community product, that is not just research articles, follows from relational accountability to all the research participants/contributors. My goal in this research project is articulated by Wilson (2008) who writes, Many things in our modern world try to force us to be separated, isolated individuals. We separate the secular from the spiritual, research and academia from everyday life. It is my dream that we may turn away from this isolation to rebuild the connections and relationships that are us, our world, our existence. We need to recognize the inherent spirituality, as well as the everyday applicability, in our research. Indigenous research needs to reconnect these relationships (p. 137).

I pray the DLMC project has and will continue to reconnect these relationships.

Acknowledgments

Project participants are best described as contributors, and all should be acknowledged. I want to specifically thank the fluent elders for their continued participation. Further, thank you everyone at Wahóȟpi as well as the Standing Rock Iyápi for their invaluable partnership. Thank you to my PhD committee for supporting the use of an Indigenous research paradigm for research in undergraduate math education. Thank you to the American Indian College Fund, Native Forward, Wahóȟpi, and Standing Rock Iyápi for partially funding some portion of the D/Lakota Math Connections project. Finally, thank you to Creator for this opportunity as well as my wife and daughters for making it possible. Líla wóphila tȟáŋka héčha (Many thanks!).

References

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The Sustainable Development Institute Model and Indigenous Approaches to Research

Chris Caldwell College of Menominee Nation

Abstract

In the early 1990s, the College of Menominee Nation facilitated discussions with Menominee Tribal leaders to understand sustainable development based on the Tribe’s sustainable forestry experience. This led to the creation of the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) and the theoretical model of sustainability. SDI stewards the model on behalf of the Menominee people, developing an advanced understanding of Indigenous sustainability. The SDI model predates much of the published literature on Indigenous approaches and practices for scholarly research. This article examines SDI’s independent development and how the model is situated in relation to existing models, theories, and applications of Indigenous research.

Background

This story illustrates a deeper understanding of my journey and historic moments of the Menominee Indian Tribe, the College of Menominee Nation (CMN), and the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI). Along with a theoretical model of sustainability, that is the framework for SDI’s mission and core values; this article focuses upon the SDI model intersecting with Indigenous approaches to research.

The SDI model represents the Menominee people’s intricate history and deep connection to the land and forest. Its development involved an advisory council of Menominee Tribal leaders, CMN members, and Menominee Tribal Enterprises (MTE). The model’s initial framework draws from existing sustainable development models focused on community-based sustainable forestry. By contextualizing these frameworks for the Native American, specifically Menominee, experience, a six-dimensional model emerged. The main dimensions include land and sovereignty, natural environment, institutions, economics, technology, human perception, activity, and behavior.

Several concepts and premises further describe the model’s theoretical foundations and practical application. One key premise is the concept of autochthony, representing the Menominee connection to place, which is central to the SDI model. Another premise is the transition from theory to practice by examining environmental impacts on human–environmental relationships through the assessment of each dimension, both individually and holistically. When an impact spans multiple dimensions, the SDI gathers the community to investigate,

develop understanding, and secure resources for collaborative solutions to balance the model.

A final central premise is the iterative nature of this process. Once impacts are identified, decisions or changes within a dimension affect relationships with other dimensions. These changes occur at different spatial and temporal scales, contributing to both present-day and future generational shifts within and across dimensions. With these understandings, the model is used in education, community research, and shared initiatives and space (Dockry et al., 2016).

This narrative is based upon my reflections as a Tribal member, forestry worker, CMN student, SDI director, CMN adjunct faculty, and Indigenous researcher. These experiences contributed to the SDI and the theoretical model of sustainability (SDI model). SDI stewards continuance and application of the model on behalf of the Menominee people, the college, and for the greater good. SDI and its application of the model through research and education projects have created one contemporary understanding of Indigenous sustainability. This work continues to promote Menominee interests as well as serve as an example for other Indigenous peoples and those seeking to understand sustainability. One critical issue that SDI also advances through application of the model is the relationship between scholarly research and Indigenous sustainability. The SDI model represents a pathway for the Menominee people to take ownership of research practices and approaches that support Tribal sovereignty and self-determination.

Significantly, the origin of the SDI model predates much of the published literature on Indigenous approaches and practices for scholarly research. The model was developed as part of the Tribes’ chartering of CMN with the aspiration for the college to serve as an educational and community hub for the well-being of future generations. SDI’s dual mission of reflection and dissemination is to serve the Menominee people and provide research and education that benefits the Menominee and others interested in learning from and with the Menominee.

However, there has not been a focused effort to compare the SDI model, a sustainability-focused model, with the growing published literature on Indigenous approaches and practices of scholarly research. This gap in literature ultimately brought me to the main question I have explored for this article: How does the model situate (compare or contrast) with other existing models, theories, and applications of Indigenous research more broadly?

As I explored how the SDI model aligns with Indigenous methodologies, my literature review raised the question of whether the SDI model qualifies as an Indigenous research paradigm and what implications that might have. The creation process of the model reflected the communal, place-based, and people-led nature of Indigenous research paradigms. However, the literature highlighted potential issues, such as ensuring the research is conducted by and for the people rather

than imposed on them because of the historical and negative impacts of research on Indigenous communities (Kovach, 2008; McGregor, 2018; Smith, 2021).

Moreover, as Indigenous researchers develop new methods to benefit their communities, caution and responsibility are essential to avoid “the risk of colonizing anew” (McGregor, 2018, p. 6) or making “strategic concessions” to Western academia that do not fully align with relational Indigenous worldviews (Kovach, 2008, p. 41). This article discusses how I conceptualized my research paradigm as an Indigenous person connected to the SDI model. Through this inquiry, I reflected on the Menominee language name given to MTE’s forestry efforts by a Menominee elder, Maeqtekuahkikiw kew kanāwihtahquaq (The Forest Keepers). I see this name reconnect our relationship with the forest through contemporary forest management; cultural activities; and, more importantly, through our language, which grounds us and provides a deeper context for understanding Indigenous sustainability thinking.

This approach has solidified my grounding within the Menominee theory of sustainability posited by SDI and allowed me to contextualize the SDI model as an institutional framework to guide others in their sustainability journeys. This connection between individual research paradigms and institutional paradigms offers a way to address the issue of “sustainable development” and “sustainability” becoming meaningless from overuse and lack of context (Shilling, 2018, p. 5). I explored these questions by sharing my foundational experiences and conducting a literature review on Indigenous research methodologies, models, and the SDI model. As such, this story is built on Indigenous approaches of “introducing the storyteller” (Wilson, 2008, p. 32) and yarning (Kovach, 2009) for positionality and context setting.

My Journey: Language, Culture, and Catholicism

“Pōsōh mesek māēhnow kēs-ahnīnāwahkow nēc-nepāēmatesetuaq maeqnakwahkok. Yōhpeh taeh nekātatow nenōhtan opāēq ēh-yōm kayēs enāhkocehkan Nēc-pāēmātesetuaq Omāēqnomenēwak.

“Wēc pehmāēnehtakuaq yom maeqtekuahkihkiah Omāēqnomenēw yōhpeh mecēmāēnetahmok. Akōm meyāwaewak kayēs kīketwan Kayēs kōcēmanetuaq ehyōm ‘s aw Kīskahakītuaq māēqtekon yōs yōm otāhkemenaw.

“ Yōq āēceh enāēniw ‘s aw wāēp Kīskahakītuaq enes yōh ‘s kīmokahah Tahpēhnen nesek new ayōm kēsekew Māēqnahkosow mesek nepāhkasawtuaq. Kaniw ehpeh ‘s pīyahtāēyaek enes ‘s yon nīkenakah, yāh wāēpeqtah mesek akōm Maeqtekok kew wāēnūskapew mesek.”

Hello and good afternoon to you my fellow badgers. Today, I would like to share part of the history of my people…the Menominee people.

When caring for the forest, Menominee today remembers the words of a past leader who had been asked about cutting timber on the land. This man said, start

cutting in the east taking only the mature, sick, and dead trees. Then, when you reach the west, start over and the trees will be ready again.¹

I grew up in Neopit, Wisconsin, on the Menominee Indian reservation in the shadow of the forest, the sawmill, and the Catholic Church. I attended the St. Anthony Catholic School when priests and nuns were still present and teaching. However, it was also a time when Menominee language and culture became more prominent in the school, including language elders helping in class and with smudging and eagle feathers in church. One distinct memory for me is wearing the dance regalia my Aunt Kristi had modified from my cousin so I could represent at school cultural events. This included a visit to a larger off-reservation church. I remember our group dancing into the cathedral and then reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Menominee for the congregation.

A young Menominee dancer taught us movements, and a Menominee elder taught basic Menominee to our class, including prayers, counting, and phrases. As I think about it, this time was foundational for me because I began to understand the sound, the heartbeat, and the rhythm of the language. I did not realize it then, but I was growing up amid the ongoing tension and impacts of colonization and acculturation. As our community wrestled with increased loss of language and culture, language revitalization was the next step.

Growing up in Neopit, I have always been around the Menominee sustainable forestry story in one way or another. My father worked in the MTE sawmill, and my mother (kaeh nap)² worked at the MTE forestry center. Both served on the MTE board of directors at different times. After high school, I worked for the Wisconsin Conservation Corps stationed at the MTE Forestry Center in Keshena. We constructed fish and wildlife habitats, conducted field surveys, pruned and planted trees, staffed wildfire crews, and carried out other projects for the benefit of the Menominee forest.

After a year, I moved to the MTE timber marking crew, and I spent days walking the forest, marking trees according to silvicultural prescription requirements, and helping set up other forest management activities. I learned from nonNative foresters who were experts in their field through higher education and Menominee forestry workers who had spent their lives in the forest. A few Menominees had degrees in addition to learning from the forest and their elders. Grignon and Kimmerer (2017) describe the relationship between traditional ecological knowledge and Western-based forestry science that permeates the MTE Forestry Center.

Around the late 1990s, I remember a growing desire to more deeply understand the work I was doing on the marking crew, questions of why we set specific targets for reducing tree density or marked one species over another or even one individual tree over another. I had been doing the repetitive technical work long enough that I now wanted to understand why. More significantly, I wanted to know why because I was observing the angst among some Menominee Tribal members

over forest management practices, whereas people visiting the Menominee forest from around the world unanimously praised the practices and the ongoing ecosystem of the forest. This was my introduction to thinking about broader sustainability principles, social contexts, and the tension between worldviews within an Indigenous forest community context.

