The tensions between Indigenous sovereignty and multicultural citizenship education: Toward an anticolonial approach to civic education

ABSTRACT

Indigenous studies complicates and advances existing notions of citizenship education, in particular, by making visible ongoing legacies of colonialism and foregrounding Indigenous sovereignty. In this article, the author examines how the erasure of Indigenous citizenship, nationhood, and sovereignty permeates multicultural citizenship education. Theories of ignorance are then used to discuss various interests that underlie these erasures. By focusing on Indigenous studies scholarship that complicates structural inclusion as the goal of citizenship education, this article advocates for citizenship education that explicitly counters colonialism and supports Indigenous sovereignty. To support this aim, the author outlines an anticolonial approach to civic education—place, presence, political nationhood, perspectives, power, and partnerships—to challenge and complement existing citizenship education literature and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous studies
• citizenship education
• settler colonialism
• tribal sovereignty
• Indigenous nationhood

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Ashley Cordes, Sarah Shear, Christine Rogers Stanton, and Jerry Rosiek for their valuable feedback on this manuscript.

Notes

1. For the purpose of this article, I use the terms Indigenous and Native interchangeably when referencing Indigenous peoples, the discipline Indigenous studies, or when referring to Indigenous education. I recognize that any term (Native American, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native, Indigenous) risks glossing over and collapsing the rich linguistic, cultural, spiritual, geographic, and political diversity of Indigenous peoples and nations; yet, I use these overarching terms, recognizing limitations in such a task. I also use the specific tribal affiliations of Indigenous scholars and authors I cite to draw attention to the diversity and specificity of Indigenous peoples.

2. Not all Indigenous peoples are citizens of Indigenous nations, and not all Indigenous nations are recognized by the federal government. Some are descendants of their nations; others may be citizens, but of nations the United States does not formally recognize as a nation. For the purpose of this article and the conceptual argument I am trying to make, I will routinely use the term citizens, even as I recognize this is a narrow construct of Indigeneity. I encourage those interested to read Indigenous studies scholars who are generating expansive conceptions and practices of Indigeneity, citizenship, and nationhood (Lyons, 2010; L. Simpson, 2017; Vizenor & Doerfler, 2012).

3. Indigenous peoples have a complicated relationship with U.S. citizenship. A strand of Indigenous activism in the early 20th century, led by Arthur Parker (Seneca), Carlos Montezuma (Yavapai), and the Society of American Indians (SAI), did focus on inclusion and pursuing U.S. citizenship as a way of attaining rights and respect (Maddox, 2005). Moreover, a variety of political efforts today—such as the NCAI, the National Caucus for Native American Legislators, and the 2018 mid-term campaign (#NativeVote18)—make clear that Native people value civic engagement within U.S. governmental institutions. However, it should also be remembered that a number of Indigenous peoples and nations did not desire inclusion or citizenship within the United States. The Pueblos of San Juan, Taos, Picuris, Santa Cara, San Ildefonso, Nambe and Tesuque and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (including the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora nations), among others, contested their forced inclusion as U.S. citizens via the Indian Citizenship Act 1924 (Bruyneel, 2007; D. M. Cobb, 2015). This desire and advocacy for political autonomy and nationhood is longstanding and persists to this day as Native nations assert their sovereignty (Wilkins & Stark, 2010). Further, although the narrative of civic inclusion appears benevolent, Temin (2018), drawing on Deloria (1969), argued that it has also sanctioned policies, such as termination, which devastated Indigenous nations by terminating the federal trust relationship, and forcibly absorbing Indigenous peoples into the nation-state as individual citizens.

4. Following Rosiek and Kinslow (2016), I do not capitalize the term “white” as capitalizing terms such as “Black” or “Indigenous” “signifies a conscious project of resisting institutionalized racism.” I use the lowercase white “because at this point in our history there is no collective ‘White’ identity organized around the project of resistance to institutionalized racism” (p. xxxvii).

5. I recognize that a variety of critical citizenship discourses, particularly from within Black/African American studies, complicate the nation-state. Black critical patriotism (Busey & Walker, 2017; L. J. King et al., 2016), for example, “is rooted in personhood” (Busey & Walker, 2017, p. 476), not the very state that sanctioned slavery. In the interest of holding citizenship education accountable to recognizing Indigenous sovereignty, and due to space, this article does not take up the important lines of inquiry and “contingent collaborations” (Tuck, Smith, Guess, Benjamin, & Jones, 2014) between Indigenous struggles for sovereignty and Black theories of liberation (Day, 2015; Hayes, 2016; Karuka, 2017; Tuck, Guess, & Sultan, 2014); however, this will be an important future project.

