Indigenous literacies: A look at pedagogies and policy in the Southwest United States

Abstract

Literacy engagement for Indigenous peoples is a practice embedded in lived experience as thoughtful ways to communicate with and make sense of the world around us. Indigenous literacies involve the melding of Indigenous ways of knowing with contemporary educational pedagogies. Indigenous authors and teachers have long used Indigenous pedagogies in their writing and teaching to situate Indigenous identities and knowledge where it has been omitted, to interrogate the systems that appropriate or misarticulate Indigenous knowledge, to actively question spaces where the value and power of Indigenous knowledge is completely disregarded, and to reclaim or create spaces that amplify Indigenous voices and ways of knowing for learners as acts of education sovereignty. This column discusses the concepts of Indigenous literacy, it provides an overview of its practical applications in the US Southwest and the Native American education policies that shape literacy engagement in contemporary learning spaces centering on Indigenous perspectives.