<i>Indigenous Knowledge and Education: Sites of Struggle, Strength, and Survivance</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Indigenous Knowledge and Education: Sites of Struggle, Strength, and Survivance Tiffany S. Lee Malia Villegas, Sabina Rak Neugebauer, and Kerry R. Venegas, eds. Indigenous Knowledge and Education: Sites of Struggle, Strength, and Survivance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review, 2008. 351 pp. Paper, $32.95. This book offers a compilation of essays from the academic journal the Harvard Educational Review that address ideas and applications of Indigenous knowledge and education. The essays span from 1958 to 2006 with a concentration in more recent years. The book is organized into three sections that thematically discuss Indigenous educational struggles, strengths, and survivance. This is a timely, significant book for understanding Indigenous knowledge contextually across the world. As I read each essay I became exceedingly interested in the particular contexts of the selected sites; moreover, I became interested in how they connected to one another. The book is organized very well, and the prologues help the reader to discover those connections between essays. The editors pose useful reading questions at the end of each prologue as well. Indigenous scholars are speaking and publishing more about their understandings and the value of Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) for the education of Native students and for the well-being of Native people and communities. This book adds to this discussion and is important for learning about applications of IKS, particularly in international educational contexts from academic perspectives. Its strength is the international background in which the essays place Indigenous education. The book would be useful for courses related to Indigenous education, philosophies of education, educational foundations, sociology of education, and Native American or Indigenous studies. Being that “survivance” is a major theme for the third section and, as the editors recognize later in the book, “survivance” is not a commonplace term, the introduction [End Page 405] needs a fuller definition of survivance as they employ it as a thematic stance. This definition is provided well in the prologue to the third section, and thus readers might benefit from reading this particular prologue prior to reading the essays from all the sections. The first section includes four essays representing struggles in Indigenous education from North America, Mexico, Haiti, and the “Third World.” Each essay addressed various contexts where the powers that be, including academic intellectuals, determined what is best for Indigenous populations without a true understanding or even the consultation of Indigenous peoples themselves. The essays described struggles in assimilationist education policy (Adams), the evolution of Indigenous movements in Mexico (Ruiz), characterizations of Haitian children’s intelligence (Hudicourt-Barnes), and control of knowledge production in the world of books and publishing (Altbach). The section’s concluding essay by Battiste poignantly argues for the recognition of IKS as distinct knowledge systems and calls for solutions to rethink education by creating a fair and just education system that can integrate and build on both Indigenous knowledge and Eurocentric knowledge. She summed up the struggle and charge that each essay contended when she said, “The traditional Eurocentric view of Indigenous peoples and their heritage as exotic objects that have nothing to do with science and progress is over” (89). The second section of the book consists of a collection of essays that address sources of strength from Indigenous knowledge. The editors define strength as representing purpose, power, and action. In particular, the selected essays share the “communal and action-oriented nature of Indigenous knowledge” (93) in various communities. The essays all place community and the student at the center of discussion and analysis. The sources of strength revealed in the essays emanate from the Indigenous communities or students representing communities in Sub-Sahara Africa, Western Australia, Nicaragua, and the United States. Definitions of strength are contextualized by these places and perspectives, such as in essays by MaClure and Lomawaima, who describe the growth and importance of community-based and community-controlled research. MaClure argues that while endogenous research in Sub-Sahara Africa has grown, it is still ambiguous as to how much it is valued and how much the entire research process is controlled by external agencies. Lomawaima offers another aspect of endogenous research, where it is completely controlled by tribal communities (in the United States) as an exercise...