Some Elements of American Indian Pedagogy from an Anishinaabe Perspective

Abstract

In 2005 I published an article discussing the teaching method we used for an introduction to American Indian studies course at Iowa State University.1 As might be expected, since the publication of that article my career and teaching have continued to develop. I am no longer at Iowa State but have moved to the Department of Native American Studies at Montana State University— Bozeman. Under these circumstances, a pedagogy based on American Indian approaches has become that much more appropriate. Additionally, I have more years worked with the teaching method in question, and as a result, I have refined the technique some, although the basic approach remains intact. In my previous piece, I did not delineate the elements that go into an American Indian pedagogy. I will address that issue here. Because I am most familiar with Anishinaabe culture, I will primarily limit my remarks to that nation. My article about teaching American Indian studies explained a blended teaching method we used at Iowa State University that drew from American Indian pedagogical approaches as well as methods traditional to the academy. I discussed the history of the teaching method and the theory informing the technique; briefly outlined some elements of American Indian pedagogy and the logistics of the class; and ended with some observations on the effectiveness of the technique. For this article, it is important to have an understanding of the course assignments. Students are required to write a fourto five-page paper about their family, community, and place and about their interest in and/or knowledge of the course topic and how it developed. Students are encouraged to talk with their family members in order to get material. The material from the paper is given in an oral presentation. Students are informed they will all receive an A for the oral presentation. The idea is to allow students to be the complete authority in the classroom when they do their respective