The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native American Charter School by Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘pua (review)

Abstract

Reviews NAIS 1:1 SPRING 2014 110 VANESSA ANTHONY-STEVENS The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native American Charter School by Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua University of Minnesota Press, 2013 NOELANI GOODYEAR-KA‘ŌPUA’S rich documentation of Hālau Kū Māna (HKM), a­ Hawaiian culture-based public secondary charter school located in urban Hono­ lulu, powerfully presents a persisting paradox in Indigenous education : educational sovereignty and policy constraint. In The Seeds We Planted,­Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua contextualizes her telling of HKM’s history at the complex intersection of Hawai‘i’s “colonial settler history,” the Native Hawaiian self-­ determination movement, and the emergence of the Hawaiian culture-based charter schools. The author frames her work by revisiting a question of continued relevance for Indigenous educational sovereignty within institutions of schooling since colonization: how do we teach Indigenous culture “within the institutions built to marginalize and displace Indigenous knowledge and relations?” (7). Throughout the book, the author’s voice moves between her position as an Indigenous, political science scholar and her position as a member of the grassroots effort to found and construct the learning community of HKM, the secondary school at the center of this work. Using more than a decade of on-the-ground experience, The Seeds We Planted challenges readers to examine the ways Indigenous self-determination can and cannot be practiced within new policy moments such as the charter school movement. Goodyear-­ Ka‘ōpua offers the story of HKM’s thirteen-year persistence as a local manifestation of Indigenous survivance. The author employs Gerald Vizenor’s (2008) term survivance to theorize HKM as a case of Native resistance, persistence , and renewal through operationalizing opportunity within dynamic political landscapes, such as the opportunity space created by contemporary charter school policy. As standardizing practices continue to gain political traction, manifesting in a new era of silencing Indigenous knowledges in schools, it becomes increasingly significant that a school such as HKM has prevailed amid continued systemic inequities. The first two chapters outline the historical and institutional tensions embedded in the Hawaiian culture–based charter school movement and the impacts of No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) standardized accountability and assessment systems on culture-based schools, and in particular on the efforts of HKM. The heart and soul of Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua’s book, chapters 3 through 5, walks readers through the educational brilliance and systemic roadblocks NAIS 1:1 SPRING 2014 Reviews 111 encountered in the process of realizing a grassroots, place-based curriculum and pedagogy aimed at reconstructing Indigenous lifeways and knowledge with its students. Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua takes on a critical perspective as she documents the vision of the school’s community-based leaders and the physical and emotional investment demanded of parents and community members to carve out both physical and intellectual space for teaching and learning from the Hawaiian Native worldview. Using Hawaiian language and spiritual practices, a worldview unpacked for readers with a Hawaiian–­ English glossary, The Seeds We Planted charts the creativity of HKM teachers as they cultivated ways to invite students into the social and spiritual landscape of the Hawaiian worldview through connection to the vast oceanic network that surrounds them. As Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua documents the trials of forming a teaching team dedicated to taking students outside the classroom to “rebuild the structures that feed us” (chapter 3) through project-based learning, readers gain insight into an area of Indigenous culture-based education scarcely documented in the existing literature: the experience of urban Indigenous students and families. The remarkable experience of HKM expands understanding of how educational self-determination can manifest locally in urban spaces where discontinuity and fracture are typically thought to be abundant. The construction of collective strength emerging out of pedagogy based in and on relationships resonates through the voices of HKM’s staff and former students. The photos and voices of urban youth participating in the revitalization of Hawaiian sailing practices can been seen as healing and enriching against the backdrop of colonial history in globalizing times. The moving innovation of the HKM story needs to be continuously tempered against the political constraints of NCLB’s hegemonic standardization...