Reconceiving Schooling: Centering Indigenous Experimentation in Indian Education History

Abstract

Federal agents, church officials, and education reformers have long used schooling as a weapon to eliminate Indigenous people; at the same time, Indigenous individuals and communities have long repurposed schooling to protect tribal sovereignty, reconstitute their communities, and shape Indigenous futures. Joining scholarship that speaks to Indigenous perspectives on schooling, this paper offers seven touchpoints from Native nations since the 1830s in which Indigenous educators repurposed “schooling” as a technology to advance Indigenous interests. Together, these stories illustrate the broad diversity of Native educators’ multifaceted engagements with schooling and challenge settler colonialism's exclusive claim on schools. Though the outcomes of their efforts varied, these experiments with schooling represent Indigenous educators’ underappreciated innovations in the history of education in the United States.