Dogon Traditional Stories, the Dine (Navajo People) and workng in Indigenous Education
So there has been an intention with this blog to share more about the process of native and non-native people working together in education and the kinds of indigenous knowledge that emerge in my classroom. Without getting too theoretical at this point, I would share that I find the writing of indigenous scholars Shawn Wilson and Gregory Cajete to be the most interesting on this front.
Two discussions in my anthropology classes over the last months have stuck out, particularly about indigenous knowledge in the classroom as something very practical that emerges in a dialogical way while studying material, rather than the more clumsy banking method (As Freire refers to it). While, as a non-native person I cannot claim to be decolonized, as such, I do feel that I am recognizing what happens when there is a democritization of knowledge in the classroom, particularly in an environment of historical inequality. Almost all of my students come from families touched by the boarding school kidnappings, a generational trauma that obviously links to colonial forms of education and bonds trauma to the classroom.
So setting aside some of the theory here for a moment, what actually actually develops in the classroom when one is working more collaboratively?
There is one story that I always remember on this theme: In one class I had asked students to think about a kind of functionalist perspective on the place of traditional ancestral stories and myths. What do they try to teach us? What kind of information do they convey and what do they show us in terms of what a community values? I had prepped a few videos including a Hawaiian creation story and another similar one from the Dogon of West Africa. One of the Dine students, a tribe that is very involved in making jewelry and art, answered one of my questions saying, "traditional stories can be about jewelry making." At first I thought maybe this was a misunderstanding of the question, an assumption that traditional stories should always be practical, but instead of saying that, I inquired a little further into what he was thinking until I remembered that I was just about to show the Dogon creation story. In fact, the Dogon say that the sun, moon, and the universe were mostly created through pottery. Have a look here:
I am glad that I took a moment before pushing my own epistemoloy further. Clearly, the student was correct and an interesting dialogue ensued from there, considering the fact that I had already prepped this very story but hadn't yet fully reflected on it through the dialogical learning I would of course be able to do, once in the classroom. Didn't it seem, watching this traditional Dogon story, that here are intimate links between vast cosmovisions and everyday life? Interestingly, I have come to ask myself why my own cosmovision (because we all have one) wouldn't include pottery, jewerly making, or basic skills of how to make a living. Why must divinity and sacred ancestral narratives be unconcerned with containers that help us live and transport water, that essential ingredient for survival. I have always been fascinated by epistemic suprise. There is a lot to dig out from moments of heightened cultural awareness or shock, one of the reasons for the PhD topic I chose many (clay) moons ago.
As an appendix to this, just a few days ago I was also teaching about a town in India where the people have high levels of rainfall and they have been fashioning bridges from the roots of strong trees for generations, passing on this botanical knowledge for many years. The Pueblo student immeidately explained to me the ways that plant fibers soften and expand in water and then strengthen as they dry. This makes many of them useful for anything, even the construction of bridges, she said, making a basica connection with our case study that I would not have, isolated in the role of teacher, in a separate realm from student knowledge.
Two discussions in my anthropology classes over the last months have stuck out, particularly about indigenous knowledge in the classroom as something very practical that emerges in a dialogical way while studying material, rather than the more clumsy banking method (As Freire refers to it). While, as a non-native person I cannot claim to be decolonized, as such, I do feel that I am recognizing what happens when there is a democritization of knowledge in the classroom, particularly in an environment of historical inequality. Almost all of my students come from families touched by the boarding school kidnappings, a generational trauma that obviously links to colonial forms of education and bonds trauma to the classroom.
So setting aside some of the theory here for a moment, what actually actually develops in the classroom when one is working more collaboratively?
There is one story that I always remember on this theme: In one class I had asked students to think about a kind of functionalist perspective on the place of traditional ancestral stories and myths. What do they try to teach us? What kind of information do they convey and what do they show us in terms of what a community values? I had prepped a few videos including a Hawaiian creation story and another similar one from the Dogon of West Africa. One of the Dine students, a tribe that is very involved in making jewelry and art, answered one of my questions saying, "traditional stories can be about jewelry making." At first I thought maybe this was a misunderstanding of the question, an assumption that traditional stories should always be practical, but instead of saying that, I inquired a little further into what he was thinking until I remembered that I was just about to show the Dogon creation story. In fact, the Dogon say that the sun, moon, and the universe were mostly created through pottery. Have a look here:
As an appendix to this, just a few days ago I was also teaching about a town in India where the people have high levels of rainfall and they have been fashioning bridges from the roots of strong trees for generations, passing on this botanical knowledge for many years. The Pueblo student immeidately explained to me the ways that plant fibers soften and expand in water and then strengthen as they dry. This makes many of them useful for anything, even the construction of bridges, she said, making a basica connection with our case study that I would not have, isolated in the role of teacher, in a separate realm from student knowledge.
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