Introduction: Menominee Indian Tribe

The ancestral lands of Kayāēs Mamaceqtawak³ in the Great Lakes region are located in what is now known as the state of Wisconsin. The Menominee reservation lands span approximately 235,000 acres of the original 10 million acres of ancestral lands. The Menominee creation story takes place approximately 70 miles from present-day reservation lands. Tribal members have maintained access and a relationship to an abundance of culturally important beings and elements, such as wild rice, trees, plants, animals, waters, and spiritually significant sites. These Menominee relational lifeways have continued despite times of great uncertainty, including relatively recent European colonization and American settler expansion and, even now, as we contend with an era of capitalist-induced climate disruption.

Omāēqnomenēweqnasaen (Menominee language) is essential for sharing these relationships and knowledge across generations. The prevalence of our language was greatly diminished from pre-European times and even more recent American assimilationist periods. However, the language is still spoken and growing more alive with revitalization efforts by individuals, grassroots-led organizations, and Tribal institutional efforts.

Kāēyas Mamāceqtawak (The Ancient Movers)

As at other Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) in their own context, the CMN creation is part of a longer story of Kāēyas Mamāceqtawak (the ancient movers), the original name the Menominee use for themselves. In the early 1990s, CMN was chartered to advance and create knowledge based on a Menominee knowledge system in place for thousands of years. CMN’s charter founds the College “…upon the highest educational ideals of the Menominee people…to provide quality higher education…to preserve and protect the history, traditions, values, and aspirations of the Menominee people…and to preserve the Menominee way of learning, which is learning by doing,” thus creating foundational philosophical and pedagogical approaches that guide CMN in the development of a Menominee worldview within a higher education institutional context.

CMN founding President Dr. Verna Fowler (kaeh nap) often mentioned that CMN is unique even among other TCUs. It is truly a creation of the Menominee people, who gathered signatures in the community and petitioned the Menominee Tribal legislature to charter the institution through the Menominee constitution and bylaws starting in 1990. The idea of a Tribal college is also attributed to August Breuninger, a self-identifying Menominee, who, in 1911, advocated for a “university for Indians” (Crazy Bull & Guillory, 2018, p.96). As Dr. Fowler noted,

because of several U.S. federal policy issues with which the Menominee were dealing, “we got a little sidetracked in actually creating a college until 1993” (CMN, 2023).

TCUs

CMN is structured from a community college model that many of the TCUs adopted in the 1970s. Research and extension initiatives were added with the passage of the Equity in Educational Status Act of 1994, which authorized land grant status for the TCUs. The resulting dual identity of a community college/ land grant institution has lent a unique structure that reflects the place-based origins of the TCUs. As Paul Boyer (2015, p.xv), founding editor of the Tribal College Journal explains, “Tribal colleges exist—and succeed—precisely because they were invented by Indians and respond to local problems on their own terms.”

Since their beginnings, TCUs have continued to develop in sophistication at the intersection of Tribal self-determination and sovereignty efforts as Indigenous and Tribal peoples retake control of educating their peoples. TCUs provide a North American context for Indigenous education and research built on land relations, treaty obligations, civil rights movements, and other policies and events that both directly and indirectly affected Tribal Nations (Boyer, 2015).

TCUs differ significantly in their educational philosophy, spirit, and focus of action. The mission of TCUs is place-based; is intentionally focused on the Tribes they serve; and by extension, has become a contemporary mechanism for the generational transfer of knowledge that has existed for millennia (Crazy Bull and Guillory, 2018).

Returning to Academia

Lifelong learning is a constant in my life, exemplified when I restarted my higher education journey at CMN in 1999. My initial courses included SDE 100: Introduction to Sustainable Development. I was introduced to SDI and the model through Dr. Holly Youngbear-Tibbetts. She was the director of SDI at the time and led the completion of the SDI model work, which still stands today. She assisted in expanding my thinking on the finite nature of our reservation because of its boundaries and our contemporary dependence on resources outside of our forest.

Her work at SDI established a transfer agreement between CMN and the University of Wisconsin (UW)–Madison, where CMN students completing their associate degrees in sustainable development could transfer to UW–Madison to complete their bachelor’s degree. This opportunity launched my career and experiences, spanning forestry and timber research, Tribal resources policy and management, and Tribal higher education research and administration.

Partnerships and Collaborators

In 2012, I started as director of the SDI at CMN working alongside Michael Dockry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service Tribal liaison stationed on the CMN campus. Dockry gathered a team of CMN–SDI affiliated faculty members Dr. Katherine Hall (kaeh nap), Dr. William Van Lopik, and me to propose an article focused on the origins of SDI, the model, and their applications within the context of sustainability science. The published article, “Sustainable Development Education, Practice, and Research: An Indigenous Model of Sustainable Development at the College of Menominee Nation, Keshena, WI, USA” (Dockry et al., 2016), was part of a special issue in the Journal of Sustainability Science that introduced a dialogue between Indigenous and sustainability sciences at the scale of “resilient landscapes” to develop collaborative solutions to common problems while engaging in dialogue on care and transparency regarding colonization within academia.

Working on this past article was pivotal for SDI and my personal development. It caused me to reflect more deeply on my lived experiences as a Menominee person. It also started a body of literature that addressed the origins of SDI and the model and deepened understanding of the mechanics of the model. This seminal article provided context at the intersection of Tribal community and academia and contemporary Tribal-led research and education and illustrated how the model moves from theory to praxis. The article also provided a foundation from which SDI leadership began considering how to programmatically realign and restructure the institute.

My time at SDI connected me to Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers on projects focused on our forest, people, and engagement with other Indigenous peoples. Drs. Kyle Whyte and Robin Kimmerer were two Indigenous scholars who greatly influenced the thought work of SDI. This work shaped individual and institutional understanding of incorporating cultural protocols such as smudging, perspective-taking, gifting, and other relation-building actions into contemporary research projects and office settings. In addition, we worked with numerous other established and emerging Indigenous scholars who contributed and shared with our staff, community collaborators, and students. Indigenous methodologies literature appeared increasingly in our design discussions and programmatic offerings.

As SDI work evolved, in 2018, my wife, Piatkimoq (Toni A. Caldwell), started her doctoral work at the UW–Green Bay under the newly developed Ed.D. with the First Nations education program. As she began her journey, it reminded me of the many Indigenous scholars and students I had worked with at SDI. Her efforts inspired me to apply to the UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute because of its historical connection with Dr. Youngbear-Tibbetts and its structural influence on SDI.

My wife and I became stronger thought partners that intertwined our professional, academic, and family lives. These discussions shaped how I think about SDI and the model as I would try to explain it in a way I thought made

sense. Even as I write this article, the discussions continue; the dialogue is invaluable as it grounds my thinking and spirit.

Convergence: The SDI Model and Indigenous Knowledge and Application

The stated SDI mission is a dual mission of reflection and dissemination focused on Menominee-based sustainability principles. This mission is advanced using the SDI model through reflective academic coursework, community-based discussions, and research projects (Dockry et al., 2016). The following section outlines a work focused on Indigenous peoples and climate change.

The Shifting Seasons Summit is the most extended running conference series convened by SDI (2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021) focused on climate change. The conference brings together practitioners, managers, Menominee, other Tribal Nations, Indigenous communities, and representatives from governmental agencies, academia, and nonprofits. These events help SDI with agenda-setting through dialogue between the participants to share knowledge, identify common problems, and recommend solutions through projects.

One such project, funded by the USDA National Institute of Food & Agriculture, was “Measuring the Pulse of the Forest,” focused on a coupled socio-ecological assessment of Menominee-based forest relationships. This project included a forest cultural relationship assessment with Tribal focus groups (students, forestry workers, elders) and ecological data collection on forest monitoring plots. This project provided training for the SDI team (staff, students, and community members) and increased community understanding of climate change and its impact on the forest.

Tribal climate change workshops supported through the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences + Assessment Center framed with the SDI model and linked with localized climate profiles organized Great Lakes Tribal Nation discussions around integrated, complex, social, environmental, economic, and cultural issues (Whyte et al., 2014). These workshops led to further Tribal Nation work by Whyte et al. (2018) through the U.S. Geological Survey Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.

SDI involvement with the Pennsylvania State University–led Sustainable Climate Risk Management network led to an U.S. National Science Foundation–funded project called “Visualizing Future Forests: How Biodiversity and Human Values Shape Decision-Making Under Climate Change.” This project developed immersive virtual experiences based on Menominee forest ecosystems to understand values in decision making for considering future forest conditions (Smithwick et al., 2019).

A project with the Menominee Language and Culture Commission (MLCC) focused on language revitalization and climate change. This project, supported by the Pawanka Fund, organized collaborative relationship building between

the Menominee, Ojibwe, and Hawaiian language immersion programs. These relationships supported MLCC efforts to develop immersion classrooms for the Menominee language, expanding community thinking on climate change impacts to language work.

Understanding from projects is often brought into the classrooms at CMN. As SDI director, I collaborated and cotaught the SDE 100: Introduction to Sustainable Development course at CMN with Dr. Dennis Vickers (kaeh nap). Based on our work for the course and discussions, we developed questions around the SDI model to explore potential climate impacts, including impacts on language revitalization (Vickers & Caldwell, 2018).

As SDI progressed in its engagement with Indigenous peoples and climate change, the question of how Native American tribes and scientists from climate science organizations (CSOs) work together became a focus. This collaborative project with Dr. Kyle Whyte and Dr. Julie LiBarkin from Michigan State University (MSU) built on previous SDI and MSU work and sought to understand ethical collaborations and training needs to help CSOs better understand tribal engagement (Kalafatis et al., 2019; Kirby et al., 2019).

SDI has worked to build sharing mechanisms reflective of its twofold mission of reflection and dissemination. The Indigenous Climate Resilience Network (ICRN) shares SDI work and helps promote other examples from the Midwest and Northeast regions. The CMN-SDI Midwest Tribal Climate Liaison leads the ICRN and works to identify threats to Indigenous self-determination and ways of life and to formulate adaptation and mitigation strategies, dialogues, and educational programs that build Indigenous capacities to address climate-related issues (CMN, 2023).

The relationships developed between CMN student interns, SDI staff, Menominee community partners, and external collaborators are central to all these projects. The SDI-led Indigenous Planning Summer Institute brings Indigenous peoples together to understand sustainability concepts through an Indigenous lens and exemplifies the institute’s relational work.

