Honoring Indigenous Teacher Education Students' Stories: Shifting Indigenous Knowledge From the Margins to the Center

Abstract

Using a survey, interviews, and an Indigenous focus group, we examine how a university and college met the stated goal to “Be a leading university/college serving Indigenous students.” We draw on Tribal Critical Race Theory to analyze the data. We make specific recommendations to achieve the stated goal: (a) recruit Indigenous faculty, staff, and students; (b) ensure consistent and continual communication across campus to support Indigenous students; (c) provide additional Indigenous education cohorts; (d) require college-wide faculty training on culturally responsive Indigenous content and pedagogy; (e) require education faculty to include cultural ways of knowing in all of their curricula; (f) involve Indigenous teachers at both the pre-service and in-service levels; (g) maintain Indigenous student organizations; and (h) integrate annual accountability system to reach the above goals so that this discussion becomes reality.