6. Acknowledgements alone are insufficient, as demonstrated by the Native Hawaiian Apology Act, in which the federal government acknowledged the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai’i and annexation of Hawaiian lands but did not restore Native Hawaiian homelands or political autonomy, key goals in the struggle for Hawaiian sovereignty (Kauanui, 2008).

7. These are distinct as not all Indigenous nations signed treaties; further, not all Indigenous peoples seek recognition from the federal government. This article does not examine debates within Indigenous studies about the “politics of recognition” and how this theory of change may cede too much power to nation-states. For those interested in analyses on the politics of recognition, see Klopotek (2011), A. Simpson (2014), and Coulthard (2014). I avoid this debate due not only to space, but also because this argument concerns whether or not politics of recognition are an effective theory of change for Indigenous nations, not whether nation-states have a responsibility to recognize Indigenous nations.

8. Martin and Chiodo (2007) noted that for Native students, “community service was often referred to in terms of tribal affairs,” and “[v]oting and holding political office were also related to tribal government” (p. 124), findings that complicate their own framing of political engagement in relation to the state; however, these were not viewed as political engagement, but as “an interesting aspect of citizenship that surfaced” (p. 124).

9. For example, Martin’s (2017) inquiry into Mohawk students’ conceptions of citizenship suggested that “disengaged citizenship” was the primary form of citizenship students expressed. Noting the lack of participation and engagement from Mohawk students, Martin theorized that “Tribal sovereignty is extremely important to the Mohawks … and by rejecting this form of citizenship behavior, the Mohawk students are able to reaffirm their commitment to tribal sovereignty and the traditional Mohawk culture” (p. 230). Students’ “commitment to tribal sovereignty” was contrasted with “political engagement” because political engagement was framed primarily in relation to the state.

10. In their analysis of federal Indian boarding schools, Lomawaima and McCarty (2014) recognized “anomalies in the ideology of erase-and-replace assimilation” (p. 2). Some forms of Indigenous cultural difference, such as lullabies or crafts, were allowed because they were deemed “safe markers of Indian identity” (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006, p. 92), while others, such as Native religious practices, prolonged connection with children’s families, or sustained engagement with Indigenous languages or homelands (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2002), were prohibited because they were deemed too dangerous.

11. For example, scholars foreground theories of political sovereignty (Wilkins & Stark, 2010), intellectual sovereignty (Warrior, 1995), rhetorical sovereignty (Lyons, 2000), and visual sovereignty (Raheja, 2010), among others.

12. The United Nations (and as a curricular example, the model UN), for example, are clear examples of the marginality of Indigenous nations within the United States, which do not have a seat at the table as equal sovereigns despite the clear affirmation within treaty negotiations “affirm[ing] the sovereign capacity of Indian tribes to engage in bilateral government relations, to exercise power and control over their lands and resources, and to maintain their internal forms of self-government free of outside interference” (Williams, 1997, p. 9). Indigenous peoples in the United States and internationally are supposedly protected by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but this document is “an aspirational document” and “not legally binding under international law” (Council for International Development, n.d., p. 1).

13. The majority of Indigenous students do not live on reservations, but live outside of American Indian/Alaska Native areas (Norris, Vines, & Hoeffel, 2012). Moreover, only 7% of Native students attend Bureau of Indian Education schools; the other 93% of Indigenous students attend K-12 public schools (The Education Trust, 2013, p. 4), which means it is likely that public school teachers will have Indigenous students in their classrooms at some point.

14. As of 2005, 26 states had state Indian Education laws that address issues of curricula and programs (McCoy, 2005).

15. It should be noted that Indigenous studies approaches to place and land are often rooted in different ontologies and epistemologies (Bang et al., 2014; Deloria & Wildcat, 2001; Grande, 2015; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015; Wildcat, McDonald, Irlbacher-Fox, & Coulthard, 2014).

16. Although I am arguing that Indigenous thought can enrich citizenship education, I want to make clear that before the field moves toward acknowledging a more-than-human conception of personhood, the field has a responsibility to first afford Indigenous peoples respect, dignity, and rights as peoples and nations.

17. Creating space and opportunities for this type of engagement does not mean singling out Indigenous students in class or placing a burden on them to educate the class.

18. For example, the only reference to tribal governments is within the civics standards for students by the end of grade 12: “D2.Civ.1.9–12. Distinguish the powers and responsibilities of local, state, tribal, national, and international civic and political institutions” (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013, p. 32). While important, students can and should learn earlier and often about tribal governance and sovereignty (Sabzalian & Shear, 2018).