“Oh, it’s just them Indians”: Indigenous Case Study toward interrupting the manifestations of native student oppression

Abstract

This study introduces Indigenous Case Study (ICS) as a methodology poised to foster decolonized and anti-racist spaces. ICS is a weaving of TribalCrit, critical and Indigenous methodological approaches, and considers contemporary and historical contexts, simultaneously. In the current manuscript, ICS helps reimage campuses through revised policies and practices that work toward the creation of decolonized and inclusive institutions for Native students and communities. ICS allows for deeper analyses as we interrogate the dissonance between university president’s statements about race and inclusion, institutional policies and practices, and the experiences of Native students as shared through student stories. We explore historical documents, president speeches, campus events, individual interviews, and researcher auto-narratives in Sharing Circles over the course of five years. The findings situate historical and contemporary campus contexts as we reveal five manifestations of oppression experienced by Native students: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. ICS provides circular and methodical methods that offer the opportunity to think in more complex ways as we offer findings and discussions on the cultivation of decolonized and anti-racist spaces.

Keywords:

• Indigenous case study
• methodology
• indigenous methodology
• case study
• TribalCrit
• Native American
• students

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Lena Khader who was a part of the research process as a graduate research assistant for a few months.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Students of Color and minoritized groups signifies the coalition of 5 student groups: OU Unheard, Indigenize OU, The Brown Collective, Queer Inclusion on Campus at OU, and Disability Inclusion and Awareness on Campus.

2 While we can name the presidents, in consultation with reviewers we have removed contemporary president names from this manuscript.

3 Consistent with Indigenous methodologies, we intentionally break the “third wall” with this research study to work toward decolonization and anti-racism in reimagined academic spaces.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received for this research.

Notes on contributors

Corey M. Still

Corey M. Still (he/him) is a Senior Research and Training Director at One Fire Associates, LLC. A citizen of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee, Dr. Still focuses on areas centering Indigenous Qualitative Methodologies, Indigenous Higher Education and Indigenous Data Sovereignty.

Breanna Faris

Breanna Faris is a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes and comes from the Youngbear family of Watonga, OK. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Monty Begaye

Monty Begaye is a member of the Diné (Navajo) Nation from Tuba City, AZ. He is the Director of Native American Student Affairs at the University of Arizona.

Penny A. Pasque

Penny A. Pasque is Professor of Educational Studies in the Higher Education & Student Affairs (HESA) program. She also serves as the founding director of the QualLab and Director of Qualitative Methods in the Office of Research, Innovation and Collaboration (ORIC), College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University.