Native. Educated.
Indigenize.
Representation matters. While 92% of Native students attend public schools, 87% of textbooks don’t mention us after 1900 and 2/3 of states have no requirements for learning about Native Americans. To stop the erasure we can show educators how education systems are designed to omit or minimize Native presence.
Resurge.
Culturally responsive education is insufficient. We need to envision an education that is at a minimum, culturally sustaining and ideally culturally revitalizing. Students and educators need spaces where they can grow in their identities, cultural connections, and cultural knowledge. We need an education that can contribute to Indigenous futures and cultural resurgence.
Desettle.
Decolonization gets thrown around a lot in education. But who decolonizes? The colonized. Settlers desettle. Desettling helps non-Native educators identify settler biases and can begin the work of interrogating and dismantling them. There are many opportunities to desettle the settler meta-narratives that dominate instructional material.
“Jerad is at the forefront of the movement to strengthen government to government relations in our schools, a leader in the field of Native Studies, and a believer in the power of indigenous education for all students.”
—Chris Reykdal, Superintendent of Public Instruction