Situating the SDI Model: Comparison of Indigenous-Based Models/ Frameworks

My central research question aimed to understand how the SDI model aligns with Indigenous research methodologies. I shared my experiences to help readers grasp my engagement with the model and why I contextualize it within Indigenous methods. This section reviews Indigenous research approaches and examples of Indigenous-based models/frameworks, organized by SDI model concepts and premises. This review is not exhaustive, but serves as an initial framework to guide future investigations and critical evaluations of the model.

Autochthony

The concept of autochthony in the SDI model represents the Menominee worldview of connection to place—a profound sense of place and tie to the land in contemporary and ancestral relationships. Autochthony signifies the belief that the forest’s health reflects the people’s health and vice versa. It also underscores the place-based organization of the people (e.g., clan system governance), highlighting how the Menominee maintained a portion of their ancestral lands through periods of colonization and assimilation.

This concept situates the six dimensions of the theoretical model to place and serves as a reference point for others using the model to understand their sustainability story. Dockry et al. (2016) note that the use of autochthony in the SDI model was developed outside the global academic debate. The term “Indigeneity” is mentioned in passing but not explored further in the article.

Indigenous methodology literature focuses on worldviews rather than autochony. Indigenous researchers’ worldviews are foundational for creating Indigenous research paradigms, frameworks, or models. Hart (2010, p. 2) describes worldviews as “cognitive, perceptual, and affective maps that people continuously use to make sense of the social landscape,” which can change over time and contain internal incongruences. For Indigenous scholars, recognizing and building from their worldview is foundational and central to Indigenous methodologies (Little Bear, 2000; Wilson, 2008; Hart, 2010; McGregor et al., 2018, Pewewardy, 2019; Smith, 2021).

Indigenous worldviews share commonalities despite inherent differences, such as valuing and recognizing close relationships between peoples and their environments. Cajete (2000, p.2) uses “participation with nature” to describe the Indigenous science paradigm as “a metaphor for a wide range of tribal processes of perceiving, thinking, acting, and ‘coming to know’ that have evolved through human experience with the natural world.” Dan Wildcat (2009, p. 9) describes foundational relationships of people’s emergence from place as “Indigenous realism.” Leroy Little Bear (2000, p.77) approaches worldview through “Aboriginal philosophy,” which includes understanding energy, motion, animacy, the spiritual, and space over time and is “holistic and cyclical or repetitive, generalist, processoriented, and firmly grounded in a particular place.”

Reviewing examples of worldviews and researchers’ approaches provides further contextual grounding. Huambachano (2018) shares how Quechua and Māori cultural values and environmental indicators promote food security and sovereignty, including intrinsic beliefs and obligations as “land-based peoples.” Morgan (2006) includes a dimension of cultural well-being in his Māori model to reflect the Māori sense of place and cultural relevance. Indigenous researchers’ worldviews influence their choice of methodologies and data analysis whether qualitative or quantitative. Compared to autochthony in the SDI model, Indigenous methodologies literature deeply engages with the concept of “self” and “from the land.”

Theoretical Underpinnings/Frameworks/Models

Since 2005, SDE 100: Introduction to Sustainable Development has been a core requirement for all students at CMN, reflecting its commitment to sustainability from a Menominee/Indigenous worldview. The course, taught by faculty with diverse backgrounds, uses the SDI model to introduce students to sustainability complexities.

The use of theoretical models in academia is not new. However, for Indigenous peoples and Tribally led higher education institutions, their use creates opportunities to address the untangling of colonization’s impacts and efforts to approach matters from Indigenous worldviews, “contact or direct experience rather than through abstraction” (Cajete, 2000, p. 45). Helping Native students understand their worldviews in relation to the theoretical model is challenging, but SDI model–related literature includes reference points. Dr. YoungbearTibbets (1998, p.31) discusses themes related to early thinking about the model, stating, “Herein lies the paradox: while we make worlds through metaphor; in the context of individual perception and experience, those metaphors are, when most powerful, resonant of our cultures.” Dockry et al. (2016) describe the SDI model as framing and understanding sustainability within Indigenous values and perspectives.

Using terms such as “conceptual,” “theoretical models,” and “frameworks” can privilege Western-based approaches when describing Indigenous knowledge systems based on oral tradition (Wilson, 2008; Kovach, 2009; Smith, 2021). Indigenous scholars have found ways to decolonize, indigenize, and change how Indigenous communities apply and connect with research and methodologies. Recent examples included edited books by Windchief and San Pedro (2019) and McGregor et al. (2018), which move beyond just understanding the theoretical foundations to examples of practical applications. Understanding the power of Western-based research in controlling Indigenous narratives has led to continuous efforts to decolonize research practices.

Visual representation or metaphors are also vital for helping others understand the theory, framework, or model presented (Cajete, 2000, Kovach, 2009) as exemplified through different individual and institutional models and frameworks (Dockry et al., 2016; Huambachano, 2018; Morgan, 2006).

All these considerations are important when any scholar decides to work with Indigenous peoples. For Indigenous scholars, they are even more critical as we see the direct, indirect, short-term, and long-term impacts of research results. Thus, the creation of individual Indigenous research paradigms is foundational because it not only deepens our understanding, but can serve as a bridge to contend with Western-based research tools, processes, etc. Further, this is important because understanding Western-based research and processes includes understanding the power it can hold over Indigenous peoples; their stories; and their connections to place and, ultimately, to who they are as humans. As Wilson (2008, p. 13) explains, “A research paradigm is the beliefs that guide our actions.”

Sustainable Development

Toward Sustainable Development (1992) was published to understand and define sustainable development better with one finding that recognized the scalability issues of sustainable development in terms of finding attributes that could represent concepts relatable for both large South American megacities and smaller African villages. The report guided initial thinking for Menominee to consider its story of sustainable forestry in the context of sustainable development. These efforts laid the groundwork for SDI Indigenous sustainable development thinking. However, as mainstream use of the terms “sustainable development” and “sustainability” has grown, so has criticism that they are oxymorons and business as usual and do not address core issues sustainability is trying to solve (Shilling, 2018).

Indigenous sustainable development principles from a North American worldview, as expressed through the SDI model, are also expressed through terms such as “Native science,” “the honorable harvest,” and “traditional ecological knowledge” (Cajete, 2000; Kimmerer, 2013; and Shilling, 2018). In these examples and many more, the foundational element of these expressed worldviews points toward valuing and continuing the long relationship between people and place.

In reviewing other Indigenous-based research models, sustainable development or sustainability is not often the focus, but context-specific examples relate to approaches for Indigenous sustainability. For example, creating an Indigenous framework for evaluation was the focus of a project by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which sought “…to develop evaluation processes that are robust enough to accommodate and value different ‘ways of knowing’ within Indigenous epistemologies” (LaFrance & Nichols, 2010, p. 14). The project identified core values for the framework: Indigenous knowledge creation context is critical, people of a place, recognizing our gifts, personal sovereignty, the centrality of community and family, and tribal sovereignty.

Dimensions

Six discrete but highly interrelated dimensions of community life are critical structural elements of the SDI model (Dockry et al., 2016). The SDI model, including six dimensions, was initially created to extend beyond the limitations of generalized, three-legged sustainability models (environment, society, and economics) to consider sustainability issues from an Indigenous worldview (e.g., Menominee). In creating this understanding for the Menominee, the model provides an example of how, even with limitations, models can account for holistic worldviews of Indigenous peoples, including understanding relationships in places, through times, and at multiple scales and complexities.

“Dimension” indicates measurement with many applications, including mathematics, engineering, theoretical frameworks, and other Western-based ways of understanding. The term can express the numerical exactness of physical items or theoretical approximations of space and time. It is a critical concept in developing theories, models, and frameworks as it helps create parameters or

boundaries to grasp complex and uncertain phenomena and elements of the world around us. Yet the question this raises is how Indigenous researchers view the measurement or understanding of dimension or other ways to measure their reality.

Indigenous methodologies literature highlights the significance of nature-based observational methods, honed over thousands of years, as a measurement form. These observations are documented and shared through ceremonies, rituals, language, art, and other cultural expressions unique to the Indigenous peoples of a specific place as well as renewed relationships in response to relocation (Cajete, 2000; Huambachano, 2018; LaFrance & Nichols, 2010; Lavallée, 2009; Wilson, 2008). In this case, thinking about, reflecting on, and seeking to understand dimensions of space, time, relationships, and spiritual understanding as measurement is more reflective of the circular knowledge of natural processes that inform nature-based observational methods. These perceptions, activities, and behaviors that embody measurement over time, thus, become essential elements for expressing people’s worldviews.4

Indigenous methodologies literature also includes reference to creating “academic” space, physically, epistemology, spiritually, and in other ways for Indigenous researchers and the peoples with whom they work to determine the research focus, the questions asked, the way they ask, and how the information is understood and shared (Smith, 2021). Creating this type of space may require different measurements to understand success better.

Tensions and Change

The SDI model operationalizes by identifying tensions within and across dimensions, creating solutions to address the tension, and understanding the changes. This process is essential for moving SDI focus from theory to praxis (thinking to action). The model explicitly recognizes that when two or more dimensions are environmentally impacted, the SDI should concentrate on working with the community to develop discussion, secure resources, and identify solutions. An early example was the effort to address the tension between gatherers of ginseng (a medicinal plant) and timber harvesting equipment in the same forested areas and the impact on the land.

For Indigenous research and education, addressing the issue of Western-based approaches to research and validating Indigenous approaches to research are considerable tensions. This thought is an issue that exploration through the lens of the SDI model helps and is a focus point for examining the SDI model itself. Walker (2015) describes the tension that exists between Western-based research and Indigenous knowledge and the harms caused by “formal academic research,” which includes the appropriation of Indigenous knowledges and misrepresentation of those knowledges and the peoples from whom they come.

Use of the term “change” represented in the model explicitly considers history, change, and possible futures as a part of its dynamic nature. This, in turn, introduces the consideration of an iterative process of sustainable development,

whereas the model is action-oriented in the present and forward looking in the development of solutions to human–environmental issues. Social change in food politics (Huambachano, 2018), the continued evolution of personhood (LaFrance & Nichols, 2010), change in people’s situational perceptions (Morgan, 2006) as well as behavioral sciences and science, technology, engineering and mathematics work (Grant et al., 2022) are examples found in Indigenous models–based literature that align with the SDI model perception of change and related characteristics of iterative process, scale, and complexities.

