Teaching our way of life through our language: Materials development for Indigenous immersion education

Abstract

Culturally Responsive Education has been widely proposed as a mechanism to improve the academic achievement of minority and Indigenous populations. Instruction in heritage languages has been shown to produce desirable outcomes both on linguistic and academic measures. However, culturally responsive and immersion instruction faces a number of challenges; among them a lack of materials that (a) reflect and accurately represent ancestral knowledge and worldview, (b) are linguistically appropriate to elementary students, and (c) are aligned with state mandated outcomes in the content areas. In this paper we report on a university–school collaborative project, designed to develop Yup’ik language and cultural materials for elementary level Yup’ik-immersion and Yup’ik/English Dual Language schools in Southwest Alaska. Beginning with an overview of what we view as essential elements contributing to a strong and sustainable immersion program in K-12 education, we then discuss the process of the collaboration and tensions that arose during the course of the materials development project. Finally, we present two books developed as a result of this collaborative process.

Keywords:

• culture
• curriculum
• language
• identity

Public Interest Statement

Children learn best when they see themselves and their culture represented in materials used in school instruction. However, particularly for Indigenous populations, few authentic materials are available. And those that are culturally appropriate are many times written in English. Even materials in the Indigenous language are oftentimes translated Western stories from basal readers. Materials created by Indigenous educators for Indigenous children are an essential element for successful Indigenous immersion schools. In this paper, we share what we have learned during a collaborative project involving Alaska Native educators and non-Native university faculty. We introduce what we view as essential elements for strong and sustainable Indigenous immersion programs, discuss the process of the collaborative project and present two books as examples of successful development of immersion materials.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the other members of the Pugtallgutkellriit collaborative Agatha Panikgaq John-Shields and Sheila Cingarkaq Wallace for their contributions to our research collaborative. The authors would also like to acknowledge the work of all the teachers who participated in the Piciryaramta Elicungcallra grant.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sabine Siekmann

Pugtallgutkellriit is a Participatory Action Research Collaborative consisting of four Alaska Native PhD students and two non-Native faculty advisors. The PhD students are all Yup’ik women working to improve education of Yup’ik children in public schools in Alaska. All are highly proficient in their ancestral language (Yugtun), and each has many years of experience teaching in Yup’ik medium schools, such as Immersion, Yup’ik First Language, and Dual Language Education. Samson is completing her dissertation, Lesson Study in Yup’ik immersion reading instruction. Moses’ dissertation topic focuses on students’ language choice (either English or Yugtun) as they work on collaborative research projects in her Dual Language 3rd grade classroom. Parker Webster is an ethnographer whose research focuses on multiliteracies and multimodalities in Indigenous contexts. Siekmann’s research focuses on second language teaching and learning in Alaska Native contexts.