History without Silos, Ignorance versus Knowledge, Education beyond Schools

Abstract

Contributors to this thematic issue of theQuarterlycall education historians' scholarly attention to the particularities of Native histories and the diverse ways that Native people experience and think about our worlds. Their call to envision—or re-vision—histories of Indigenous education weaves together suggestive directions for productive scholarly inquiry. In my commentary, I focus on three of their main points. First, they note the unfortunate phenomenon of academic “silo-ization” that all too often leads to a disciplinary tunnel vision blocking our view of useful—even necessary—sources, archives, methods, evidence, perspectives, questions, and analytic frameworks. Second, they point out the vast and critical difference between two common interpretations of the phrase “American Indian education,” which is to say the difference between Indigenous self-education and colonial education of Indians by settlers and their institutions. Over the last five centuries, the divide between educationbyIndians and educationforIndians has been glaringly obvious to Native peoples but often conveniently ignored by others. That willful ignorance, of course, has been necessary to the settler colonial imperative to “eliminate the Native” and thus solidify settler claims to lands and national identity itself. Third, they make an urgent and timely call for more attention to Indigenous educational philosophies and practices in Indigenous contexts, that is,education(in Bailyn's terms) outside of the walls of (usually colonial)schools.They direct our attention to teaching, learning, and intergenerational transmission of knowledge embedded within and constitutive of Native histories.