Indigenous Education, Mainstream Education, and Native Studies: Some Considerations when Incorporating Indigenous Pedagogy into Native Studies

Overview & Synopsis

A person coming to know for him or herself while respecting differences characterizes the author's experience of Indigenous education. Based on his experience with Indigenous education, he has found that what constitutes validity is very different than mainstream education. In this article, the author presents characteristics of Indigenous education based on his experience with a Mohawk elder and Lakota mentor. Indigenous education is intrinsically connected with culture, language, land, and knowledgeable elders and teachers. The traditional forms of knowledge are opinions, practices, or customs that come from culture and inform a perception of something and includes an act, fact, or state of knowing. He then explores mainstream education, focusing on empiricism, rationalism, and the factory metaphor and assembly line model of the industrial revolution and their influence on behavioral psychology and education evaluation. The author uses these examples to bring to light general beliefs, practices, challenges, and power relationships commonly found in the traditional mainstream pedagogy, whose influence in education is pervasive. He then discusses the differences presented and offers some suggestions of incorporating Indigenous pedagogy into a Native studies program. (Contains 32 notes.)