Indigenous Sustainability Thinking (Rethinking the Model)

This research expanded my understanding of the SDI model concerning Indigenous research methodologies literature. Through this work, I see the SDI model adaptability fosters both individual and institutional knowledge of research positionality. The following describes the initial emergence of an Indigenous research paradigm built from my understanding.

Maeqtekuahkikiw kew kanāwihtahquaq (The Forest Keepers)

I approach the Menominee phrase Maeqtekuahkikiw kew kanāwihtahquaq as the broad framework for my research paradigm to reflect a forest-keeping metaphor. This name given to MTE denotes their institutional responsibility to care for the forest on behalf of the Menominee people, a responsibility of more than just “boards and cords.” This metaphor is representative of “kincentric ecology” thinking (Martinez, 2018), “collective continuance” thinking (Whyte, 2018), and “honorable harvest” thinking (Kimmerer, 2013). Maeqtekuahkikiw kew kanāwihtahquaq helps to root my story and our tribal higher education and research story.

Māēhnow-pemātesenon (Live Well)

The Menominee have always sought a good life for current and future generations. Māēhnow-pemātesenon yōhpeh (live well, today) is a phrase in the language that indicates care for others. This value of caring is heard in our sustainable forestry approach or the words of Chief Oshkosh in an 1856 general council, several years after the final treaty for Menominee lands, when he said, “I wish to pursue a course which will be best for our children who will follow us.” Although attributed to one speaker, these words come from a shared worldview built on thousands of years of relational development between the Menominee and their environment. As such, this worldview represented through Māēhnow-pemātesenon yōhpeh provides a lens through which to approach contemporary concepts such as sustainable development and sustainability in a relevant way.

Netāēnawemākanak (All My Relations)

My story is one of thousands, interwoven across time and place, rooted in the longer collective story of Kāēyas Mamāceqtawak. In that way, I think of the Menominee word Netāēnawēmākenak (all my relations). This phrase denotes that my relations extend beyond my immediate family, community, and the broader

Menominee Nation. They include all humans, nonhumans, the land, the forest, my ancestors, and future generations. These relationships are context-specific when addressing situations or issues but remain a part of the whole, no matter what. Netāēnawemākanak at the intersection of the SDI model and Indigenous approaches to research represents the tensions, dynamisms, and scales addressed in our understanding of Indigenous sustainability.

Otōtāēm (Clan System)

The Menominee creation story talks about the emergence of the Bear from the mouth of the Menominee river and calling out to the Eagle, Wolf, Crane, and Moose to be brothers and the first Menominee. This story also describes Otōtāēm (the clan system) or the organizational structure of Menominee society and the cultural duties and responsibilities shared by the people for the people (Menominee Clan Story, 2024). This culturally significant story creates space from which institutional and individual structures and responsibilities for Indigenous research projects are built.

Omāēqnomenewaeqnesen (Menominee Language) as an Indicator of Sustainability

I have come to think of Omāēqnomenewaeqnesen (Menominee language) as an indicator of Indigenous sustainability. Language over time has developed to reflect both self-acknowledged and observed understanding of relationships between Menominee and place. The name we gave ourselves is Kāēyas Mamāceqtawak (Ancient Movers), the Ojibwe referred to us as Manominii (wild rice people), and more recently use of the name Maeqtekuahkihkiw Kew Kanāhwihtahquaq (keepers of the forest). Omāēqnomenewaeqnesen holds more principles, lessons, and values regarding Menominee Indigenous sustainability thinking. Thus, one measure of sustainability for the Menominee could be by how much of the project work is conducted in the language.

Conclusion

In “Indigenous Research: Future Directions,” McGregor (2018) discusses a continued movement of Indigenous inquiry and relational storytelling that supports the self-determination and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples in contemporary times. I see the individual, communal, and institutional responsibility necessary for continued refinement to ensure it makes sense and benefits Indigenous peoples. As Indigenous scholars, we carry this weight heavily. Mainstream academia and external partner responsibility is to understand the adverse history of research and Indigenous peoples. This foundational understanding guides the first steps for considering when relationship building is appropriate with Tribal Nations and Indigenous researchers.

Based on my work, the SDI model is not an Indigenous research paradigm. The Western-based underpinnings of its framework always need to be considered when applying it in Indigenous research contexts. However, it supports Menominee and other Indigenous peoples in understanding, exploring, and developing their Indigenous research paradigms. The model serves as an institutional framing of Menominee sustainability theory specifically and Indigenous sustainability theory more broadly. The model’s holistic approach accounts for the Menominee’s well-being, increasing our understanding of relationality to share what we know for the benefit of our relatives and those who seek to build a good relationship with us.

My experiences have shaped an understanding of patient guidance, support, and a mindful approach to institution–community and teacher–student roles. These contribute to the long-term stability and vision of both CMN and SDI and their service to people and place. The work is sometimes overwhelming, and we don’t always get it right. However, the intrinsic value, richness, and opportunity for personal growth while being part of institutional support for Indigenous sustainability are immeasurable. It keeps us coming back. Reflecting on Chief Oshkosh’s statement at the 1864 general council, I can’t help but think about the generations after my time. As I do, I think of one of our CMN alumni and SDI relative, Jasmine Neosh (2022, p.40): “We can find that we are not relegated to understanding the world around us through a lens of distrust, fear, and disconnect but rather from a place in our hearts that knows awe, respect, and accountability.”

Eneq (that is all)

Notes

1 This is a translation created for my class at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with the help of my wife’s grandmother Lavina “Sawanuhkiw” Shawano and another elder who typed it up.

2 The term kaeh nap in Menominee means “used to be” and is meant to be mindful that these people are no longer with us even as we invoke their memory in our stories.

3 Kayāēs Mamaceqtawak (ancient movers) is our peoples name for ourselves, Omaeqnomenewak (people of the wild rice) is Menominee language for the name given to us by the Ojibwe, and Menominee is the English way of saying (people of the wild rice). These are used interchangeably throughout the article.

4 See Kimmerer’s (2003) Gathering Moss, chapter 5, “The Standing Stones” for further story of Indigenous measurements.

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Youngbear-Tibbets, H. (1998). Making sense of the world. In Aiken, S.H., Brigham, A., Marston, S.A., and Waterstone, P., Making Worlds: Gender, Metaphor, Materiality. University of Arizona Press. (pp.31-44). https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv27bds8b.6

Self-Determination on Indigenous Terms: The Tribal College as Institutional Site of Healing and Resilience

Michael S. Merry¹ and Cynthia Lindquist

Abstract

Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) have a unique position in the landscape of higher education vis-à-vis trauma-informed pedagogy insofar as nearly all of their students identify with a cultural group that has experienced genocide, that continues to experience discrimination and poverty, and whose families are inevitably affected by serious psychological problems that plausibly might be considered as responses to trauma. In this paper, we principally concern ourselves with the healing role that TCUs are playing in the quest to repair the historical damage that has been done and also that continues to be done. Accordingly, we detail the important work they do. But, in doing so, we also closely examine the Indigenous historical trauma theoretical framework, which figures prominently in the thinking of many TCU staff, and suggest that a resiliency focus can helpfully assist with resolving a number of theoretical difficulties. We then move to assess the practical dimensions of healing and resilience in the Tribal College as staff members tackle the myriad challenges facing not only their students, but Tribal Nations more generally in the 21st century and beyond.

Key words: indigenous, tribal college, historical trauma, resilience, Native American

True self-determination in any society of people is dependent upon an educational process which will insure the development of qualified people to fulfill meaningful leadership roles.

Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (1975, sec. 2 (a))

The cumulative experience of Native Americans under settler colonialism has been one involving land theft and forced displacement motivated by a doctrine of discovery,² of cultural and religious assimilation involving the collusion of the churches and of both real and cultural genocide whether by disease, military conquest, murder, internment in prison camps, or more mundane forms of federal neglect (Fear-Segal, 2007; Piccard, 2013; Ulrich, 2010). This dismal legacy of intergenerational suffering—often couched in terms of “historical trauma”—has led to myriad challenges facing tribes throughout North America, including chronic unemployment and poverty; high rates of diabetes, obesity, and suicide; low high school graduation and college attainment rates; and an opioid epidemic that has further ravaged communities afflicted by alcohol addiction (Bombay et

al., 2014; Brayboy & Lomawaima, 2018; Brown-Rice, 2013). Compounding these challenges, for many families and individuals living on reservations or in cities, food and housing insecurity, homelessness, and experiences with “everyday racism” are routine (Chavers, 2009). Consequently, a disproportionate number of Native Americans suffer from chronic depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Gone et al., 2019; Sotero, 2006).

Notwithstanding these sobering facts, the history of Native Americans is not an endless tale of victimhood (Blackhawk, 2023; Hämäläinen, 2022); nor is the contemporary news on or off the reservation all doom and gloom (Benham & Stein, 2003; Castile, 2006; Szasz, 1999). Whereas there have been a number of political and economic successes for many tribes, in this paper, we fill an important lacuna and focus our attention on one of the most hopeful signs of rebirth in Indian Country: the Tribal College Movement. Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) have a unique position in the landscape of higher education vis-à-vis trauma-informed pedagogy insofar as nearly all their students identify with a cultural group that has experienced genocide, that continues to experience discrimination and poverty, and whose families are inevitably affected by serious psychological problems that plausibly might be considered responses to trauma. TCUs also have “natural” access to traditional modes of healing, mourning, identity-seeking, and memorialization as content to be taught and as methods to be employed.

As we proceed, we principally concern ourselves with the healing role that TCUs are playing in the quest to repair the damage that has been done and also that continues to be done. To that end, we argue that TCUs are the quintessential institutional space for providing the nonmaterial resources (e.g., cultural values, an emotional bond with the land, spiritual and career guidance, relationships, and humor) that Native American students and their communities value.

