Centering Indigenous Brilliance in “The Stories We Tell”☆

Abstract

Indigenous stories are the backbone of Indigenous education systems. While Indigenous communities are still grappling with settler colonial‐imposed violence, many Indigenous Nations are engaging in what Leanne Betasamosake Simpson describes as Indigenous resurgence. In our paper, we draw from our own Indigenous communities' teachings and discuss our peoples' ongoing storytelling traditions as important forms of resurgence, which contribute to a process Dene scholar Glen Sean Coulthard describes as grounded normativity. After setting the context for understanding Indigenous stories as a form of resurgent education, we then pay special attention to a well‐known collection of stories, first published in the book Anakú Iwachá in 1974, with a second edition published in 2021. We analyze the history of the project, examine key principles that make it a strong example of resurgence, and explain how it is a particularly instructive data source for social scientists to (1) better understand Indigenous knowledges within our storytelling traditions, (2) engage place‐based learning, and (3) imagine futures beyond settler colonialism. These aims, already central in Indigenous sociology, are currently at the margins of mainstream social sciences. We argue these aims provide a particularly hopeful remedy for U.S. sociology, which has generally ignored Indigenous Peoples' knowledges.