Navigating the Problem of Inclusion as Enclosure in Native Culture-Based Education: Theorizing Shadow Curriculum

Abstract

This conceptual essay explores how Gerald Vizenor’s (Anishinaabe) literary discussions of “shadow survivance” provide opportunities to work against the containment of Indigenous knowledge in mainstream and culture-based curricular practices. More specifically, the essay considers how constructivism is deployed as an opening to the inclusion of Indigenous epistemologies, yet also contains Indigenous epistemologies within a materialist and more specifically, Marxist and Hegelian philosophy. The author suggests that an implicit “shadow curriculum” has been articulated within the literature of Native culture-based curriculum which works against these forms of containment, but has rarely turned to Native American literary figures to elaborate the philosophical and theoretical differences they represent.

Note

Notes

1 The work of Gay (2000), Nieto (2004) and Sleeter and Grant (1991), for example, all draw on social constructivist theories of learning to advance culture-based curriculum and culturally relevant pedagogies.