The theoretical framework of Indigenous historical trauma (IHT) or intergenerational trauma has taken a central role in conceptualizing the historical and contemporary damage done to indigenous individuals and communities (Burrage et al., 2021; Whitbeck et al., 2004) and also figures prominently in the thinking of many TCU staff. IHT—detailed subsequently—was first articulated by psychologists Eduardo and Bonnie Duran (Duran & Duran, 1995) and social worker Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart (Duran et al., 1998), drawing on work on intergenerational trauma among Jewish Holocaust survivors and their families, on postcolonial and critical race theory, and on various strands of indigenous writing and tradition. IHT does not limit itself to unearthing historical injury and loss, but seeks to integrate the past with the pervasive loss and injury experienced by individuals and families in the present time. Healing, in this paradigm, is an active, therapeutic enterprise—undertaken in both individual and group settings—that incorporates traditional practices with psychodynamic and mindfulness-based treatments. Its aims involve working through the past as the primary means by which one is empowered to determine one’s own present and future.

Empowerment, however, begins with trust, and TCUs are crucial to the restoration of trust, beginning with trust in the formal processes of schooling, by focusing on the culturally and psychologically specific needs of the student whose life circumstances are profoundly shaped by a history of exclusion and continued invisibility. We suggest that the restoration of trust involves placing the learner at the center of a caring and mentoring community, including its elders’ wisdom, cultural and spiritual values (e.g., respect, humility), and tribal customs and rituals. Trust is also an important component in IHT insofar as broken and insecure attachments are the primary consequence of psychological trauma, and trust can only develop within environments in which the possibility of secure attachment within a full range of relationships has been restored. Accordingly, we devote considerable attention to the place of trauma in the pedagogy of TCUs and champion the work being done and that remains to be done.

Finally, we pivot to address two sets of concerns: one theoretical and one practical. First, we offer a closer examination of the IHT framework and consider whether a resiliency focus might helpfully assist with resolving a number of theoretical difficulties. Second, we then move to assess the practical dimensions of healing and resilience in the Tribal College as staff members tackle the myriad challenges facing not only their students, but Tribal Nations more generally in the 21st century and beyond.

Before we move to the body of the paper, in what follows, we begin by briefly sketching the historical background against which tribal colleges were founded in the late 1960s and 1970s, in particular, the boarding school experience that is part of nearly every indigenous family’s collective memory, and the development of Native American educational theory, particularly by indigenous researchers. This history may be well known to some readers. Yet the only way to properly assess IHT, not to mention the important therapeutic work of TCUs, is to first understand the scale of the challenges both historical and contemporary they continue to face as they relate to education and also the wider culture and economy. This history, in general and tribally specific ways, has informed and motivated the application of historical trauma theory to the American Indian experience. Accordingly, this cursory sketch will lead to an attempt to describe the current mission and practical labors of the TCU.

Indian Assimilation by Schooling: A Brief Sketch

Beginning with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, the Department of the Interior, often working closely with a variety of Christian churches and missionary organizations, began formal efforts to educate Native American children in what were known as boarding schools, of which the Carlisle Indian Industrial School³ was perhaps the most (in)famous. The explicit paternalist purpose of boarding schools was to “civilize” Indigenous children, entailing assimilation into Western and Christian norms (Sheehan, 1973). Accordingly, boarding school4 pupils were strictly forbidden from speaking their Native languages, wearing Indigenous attire, and even praying in their own way. Many boarding schools operated like military

schools, meting out unremitting punishment on those who did not obey (Reyhner & Eder, 2017; Trennert, 1988). Though harsh treatment was not uniform everywhere or at all times, there is little controversy concerning widespread abuse in all its forms. Tens of thousands of Indigenous children of different ages were traumatized by these experiences, ones that cemented a profound distrust in education provided by the state (Adams, 1995; Fuchs & Havinghurst 1973; Giago, 2006).

With the signing of the Snyder Act of 1921, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) assumed formal responsibility for the health and education of Native American tribes though very little changed in terms of the assimilationist aims and outcomes. For the next half century, the situation, in fact, dramatically worsened for most tribes such that, by 1969, the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare issued a report titled Indian Education: A National Tragedy and Challenge. Its findings and criticisms were directed at abysmal failures of the BIA and detailed

…the despair, the frustration, the hopelessness, the poignancy, of children who want to learn but are not taught; of adults who try to read but have no one to teach them; of families which want to stay together but are forced apart; or of 9-year-old children who want neighborhood schools but are sent thousands of miles away to remote and alien boarding schools.5

The report further describes appalling physical conditions in most schools, a bloated administration, an alarming dropout and illiteracy rate, a shockingly low college attendance rate, and a virtual absence of Indian influence or control in any of the school boards even when all children in the school were Indigenous. Accordingly, one of the report’s principal recommendations was to markedly increase Indian participation and control of their own education programs as well as more culturally informed curriculum materials. In 1978, summarizing the disaster that had been federal policy toward Native Americans, Joseph de La Cruz, president of the Quinault Tribal Council, observed, “Most of the problems Indians find themselves faced with today result from Federal Indian policies made by nonIndians who are certain they know what is good for the Indians and don’t bother to ask the Indians” (Josephy et al., 1999, p. 58).

Passage of the 1975 Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (PL-93-638) was ratified with the intent of revolutionizing the practice of Indian education. It would purportedly do this by requiring the participation of Indian parent groups, chosen by and from among the parents themselves, in the planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of any educational program funded by Congress with the intent of benefiting Indian students. Thus, in theory, parental advisory committees were given both the power of final approval over the expenditures of such funds and the option to contract directly with the federal agency (the BIA) responsible for administration of the appropriation involved for the direct operation of educational programs under tribal authority (Landon, 1983).

As with other policy initiatives, however, the reality was typically very different. In 1971, for example, the Johnson-O’Malley program had been introduced to

provide greater financial support to Indian students in public schools; however, monies were allocated directly to school districts, giving Native Americans little say in how the money ought to be allocated. Nor were parents typically consulted regarding the operations of their child’s school. These trends continue into the present day such that it is not unusual for a majority of Native American students— even in a tribal school on a supposedly autonomous reservation—to have a majority of non-Native school administrators and teachers, a phenomenon that has given further impetus to a demand for public charters whose mission and staffing is better aligned with the concerns of the Tribal community.

In sum, whereas politicians and nonprofit governmental bodies6 continue to champion state-funded education as the most efficient means of social and economic uplift, both the collective memory and contemporary experience of Native Americans vis-à-vis state schools is more typically one of subordination, miseducation, and failure. Nor does the fact that most boarding schools have been closed erase the ignominious legacy still being visited upon present generations. Indeed, across the nation, Native American children continue to be disproportionately labeled with learning disabilities, suspended at higher than average rates, and funneled into the lowest ability groups and tracks, in which, too often, they are on the receiving end of low expectations and dull curricula (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Harry & Klingner, 2022). Native Americans also continue to have the lowest rate of school completion of any demographic group in the nation as well as the lowest rate of college attendance (Demmert et al., 2006; McCardle & Berninger, 2015).

Tribal Colleges and Universities

Tribal Colleges were founded in ceremony and with prayer by visionary Native educators who believed in Tribal higher education and who sought alliances with non-Native educators, politicians, and others to provide culturally informed postsecondary education to Native students. The first Tribal College was founded by the Navajo Nation in 1968.7 Aided in part by the passage of both the 1975 Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (PL-93-638) and the 1978 Tribally Controlled Community Colleges Act (PL 95-471), several others swiftly followed in the next decade.8 These first TCUs were dedicated to providing a college education on the reservation that emphasized tribal values and ways of knowing as well as practical vocational and academic skills (Brown, 2003; Stull et al., 2015). The founders embraced the principles of Indigenous education espoused by American Indian intellectuals and activists such as Vine Deloria, Russel Means, and Dennis Banks, whose vision of what education should be was partly informed by the negative example of Indian boarding schools (Davis, 2013; Deloria, 1968).

Since the late 1960s, TCUs have expanded in number to more than 35, represent more than 250 Tribal groups, and serve more than 20,000 students, nearly 90% of whom are Native American (Crazy Bull & Guillory, 2018). Though a few border midsize cities (e.g., Bismarck, ND), most have been built on reservation land belonging to the respective Tribes and are heavily staffed by tribal members, not a

few of whom are former graduates.9 TCUs further provide an important communal service, not only in terms of the educational courses and degrees they offer, but also as a crucial means of employment and a resource center for issues ranging from domestic violence and substance abuse to conservation efforts and local political activism. Nearly all TCUs operate adult learning centers for high school diploma programming; libraries that serve the reservation communities and that, many times, are the only internet resource for community members; and dual/ college credit programs with the local high schools. More than that, TCUs provide an institutional space in which vital historical knowledge can be gained. The TCU is, therefore, an ideal institutional space in which cultural membership can meaningfully occur, shattered trust and confidence can be restored, and more generally in which students can acquire the skills they need to attain economic self-reliance.

The average TCU student today is between the ages of 28 and 32, is a single mother, and is the first in her family to attend college. She has limited income and is, therefore, eligible for Pell grant assistance and financial support from the American Indian College Fund as well as other sources, such as state scholarships. TCUs that have campus dormitories further provide subsidized housing and food service. Emergency relief funds in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have made additional resources available to prospective students, including new laptops, books, and even gift cards for groceries or gas. The emergency funds also are allocated for utilities, rent, car repair, or child care services on a case-by-case basis. These benefits are based on the student meeting satisfactory academic progress for their courses and program of study.

Not unlike other community colleges and localized state universities, TCUs exist to educate those for whom higher education seems out of reach. Though many partner with state universities, all TCUs provide a variety of majors from which to choose for associate, bachelor, and even masters-level coursework. Liberal studies, cultural studies, and criminal law are popular majors, but so are nutrition, business, and Indigenous science. Whatever one’s chosen path, the goal of all TCUs is to give students the skills and building blocks they need to succeed along with fostering critical thinking and career readiness—ideas we return to later.

Though most students are Indigenous and even may have lived their entire lives on the reservation, prior to their collegiate studies, a majority of students attending TCUs are themselves largely unaware of their tribal history. Accordingly, the culture, language, and history of the Tribe(s) is compulsory curriculum and serves as the foundation for communal life and education. This endeavor includes numbers of striking features, including a historically informed humanities education, one that includes a detailed understanding of settler colonialism and violence; the blending of spiritual rituals with modern psychological understandings of well-being; rudimentary knowledge of one’s Tribal language and traditions; and culturally informed career counseling and professional mentoring attentive to the challenges of its rural geography. Succinctly summarizing their mission, Pavel et al. (2001, p. 67) write, “TCUs offer tribal

communities a means to rebuild the greatness of their past as they respond to immediate community needs, promote collective empowerment, revitalize culture and language, and facilitate community healing.”

