Race, Power, and Place: Lakota Lessons from Pine Ridge Reservation

Abstract

Drawing on three years of partnership with residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, I discuss some of the insights and challenges of working toward a critical community engagement that is antiracist, anticolonial, and “placeengaged” (Siemers et al., 2015). I specifically reflect on how the bridging of academic practice with Indigenous models of teaching and learning can offer a powerful way to center social justice in community engagement work. I model this approach by discussing academic concepts and pedagogies used in the classroom alongside Lakota concepts and stories shared during our engagement. I then include the voices of students as they critically reflect on lessons of racial privilege, Indigenous survivance, and reciprocity/allyship. Lastly, this article is my own attempt at some form of reciprocation, as a way to respond to the common expectation that many Lakota elders/teachers expressed during our time with them— that we share these lessons beyond the Reservation.