Identifying and Understanding Indigenous Cultural and Spiritual Strengths in the Higher Education Experiences of Indigenous Women

Abstract

Identifying and Understanding Indigenous Cultural and Spiritual Strengths in the Higher Education Experiences of Indigenous Women Rosemary White Shield (bio) Introduction Much has been written about how American Indians have the highest dropout rates at all educational levels and are the least represented population in higher education. Moreover, of those American Indian students who do graduate from high school and enroll in college, between 75 and 93 percent will leave college without completing their degree or education.1 Within the Native population itself, Indian women graduate from high school significantly less frequently than Indian men, and consequently may enroll at a much lower rate in most higher education institutions.2 However, there are American Indian women who do enroll and earn higher education degrees. What enables them to achieve “against the odds”? What cultural resources do they use to overcome personal challenges in their lives and immense barriers of historical trauma, cultural discontinuity, institution and societal racism, gender bias, and deplorable socioeconomic conditions? Historically, the stories and experiences of Native women, especially in the realm of higher education, have been virtually invisible to the majority culture. Very little, if any, validity has been given to Indian women’s voices or contributions to the world. Similarly, in much [End Page 47] of the historical and educational literature and materials found in the majority culture, if Indian women are mentioned at all, they are usually misrepresented and their traditional roles are misunderstood. This study seeks to increase the visibility of Native women in higher education by giving voice to those who have been silenced, misrepresented, or ignored. Contained in this article are the voices of eight Anishinabe, Lakota, and Mohawk women who tell their stories of their higher education experiences and describe the strengths found in their cultures and the spirituality that enabled them to “beat the odds of failure” and achieve their goals in the face of tremendous obstacles. Their voices and their stories answer the previous questions from an empowered perspective. These women and their community members explain how they succeeded and, most importantly, why. Background of Study As a Native researcher, I explored how Native women identify and understand the spiritual and cultural factors that enabled them to attain their higher education goals. I developed and utilized a Native research methodology for this study based on the Medicine Wheel, discussed below in the methodology section, which was constructed as an intrinsic Indigenous research paradigm and used as a process for identifying and understanding these spiritual and cultural factors.3 This study focuses on eight participants from tribes Indigenous to the north central region of the United States. At the time of the study, seven of the participants were undergraduate students and one was a graduate student. The participants and others who were involved in this study were chosen through traditional spiritual and cultural practices and methods. Due to the small sample size, the results of the study are not reflective of Indian Country as a whole, or of the tribal college and university systems. Because only a few members of the respective tribes participated in this study, the results are not reflective of other women tribal members. Assumption of the Study The assumption of this study is that internal resilient resources existing within Native women enable them to overcome the staggering “odds” confronting them in the higher educational system of the majority culture. These cultural and spiritual strengths have enabled Native peoples to survive genocide in its spiritual, cultural, social, emotional, mental, and physical manifestations. With these inherent cultural and spiritual strengths fostering resiliency, fortitude, and courage among Indian peoples in general, Native women in their quest for higher educational degrees have the ability to prevail when encountering cultural discontinuity, socioeconomic barriers, and other forms of adversity. [End Page 48] Conceptual Framework Terry Huffman’s “Resistance Theory and Transculturation Hypothesis” describes how some Native students in higher education succeed in achieving their goals of obtaining a degree within the dominant culture’s educational system.4 Huffman describes several stages that Native students experience in entering and coping with higher education systems in the majority culture. The first stage is the cultural discontinuity that is present in the higher education...