All of this means that TCUs are uniquely tasked with educating Native American students in ways beyond the purview of most mainstream institutions. For starters, academic success is believed to be grounded in both relationships as well as cultural values, such as respect, humility, courage, honesty, and wisdom. Curricular approaches foreground attention to historical and contemporary matters affecting the lives of tribal members with an emphasis on the importance of responsibility to the tribal community. If all goes well, graduates of TCUs are well-equipped to graduate with a strong cultural base and sense of self—often described in terms of knowing who one is—and also a deeper understanding of the meanings and purposes behind their learning and the vocational paths they subsequently pursue. Yet, crucially, many TCU administrators and instructors alike insist that these positive outcomes depend upon first coming to terms with trauma.

TCUs and the Task of Healing

As our earlier historical survey makes clear, there is no paucity of evidence concerning collective trauma and its lingering effects. The challenges facing most Native Americans today are formidable. They include endemic social, psychological, and economic problems both on and off Indian reservations; a (not always conscious) sense of loss concerning both individual identities and communal cohesion, resulting in recognizable patterns of learned dependency; and finally, a deep-seated distrust toward educational institutions, if not the very idea of education itself, owing to negative experiences with state authorities that continue into the present day.

As we note in the introduction, first and foremost TCUs must work toward the restoration of trust, beginning with trust in education itself: not as many have experienced it, most typically in public school settings (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Harry & Klingner, 2022) but rather by focusing on the culturally and psychologically specific needs of the student whose life circumstances are profoundly shaped by a history of exclusion as well as their continued invisibility within the social fabric of American society. Being placed at the center of this community has a clear epistemological component, i.e., learning about one’s cultural history, tribal knowledge, and practices as well as the collective experience of Indians in the United States under settler colonialism.

Indeed, it is one of the core aims of TCUs to assist in celebrating Indigenous knowledge, which entails blending a historical awareness concerning tribal ways of knowing with a contemporary blend of modern scientific methods and technology (e.g., Indigenous science, food sovereignty, conservation). Students are also encouraged to participate in restorative rituals (e.g., talking circles) that enhance both individual identities and feelings of group membership. More significantly still, and unlike other community colleges and state universities that Native American students attend, TCUs have as a foundational responsibility the work of healing.

Yet to claim that tribal colleges put healing at the center of their mission means asking who is being healed, from what injury or illness, and by what means. We should also ask how and why a therapeutic metaphor such as healing has been imported into the domain of education, in which teaching and learning are the normative terms of reference. A first possible answer to the questions of who and what Tribal Colleges mean to heal is members of the Tribal community, principally their students, who have suffered psychological harm from trauma experienced by their ancestors in the past and by themselves in their current lives. The implication here is that the healing treatments offered at the Tribal College go beyond merely supplying important, even essential, knowledge and skills and address also the emotional well-being of everyone involved. It is instructive, though, to start with the interventions proposed by the mental health workers who first adapted the historical trauma framework to an indigenous context.

The Theoretical Basis of Historical Trauma in Tribal Discourse

Eduardo Duran (Apache/Tewa/Lakota), a Vietnam special operations veteran turned psychologist (and Zen Buddhist teacher) gives us a place to start (Duran, 2019; Duran et al., 2008). When Duran took on his first clinical assignment as a psychologist in the early 1980s in a remote Native community in central California, his clients wanted to tell him about their dreams and about the genocide that had befallen their community in the 1800s. They rejected his behavioral interventions for what he diagnosed as alcoholism, depression, anxiety, and the like and instead spoke of spiritual injury, soul sickness, ancestral hurt, and soul wounding. The Western worldview Duran had brought to this work, crystallized in his disciplinary training, was at odds with the Indigenous worldview of the people he was supposed to be treating. He was, in his own words, culturally incompetent, and the psychological (and educational) therapy he was attempting to perform was as colonial as the 1862 Homestead Act that gifted lands in Indian country to white European settlers. This “soul wound”—an Indigenous way of speaking of historical or intergenerational trauma—can be understood as the object of the Tribal College’s proposed healing, and it is the historical community comprising contemporaries and collectives that is the subject in need of healing.

Duran’s contemporary, Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, helps us to address the question of how a Tribal College or any other entity or individual should undertake this healing of a soul wound. As a psychoanalytically oriented social worker working with Lakota communities and individuals in the 1980s, Brave Heart (Duran et al., 1998) identified the malady from which her clients suffered as “chronic unresolved grief across generations,” associated with traumatic historical events, including the massacre at Wounded Knee (Cankpe Opi Wakpala), the assassination of Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotanke), and the boarding school experience that forcibly separated children from their parents and cultures. She reframes the familiar social pathology of Indians—including alcoholism, depression, suicide, anxiety, child and spousal abuse, and problems with physical health—as a response to trauma and the associated unresolved grief. In her view, this pathology of unresolved grief has been exacerbated by the prohibitions on the practices of Indigenous spirituality

and ceremonies, including the ghost dance and other “culturally syntonic modes of working through grief” (Duran & Duran, 1995, p. 3).

Brave Heart, Duran, and their colleagues are responsible for the broad dissemination of the IHT framework across Indian Country, where it has become part of everyday mental health and educational discourse. Both Brave Heart and Duran stress the dialectical relationship between individual trauma, experienced in the present lifetime, and collective trauma that includes the effects of events that occurred to others outside one’s own lifetime. What this suggests is that the symptoms of PTSD and other related conditions—depression, anxiety, anger—are (unconsciously) transmitted from parent to child in a context of persistent adverse experiences that trigger increased negative responses. Non-Indigenous scholars and professionals working with Indigenous clients have also taken up IHT, seeking to integrate culturally informed, trauma-informed approaches with mainstream orientations toward public health, clinical practice, and teaching/learning.

Perhaps most important to our purpose here is to return to the question of healing—or, in clinical terms, treatments and interventions—that are appropriate to IHT. Within that paradigm, the soul wound is addressed through Tribal ceremonies and rituals along with an education into the ways of knowing and being specific to the Tribe and to the history of the Tribe, not just the traumatic history but a more comprehensive, Indigenous history of itself. The trauma-informed interventions guided by IHT seek to increase the ability of individual students to free themselves from the bondage of traumatic stress disorder by restoring memory: by healing history, in other words. Indigenous ceremonies that address suffering are typically cathartic, social, and embodied in that they don’t depend, as do dominant psychotherapeutic approaches, on treatment over time; they often require extreme physical effort and discomfort, and they are done with others (Duran, 2019).

The writings of both Duran and Brave Heart helpfully illuminate much of what TCU staff mean when they invoke IHT as a framework for the work they do. We now pivot to consider two sets of concerns: one theoretical and one practical. First, given its central role in conceptualizing the historical and contemporary damage done to Indigenous individuals and communities and also the need for healing, we examine more closely the aptness of IHT as a theoretical normative approach. Here, we speculate whether an inordinate emphasis on (historical) trauma—in the absence of a counterbalancing focus on resilience—might actually serve to thwart rather than facilitate the healing process. Second, we then turn to examine, in a more grounded and empirically precise way, the practical dimensions of resilience and healing and the culturally relevant implications for academic success in the Tribal College.

On the Theoretical Limitations of IHT for Healing in TCUs

Not everyone accepts the IHT framework as either accurate or constructive with respect to the welfare of Tribal people. For instance, some critical scholars (Maxwell, 2014; McLaren, 2015) assert that the historical trauma framework as a therapeutic modality engages in a kind of victimology and, hence, reproduces

colonial discourses about the pathologies of Indigenous families, i.e., learned dependence, thereby derailing a more resistance-focused critical pedagogy focused on the cultural, educational, political, and economic goals of Tribal selfdetermination.

Native American scholarship, too, has increasingly been questioning the centrality of the framework (Kirmayer et al., 2014). Social anthropologist and Aaniiih-Gros Ventre tribal member Joseph P. Gone (2009, 2013), for instance, acknowledges the reality of historical trauma, per se, but suggests that the psychological construct lacks scientific validity and functions primarily as “an entrenched folk discourse,” one dependent upon a culture of therapy that then posits an inherent “psychic fragility.”

He avers (Gone, 2021, p. 4) that “IHT stands to refashion contemporary Indigenous identity as fundamentally wounded by history and to remake Indigenous selfhood as damaged, disordered, or disabled (or, at least, vulnerable and ‘at risk’).” Invoking IHT, Gone argues, especially when accompanied by narratives about colonial oppression, serves the purpose of seizing the “moral high ground to insulate claims from skeptical interrogation or dubious critique.” He asserts that the healing agenda that is part of IHT—as opposed to the apolitical, evidence-based approach of normative psychology and psychiatry—is wrapped up in a larger political, decolonization agenda, including the promotion/restoration of Indigenous knowledge and self-determination. Gone (2021, p. 8) elucidates his point thus:

We might ask what it means when entire generations of Indigenous people are said to suffer from IHT and therefore to be ‘at risk’ for mental health problems? What does it mean when Indigenous communitybased ‘healing’ projects promote these ideas among their Indigenous clients, many of whom arrive to these programs by professional or legal mandate, only to be considered successful cases if they learn to disclose their vulnerability, open up to their counselors, and inaugurate a ‘healing journey’?

At first glance, the suggestion that the framework of collective, intergenerational trauma—of which IHT is a subset—is an inapt normative approach seems improbable given the quantity of empirical research and theory produced over the past three decades (Isobel et al., 2019; Menzies, 2019; Somasundaram, 2014). Perhaps this skepticism can be attributed more to the rejection by the mainstream mental health industry—professional and academic—of anything relating to psychoanalysis as prima facie invalid. But insofar as working through the past— forgetting, remembering, repressing—is a central component of this pedagogical and therapeutic work related to trauma, it is not surprising that psychoanalytic and neuro-psychoanalytic theories play a prominent role in conceptualizing the historical trauma. Many of the psychologists and psychiatrists whose work with Jewish Holocaust survivors and their descendants inspired IHT were themselves practicing psychoanalysts.

This line of research merged in the late 1990s with neuropsychological inquiry based on clinical experience treating PTSD that sought to explain the dynamics of

stress management and mismanagement and memory (see van der Kolk, 2014, for example). These clinicians describe patients who, whatever the precipitating events, are unable to remember or forget what happened and whose capacity to regulate emotions was impaired, oscillating with little warning from states of hyperarousal to dissociation. This research focused on adults, but a parallel line of inquiry took up the question of persistent trauma in early childhood, stimulated in part by the original 1994 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study that demonstrated correlations between early trauma related to abuse, neglect, family violence, alcoholic parents, etc., and later psychological and physical illness.

