Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Do current efforts to internationalize postsecondary institutions avoid reinventing the colonial methodology that perpetuates asymmetries in the curriculum? How can we ensure that global studies combat “othering” practices and align with postcolonial practices (Tuhiwai Smith 2012; Battiste 2016)? We propose the development of an Indigenous global studies approach, an approach that is designed by Indigenous scholars and community practitioners at U.S. tribal colleges and Indigenous colleges throughout the world. Our study draws on our initial work developing this rubric through a project that we have co-directed at Navajo Technical University–Indiana University entitled GALACTIC (Global Arts Language Arts Culture Tradition Indigenous Communities). We understand and construct our effort as global Indigenous education that arises from Indigenous communities, rather than as a Eurocentric study of the “other.” A colonial approach to global studies results in an imagined “utopian” Western society that erases the endless variation of people, their languages, and their actual ways of life. This colonial approach appropriates, romanticizes, and misinterprets Indigenous ways of life and ways of knowing. An Indigenous global studies approach—emerging from traditional homes such as the Navajo (Diné) hooghan or the Tuvan yurt or the Bedouin beit al-sha’r—is grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, n.d.). According to Marlene Castellano (2000), Indigenous knowledge is personal, orally transmitted, experiential, holistic, and narrative. Our paper will present some of our preliminary findings, courses, and prospects for an Indigenous global studies consortium.