Abstract
This postcolonial tribal critical race theory ethnography analyzes the implementation of an Indigenous faculty and BIPOC graduate student advisory group that co-led Indigenization and decolonization efforts in a university graduate school. The study documents the integration of Indigenous epistemology to disrupt the legacies of colonization, structural racism, and systemic inequality in three graduate mental health and teacher education programs. Tummala-Narra (2020) documented the racial trauma that results from colonized forms of education. BIPOC faculty and graduate students are frequently trained in programs steeped in systemic structural racism and colonial beliefs. Tummala-Narra (2020) suggests, “The pervasiveness of racism interacts with the normalization of racism, such that traumatic stress remains invisible to the perpetrator and sometimes to the victim/survivor” (Davids, 2009; Fanon, 1952; Hammer, 2019, p. 734). This study explores BIPOC faculty and graduate student resistance to these oppressive structures and systemic racial inequality (Fanon, 1952; Tummala-Narra, 2020). This concurrent mixed-methods ethnographic study provides a rich, detailed, and textured description of the research results (Creswell, 2015). Ocampo & Blackdeer (2022) state, “BIPOC students often do the invisible labor of mentoring and holding space for fellow BIPOC students, educating students, faculty and administration on diversity, equity, and inclusion issues, contending with faculty expectations, and participating in unpaid diversity, equity and inclusion service work” (p. 705). This study documented resistance to, “micro- and macroaggressions from their institutions and peers, lack of administrative and institutional support, and the trauma of observing anti-racism quickly go in vogue and then fall out of favor” (p. 705).
Presenters
Micki Abercrombie DonahueAssociate Professor and Associate Dean, School of Education , Whitworth University, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Education and Learning Worlds of Differences
KEYWORDS
Indigenous, Tribal Critical Race Theory, Decolonization, Postcolonial, Graduate Programs, BIPOC