It goes without saying that many Indigenous children suffer from persistent ACEs, resulting in what came to be called developmental, complex, or relational trauma though these diagnostic categories have not been incorporated into the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the handbook of psychiatric diagnosis, for lack of empirical evidence. Nonetheless, this kind of complex trauma centered on children and their families was at the heart of the clinical practices of Brave Heart and Duran and inform their conceptions of historical trauma.

It certainly is not difficult to appreciate how history might be incorporated into the psychology of trauma. Yet it is here that we discern a paradox, for a main part of the problem is that many individuals cannot remember what happened whether because the memory has been repressed or because they have not endured the trauma (e.g., a boarding school experience) directly themselves. Either way, there’s an “empty circle” where the event should be. There’s also an empty circle where identity is supposed to be (cf. Aydin, 2017; Volkan, 2001). For the traumatized individual, it is empty because the event could never be fully processed, and the “other” who was supposed to protect—a parent or teacher, say—has fed their emptiness into them. This is a way of thinking about the relational/developmental trauma rather than, say, the trauma of a physical injury or of being attacked.

Additionally, the inherent logic to IHT means that it risks being overly determinative, for to say that everyone in a collectivity is affected historically by trauma—genocide, colonization, displacement—does not imply that every individual is equally affected. In other words, not everyone experiencing a potentially traumatic event suffers from PTSD or transmits depression and anxiety to their children—a fact many times noted by various scholars (Berleković & Dimitrijević, 2020; Sleijpen et al., 2016; Song et al., 2014). Indeed, it is just as likely that individuals will demonstrate tremendous resiliency in the face of the worst experiences and pass that psychological disposition on to future generations. For example, children who grow up in violent, disorganized settings, such as refugees from war, but whose parents are able to maintain positive attachment and provide protection, that is, parents who are themselves resilient, are not necessarily traumatized psychologically and may instead exhibit resilience in the future in difficult circumstances (Alayarian, 2018). Neither do mistreatment, exclusion, and even cultural negation foreclose collective agential responses. Hence, social

resilience, Michalyn Steele (2020, p. 309) argues, “does not mean assault and disruption leave the organization or system unchanged. Rather, resilience means the systems have adapted in the face of threats and endured them so as not to be critically compromised. The ability to fulfill the core mission endures.”

Thus, whereas IHT implies that all Native Americans are uniformly afflicted with the symptoms of unresolved grief, a growing scholarship is purporting otherwise (Gone, 2021; Henderson-Matthews et al., 2022; Steele, 2020; Thomas et al., 2015; Wexler, 2014). For example, Denham (2008) documents the case of a Salish group in northern Idaho who celebrate their resilience—without denying the traumatic realities—rather than psychological dysfunction. He quotes a family elder:

A lot of pain and suffering our family has [been] going through. A lot of things that have happened to our family that were unjust, that were cruel, that were down right murderous, but we survived. My father would tell many other stories about pain and suffering and unjust things that happened to our family. And he would always bring it back to the center and say, ‘Maybe the reason for that was so you boys can make a better life for your family’ (p. 391).

Tellingly, though, the means by which this family has retained its knowledge, its interconnectedness, and its mental health are the same traditional practices, such as the sweat lodge ceremony, that IHT practitioners recommend for healing the effects of collective and individual trauma.

Indeed, inasmuch as some members of the community have experienced relational trauma across generations and have consequently lost their full ability to imagine the mental states or intentions of others, even of oneself, then the entire collectivity is affected. Thus, viewed within a North American Tribal context, the relative success of some of its members and, in some cases, entire Tribes does not eclipse the larger Indigenous picture of, say, endemic poverty, addiction, incarceration and despair; nor is it plausible that more successful Tribal members are uninformed about these pervasive phenomena. That is to say, there is a contagiousness to collective trauma. Consequently, the community as a whole loses a measure of its collective strength, its ability to find meaning in life and history, and the memory and knowledge of trauma; intense interpersonal emotions of all kinds trigger further dysregulation, damaging relationships and fragmenting the collective (Erikson, 1977).

On the Practical Dimensions of Healing and Resilience in the TCU

Indigenous philosophy, understood more or less similarly across all Tribal communities, entails that relationships are rooted in the kinship system of individual, family, extended family, and adopted family. Indeed, Native peoples are taught and understand that all of life is rooted in relationships. There is sacredness in that knowledge. Sacredness implies many things yet certainly begins with the knowledge and conviction that we are to live in this world harmoniously and

respectfully by following the cycles of the moon, the sun, and the seasons. It also includes a belief in a spiritual reality, an abiding connection to one’s ancestors, and a sense of moral responsibility to all living things, be they humans, animals, birds, or plants. We are to be ever mindful of only taking and using what we need so that Mother Earth can replenish herself naturally. The healing mission of all TCUs is, therefore, not only the teaching, learning, and perpetuation of the respective Indigenous culture, history, and language, but also the internalization of a profound understanding of the interconnectedness of all of life in its many facets. The life of TCU students and their academic success is grounded in relationships and shared cultural values. Whereas reiteration of cultural values is essential, practicing and demonstrating those values is critical and is done each and every day in the TCU system of education. Students see the values being practiced, discussed, and then perpetuated as they complete their education journey. Prayer and smudging10 the classroom, office areas, or public areas are normal, everyday practices at TCUs, which lends itself to the unique aspect of integrating cultural practice into an academic setting and, more importantly, reinforces Indigenous cultural ways. These practices lead to better human interactions, which, in turn, lead to improved faculty/student relationships. There is an interconnectedness that is subjective and yet that can also be documented via institutional, academic data for student success: enrollment, retention, persistence, completion rates, or academic progress.

For example, Cankdeska Cikana Community College (CCCC) serves the Spirit Lake Dakota Tribe in northeastern North Dakota; its mission statement reads: “CCCC provides opportunities that lead to student independence and selfsufficiency through academic achievement and continuation of the Spirit Lake Dakota language and culture.” The Dakota values of wisdom (woksape), humility (wicowahba), courage (wowaditake), generosity (wawokiya), fortitude (wowaditake), respect (waohoda), and honesty (ohan owotana) are key to accomplishing the mission and are widely publicized in the various institutional documents and materials (in both Dakota and English).

Faculty and staff at TCUs are generally tribal community members, and thus, when someone walks through the doors of a Tribal College, it is immediately understood by all staff members what an extraordinary thing such an undertaking is for the individual in question. Staff members understand all too well the probability of family and community trauma; they also know all too well both the many fiscal, emotional, and educational obstacles one must overcome. Not only do most students come from families with no college degrees, most come from families in which high school completion, too, is not a foregone conclusion. Moreover, large numbers come from (extended) families with a multitude of challenges ranging from substance abuse to domestic violence and chronic depression. It is further understood that trust in the education system—to say nothing of higher education— is virtually nonexistent. As noted earlier, much of the trauma occurs directly as a result of one’s previous experiences or one’s parents’ previous experiences in school. Indeed, whether public or Tribal schools (which may also have a majority

of non-Tribal teachers), experiences with the education system have been and continue to be generally negative, in large part because efforts to address the needs of Native American children have not led to systemic institutional change (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Johnston-Goodstar & Roholt, 2020). The result is both an inadequate preparation for higher education as well as an acutely low level of both trust and self-esteem.

Healing, Resilience and Academic Success

Earlier in the paper, we noted that the core aim of TCUs is to give students the knowledge, skills, and building blocks they need to succeed. We also noted that academic success must be grounded first in both relationships as well as the cultural values of the community and second in knowledge of the culture, language, and history of the Tribe(s). Moreover, and consistent with an important scholarship on Indigenous resilience (e.g., Steele, 2020), educational resilience (e.g., Waxman et al., 2003), and resilience tout court (e.g., Wolin & Wolin, 1993), TCU staff recognize that even in the face of innumerable personal and communal challenges, Native American students can still manage to defy negative trends if they possess certain personal characteristics (e.g., achievement motivation) and also if they receive the right kinds of material and nonmaterial support. As other scholarship demonstrates, these crucial supports can also be made available to Indigenous students in mainstream institutions, improving retention rates and completion (Gentry & Fugate, 2012; McCardle & Berninger, 2015; Nakata et al., 2019).

However, we have yet to detail more concretely how healing and resilience are related to academic success. We, therefore, wish to say more about how the educational aims of TCUs, combined with the relevant cultural and relational practices, not only can facilitate better capacities to learn, they also can promote self-efficacy by encouraging students to avail themselves of staff support when feeling stressed or overwhelmed and to cultivate persistence in the face of hardship.

First, in all that they do, TCU staff aim to provide a welcoming environment that is family-centered, in which any and all questions are answered and it is also understood that a Native student might not look you in the eye or speak up and ask for help or guidance. Patience and listening are essential skills for the faculty and staff at TCUs; indeed, they factor heavily into hiring decisions and annual performance reviews. Once the relationship with the student is established, trust can begin, and subsequently, appropriate, holistic help is determined: remediation, assistance with housing, advice concerning how to manage fees, or learning how to leverage a college degree to launch a successful career.

Second, and as part of their healing work, TCUs offer a more personalized education tailored to individual needs while simultaneously fostering a sense of community among staff and students. This entails student mentoring, assistance with planning and organization, setting realistic goals, developing efficacious study habits, and monitoring progress and persistence. With respect to content, curriculum, and pedagogy, all TCUs approach teaching and learning in ways

consistent with an American Indian metaphysics, in which knowledge and understanding is not dualistic or isolated from the rest of creation but is rather founded on a “continuum of experience” (Deloria, 1994; Deloria & Wildcat, 2001). Accordingly, academic programming at all TCUs requires Indigenous course work for graduation in both local and regional Tribal history and/or Indigenous language. As detailed earlier, this also means that the ways in which subject matter is learned and processed must be “Indigenized” in the approaches taken and the critical consciousness fostered. It further means that healing rituals may operate alongside one’s academic studies. These culturally affirming and spiritually holistic approaches to teaching and learning are facilitated via professional development of instructors, sharing models at faculty meetings, and having Tribal elders and knowledge keepers involved and engaged in the classroom or the professional development trainings.

