Unlocking Silent Histories of the Lumbee Community: Supporting Educational Sovereignty Through Video Ethnographies

Abstract

This article draws on Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit) to explore how Eurocentric education serves as a vehicle for the assimilation and acculturation of Indigenous Peoples in the United States. Departing from deficit approaches to Indigenous education, we explore the implementation of a community-based youth participatory action initiative, Unlocking Silent Histories (USH), with the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. USH is a leadership and learning initiative grounded in critical pedagogy, media studies, and Indigenous transformative praxis. USH engages youth in setting learning goals, identifying the purpose of their research, interviewing elders, and ultimately creating short films. In this study, we examine how participating youth take up and transform USH based on the context in which it is being implemented. We illuminate moments of agency, social inclusion, and healing as emergent from this community-connected and youth-directed approach to learning through a grounded theory approach.