Sustaining and revitalizing Indigenous languages in Oklahoma public schools: educational sovereignty in language policy and planning

ABSTRACT

As Indigenous scholars committed to Indigenous education in Oklahoma, we use a decolonizing approach to consider how the 39 Indigenous Nations in Oklahoma assert educational sovereignty to sustain Indigenous high school students’ linguistic and cultural identities. Seeking to promote education models that sustain and revitalize Indigenous languages, we ask: 1) How do Indigenous Nations in Oklahoma engage in language planning and liberate educational sovereignty through policies, programs, and services to their high school students? and 2) How do Indigenous Nations navigate Oklahoma state education language-in-education policies that may support or restrict Indigenous language education in public high schools? We consider the function of Oklahoma public high school classrooms as sites of Indigenous language revitalization and reclamation. We discuss how Indigenous educational sovereignty to support language revitalization occurs in interaction with overlapping and often competing language-in-education policies imposed by the state of Oklahoma. A goal of this article is to share knowledge with Indigenous Nations, educators, and policy makers who are involved in language planning. We conclude with recommendations of ways to support culturally sustaining and revitalizing education models for Indigenous students, communities, and languages in Oklahoma.

KEYWORDS:

• Community-based language planning
• decolonization
• educational sovereignty
• Indigenous language education
• world language education

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a University of Oklahoma Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education Grant. We thank Michelle M. Jacob, Ph.D. (Yakama) of Anahuy Mentoring for her helpful feedback on our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For more information about slavery in the Five Tribes and the experiences of Freedmen and their decesendants, see Roberts, 2021 and the Oklahoma Historial Society’s bibliography of sources about Freedmen (https://www.okhistory.org/learn/frbib).

2 This statistic does not include all Indigenous students such as Native Hawaiians and those who identify as mixed-race.

3 Visit https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyF_L10yHtHGUYNMEPKUNSg

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a University of Oklahoma Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education Summer Research Grant.

Notes on contributors

Kari A. B. Chew

Kari A. B. Chew is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and assistant professor of Indigenous Education in the department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Oklahoma Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education. She earned a doctorate in Indigenous Language Revitalization and Linguistics from the University of Arizona in 2016 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the NEȾOLṈEW̱ ‘one mind, one people’ Indigenous Language Partnership at the University of Victoria in 2020. Her research focuses on Indigenous language education, Indigenous language curriculum, and the role of technology in Indigenous language education. She works closely with the Chickasaw Nation on language education projects.

Courtney Tennell

Courtney Tennell (ORCID) is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a doctoral student in the department of Educational Psychology at the University of Oklahoma Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education. She is a Razorback-Sooner Scholar at the Zarrow Center for Learning Enrichment. Her research focuses on Indigenous special education, postsecondary transition and postsecondary transition resources provided to Indigenous students.