Third, it is important to note that Tribal College students typically come in wanting to further their education and improve their lives and also to help their family, to be a role model for their children, or to give back to their community (Tribe). Their motivations are rarely only about themselves as an individual. Healing and resilience, then, have both an individual and collective character. Relatedly, the idea of self-determination, which we underscore many times in this paper, denotes both an aim for the individual learner to become intellectually critical and economically self-reliant as well as the Tribal Nation as a collective whole. TCUs assist in facilitating both facets of self-determination to the extent that preferential hiring ensures administrative and staffing control, and its learning goals are explicitly geared toward the needs of the students. Self-determination also means that the aspirational aim of all Tribes is to become less dependent on federal support (Cornell & Jorgensen, 2022).11 Particularly in rural areas, TCUs also are a major contributor to the local economy, supplying nurses, welders, nutritionists, and teachers to the respective reservations as well as the counties and states in which they are situated.12

To say, then, that TCUs are an institutional site of healing is to recognize the very real traumas, both historical and contemporary, that Native students and their families have experienced and continue to experience. Humor and laughter, a favored antidote to tragedy within Native communities, also contribute to the healing process. It matters less whether healing describes an ongoing process or an endpoint; it also matters less whether healing is an explicit versus an implicit aim. Even when “healing” may not necessarily be the preferred vernacular of a staff member or mission statement, this is neither here nor there in terms of what TCUs actually do. Analogously, a community may foster virtues and habits conducive to welcoming strangers without ever theorizing the importance of hospitality or even consciously reflecting on its meanings or goals. And so, just as hospitality may be implicitly nourished, so too with healing in a Tribal context. Yet, as the foregoing paragraphs suggest, TCUs also recognize the importance of resilience in the larger story, which is to say that the healing process enables community members to both succeed academically and also be better equipped to determine their own futures.

TCUs and the Future of Native American Resilience

Some readers may express skepticism concerning whether TCUs can do all we have described in the previous section given the many social and economic problems described earlier in the paper. There is undeniably an ongoing struggle for adequate human resources13 and funding equity for Tribal needs, including parity for TCUs. Moreover, TCUs, like other institutions of higher learning, are beholden to the dictates of the board of regents and also the BIA and accreditation agencies. Partnerships with other state universities also ensure compliance with state regulatory agencies.

The self-determination of the TCU itself may be further hamstrung from within, for whereas a few TCUs have decoupled college administration from Tribal governance, Tribal charters remain the dominant model. Other practical challenges abound. The remoteness of most TCUs means that both recruitment and retention of staff remains a serious challenge, particularly given the work demands faced by staff members, who often are called upon to do much more than their job description dictates. Housing shortages in many rural locations pose an additional challenge.

Yet, without minimizing those very real and persistent difficulties, most TCUs today are fully functioning hybrid campuses with state-of-the-art material resources. Many have entirely new buildings and classrooms, elaborate vocational school operations, up-to-date science lab facilities, solar panels and greenhouses, and the latest computer lab technology. TCU grant writers are very resourceful and adept in procuring federal, state, and private funding to expand facilities, improve infrastructure, recruit qualified staff, and support student success. This resourcefulness is due, largely, to the important work of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and the American Indian College Fund, organizations founded by TCU presidents. As such, Tribal Colleges have become the cultural, economic, and political center of modern Tribal life on many levels, employing scores of local residents, graduating future leaders, and helping to boost the local economy.

Yet, whereas the relevant material resources certainly aid TCUs in their important work, it is principally the relevant nonmaterial resources Native American students need most that aid in the healing work TCUs do. These include a sense of belonging grounded in an ethos of care and emotional support; a cultural match between staff and students who share similar background experiences; small class sizes and the personal trust with the instructor such intimacy affords; extra remedial assistance in core subjects and also guidance and assistance with financial matters; and last but certainly not least, the unceasing aspiration to succeed on their own terms. TCUs are also uniquely situated in terms of their geography; mostly small, rural, isolated institutions that serve one Tribal community. Accordingly, each college is able to provide greater flexibility in personalizing counsel and nurturing relationships for each student success.

Generally speaking, TCU rates of performance have been steadily improving, whether in terms of student retention, persistence, and course completion or graduation rates. Currently, graduation rates are holding steady at approximately 21% for the academic years 2019–2022 (the academic year is fall, spring, summer). Some TCUs are showing even bigger gains. If we again take CCCC in North Dakota as a specific case, an institutional setting concerning which the second author has intimate knowledge, it is an associate’s degree–granting Tribal College that has been experiencing record enrollment (97% increase between fall 2019 to fall 2022), persistence (from 49% fall/spring 2019–2020 to 62% fall/spring 2021–2022), and retention (29% fall 2019 to 48% fall 2022) rates and all within the pandemic environment. CCCC’s spring enrollment for 2023 is an unprecedented 308, which continues the upward trend along with a record graduating class for spring 2023 with 73 students.14

Gallup (2019), the renowned polling organization, conducted a study of TCU alumni in partnership with the American Indian College Fund. The study compares TCU alumni with alumni from three national peer groups in terms of their workplace engagement, well-being, and institutional experiences both during and after college. The study further addresses the primary reasons that students may attend a TCU as they consider which type of higher education experience may provide a supportive, culturally affirming environment and a pathway to a good job. Findings from the study include the following:

• TCU alumni are nearly two times more likely than their peers nationally to thrive in all elements of well-being.

• TCU alumni are significantly more likely than graduates nationally to say their alma mater prepared them well for life outside of college.

• TCU alumni give back to their own community. Seventy-four percent report being primarily employed in areas related to American Indian communities or Tribal lands, and many work directly with their Tribe.

• TCU alumni benefitted from their campus’ unique climate as they are twice as likely as American Indian graduates nationally to have been supported while obtaining a degree.

Whereas these positive trends lag far behind national averages,15 the achievements are quite astonishing once the daunting historical and contemporary challenges are taken into account. As we show, myriad traumas, both collective and individual, suffered by Native Americans over the past centuries have resulted in entire communities and families being ravaged by disease, warfare, displacement, and cultural erasure at the hands of both missionaries and state and federal governments. Moreover, much of the damage was and continues to be done via the school.

Yet, as devastating as the colonialization process has been, Native Americans have endured, their spiritual essence has survived, and their resilience is increasingly on display. Doubtless part of the resilience entails remembering and confronting historical trauma; indeed, without these, one can neither know

one’s history nor speak of healing. Yet undoing the damage that has been done means that the narrative does not end with historical trauma, cultural fragility, or victimhood; rather, resilience points toward possibilities in Indian Country for adaptation and renewal, whether spiritual, cultural, or economic. With their unique ability to provide nonmaterial resources, such as the restoration of cultural and spiritual values, identity, and community; an emotional bond with and sense of responsibility toward the land; and care, mentoring, humor, and communal belonging so essential to trust in one’s education and the future, TCUs are the institutional space par excellence in which tribal resilience is being fostered. Indeed, TCUs are showing how trust can only develop within environments in which the possibility of secure attachment with a full range of relationships has been restored. As such, TCUs are beacons of hope.

Acknowledgments

We dedicate this study to all TCU faculty and staff across the United States, and we especially thank all those from Red Lake Nation College, White Earth Tribal and Community College, Sitting Bull College, United Tribes Technical College, Cankdeska Cikana Community College, and Haskell Indian Nation University, whose knowledge and experiences greatly informed the research. We also thank Judith Suissa and William New for comments on earlier drafts.

Author Biographies

Michael S. Merry, PhD, is professor of philosophy of education at the University of Amsterdam. Trained in both educational policy and moral philosophy, he has spent his career on both sides of the Atlantic researching and defending minorityserving educational institutions at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Both comparative and philosophical in nature, his work is motivated by a concern to highlight the copious ways in which historically marginalized communities reclaim, redefine and redirect their education as the principal means through which both individual and collective self-determination can be realized.

Cynthia Lindquist, PhD, is a member of the Spirit Lake Tribe and her Dakota name is Ta’sunka Wicahpi Winyan (Star Horse Woman). She served as president of Cankdeska Cikana Community College for 21 years (2003-2024) and in that capacity served on the Board of Directors for the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and the Board of Trustees for the American Indian College Fund. She currently serves on the North Dakota Ethics Commission, the Bush Foundation, and is an advisor to the Minnesota Diversity Foundation.

Notes

1 The authors met in the fall of 2022 on the Spirit Lake reservation while the first author was conducting research on TCUs, including visits to several TCU campuses in northern Minnesota and North Dakota. The purpose of these visits was to meet with various faculty and staff, and to discuss the challenges TCUs are currently facing. A mutual friendship developed, as did an interest in working on this project together. While preparing this paper, both fused their experiences, expertise and methodological training with the aim of making a novel contribution to Native American education, and Indigenous education more broadly.

2 “Doctrine of discovery” refers to theories promulgated by “papal bulls,” decrees that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Indigenous lands on multiple continents and which form the basis of some property laws today. See int. al. Miller (2011).

3 Located on a former army base in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the school operated from 1879 to 1918.

4 Canada’s residential schools are virtually indistinguishable from American boarding schools though the churches played a larger role in Canada. See https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/152 9106060525.

5 The full report is available here: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED034625.

6 For example, see Goal 4, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (un.org).

7 The Navajo Community College Act (PL 92-189) was passed in 1971, making the acquisition of grants and other resources easier.

8 Three subsequent pieces of legislation further facilitated the expansion of TCUs: first, in 1990, the Native American Languages Act (PL 101-477); second, in 1994, the acquisition of land grant status; and third, in 1996, the Clinton Executive Order, which provided additional federal support via the Department of Education.

9 Both Haskell (Lawrence, KS) and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic (Albuquerque, NM) are fully funded by the federal government; most TCUs, however, are Tribally chartered or else have 501(c)(3) status with the Internal Revenue Service, thereby allowing for tax-exempt donations.

10 A ritual involving the burning of plant resins and prayer with the purpose of removing negative energy and inviting peace and harmony.

11 This is already a reality for a number of wealthy tribes. See https://nativetribe.info/top-10-richestnative-american-tribes-in-the-usa-3/.

12 Online entrepreneurship is also encouraged in remote areas where it is otherwise difficult to attract visitors.

13 A challenge for all rural institutions and not only TCUs.

14 CCCC institutional profile: https://www.littlehoop.edu/.

15 College Graduation Rates | BestColleges.

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