Black and Indigenous Theoretical Considerations for Higher Education Sustainability
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32674/jcihe.v13iSummer.3754Keywords:
Black immigrants and refugees, cultural sustainability, higher education, indigenous knowledge systems, intellectual solidarityAbstract
In this conceptual paper, the authors make the case for why and how researchers can incorporate Black and Indigenous standpoints in higher education scholarship. We begin by drawing parallels between the racialized contexts of higher education for Black and Indigenous communities in the United States (U.S.). Next, we explore ethics of communality among Black immigrant and refugee populations, as well as Indigenous knowledge systems of relationality. We conclude by posing 10 research questions to be taken up by higher education researchers.
References
Addo, F. R. & Baker, D. J. (2021). Black borrowers: Building from a better narrative. Changing the narrative on student borrowers of color. Lumina Foundation. https://www.luminafoundation.org/borrowers-of-color/
Adjepong, A. (2018). Afropolitan projects: African immigrant identities and solidarities in the United States. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41(2), 248-266.
Agyepong, M. (2017). The struggles of invisibility: Perception and treatment of African students in the United States. In O. N. Ukpokodu and P. O. Ojiambo (Eds.), Erasing invisibility, inequity and social injustice of Africans in the diaspora and the continent (pp. 56-75). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Anderson, M. & Lopez, G. (2018, January 24). Key facts about black immigrants in the U.S. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/24/key-facts-about-black-immigrants-in-the-u-s/
Batalova, J., Hanna, M., & Levesque, C. (2021, February 11). Frequently requested statistics on immigrants and immigration in the United States. Migration Policy Institute. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states-2020
Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2017). As we have always done. University of Minnesota Press.
Brayboy, B. M. J. & Chin, J. (2020). On the development of territory. Contexts, 19(3), 22-27.
Brayboy, B. M. J. & Maughan, E. (2009). Indigenous knowledges and the story of the bean. Harvard Educational Review, 79(1), 1-21.
Brundiers, K., Barth, M., Cebrián, G., Cohen, M., Diaz, L., Doucette-Remington, S., ... & Zint, M. (2021). Key competencies in sustainability in higher education – toward an agreed-upon reference framework. Sustainability Science, 16(1), 13-29.
“Call for Proposals,” (n.d.). Cultivating Black & Native futures in education: June 17-19, 2021. https://www.cultivatingblacknativefutures.org/
Chacko, E. (2003). Identity and assimilation among young Ethiopian immigrants in metropolitan Washington. Geographical Review, 93(4), 491-506.
Croom, N. N., Beatty, C. C., Acker, L. D., & Butler, M. (2017). Exploring undergraduate Blackwomen’s motivations for engaging in “sister circle” organizations. NASPA Journal About Women in Higher Education, 10(2), 216-228.
Edwards, M. A., & Roy, S. (2017). Academic research in the 21st century: Maintaining scientificintegrity in a climate of perverse incentives and hypercompetition. Environmental Engineering Science, 34(1), 51-61.
Espinosa, L., Turk, J. M., Taylor, M., & Chessman, H. M. (2019). Race and ethnicity in higher education: A status report. American Council on Education.
Fries-Britt, S., George Mwangi, C. A., & Peralta, A. M. (2014). Learning race in a US context: An emergent framework on the perceptions of race among foreign-born students of color. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 7(1), 1-13.
Funke, D. (2016, December 19). Here's where the sanctuary campus movement stands. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/
Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The structure of knowledge in westernised universities: Epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 1, 73-90.
Habecker, S. (2012). Not black, but Habasha: Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants in American society. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35(7), 1200-1219.
Hailu, M. F., & Sarubbi, M. (2019). Student resistance movements in higher education: an analysis of the depiction of Black Lives Matter student protests in news media. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 32(9), 1108-1124.
Hamilton, L., Roksa, J., & Nielsen, K. (2018). Providing a ‘‘Leg up’’: Parental involvement and opportunity hoarding in college. Sociology of Education, 91(2), 111-131.
Hanselman, P., & Fiel, J. E. (2017). School opportunity hoarding? Racial segregation and access to high growth schools. Social Forces, 95(3), 1077-1104.
Hooks, B. (2000). All about love. Harper Perennial.
Jaimes, A. M. (1992). The state of native America: Genocide, colonization, and resistance. Boston South End Press.
Kanno-Youngs, Z. (2020, January 31). Trump administration adds six countries to travel ban. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/us/politics/trump-travel-ban.html
Kirkness, V. J., & Barnhardt, R. (1991). First Nations and higher education: The four R’s – respect, relevance, reciprocity, responsibility. Journal of American Indian Education, 3(3), 1-15.
La Paperson. (2017). A Third University Is Possible. University of Minnesota Press.
Labiran, C. (2020). Our Stories and Visions: Gender in Black Immigrant Communities (Rep.). Black Alliance for Just Immigration.
Lee, R. & Ahtone, T. (2020). Land-grab universities. High Country News. https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.4/indigenous-affairs-education-land-grab-universities
Lopez, J.D. & Tachine, A. R. (in press). Giving back: Deconstructing persistence for indigenous students. Journal of College Student Development.
McMillan Cottom, T. (2017). Lower ed: The troubling rise of for-profit colleges in the new economy. The New Press.
Miller, J., & Bryan, N. (2020). This is how we do it: Toward the notion of otherbrothering in the research on Black male collegians and Black male Greek-lettered organizations. The Journal of Negro Education, 89(3), 203-214.
Moody, J. (2019, February 15). A guide to the changing number of U.S. universities. U.S. News and World Report. https://www.usnews.com/
Nash, M. A. (2019). Entangled pasts: Land-grant colleges and American Indian dispossession. History of Educational Quarterly, 59(4), 437-467.
Nelson, C. A., Tachine, A. R. & Lopez, J. D. (2021). Changing the Narrative on Student Borrowers of Color: Recognizing it’s our land, and honor the treaties. Lumina Foundation. https://www.luminafoundation.org/borrowers-of-color/
Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (Eds.). (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.
Patel, L. (2015). Decolonizing educational research: From ownership to answerability. Routledge.
Pember, M. A. (2021). Graduations shouldn’t be ‘another form’ of erasure. Indian Country Today. https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/graduations-shouldnt-be-another-form-of-erasure
Pierce, S., & Bolter, J. (2020). Dismantling and reconstructing the US immigration system: A catalog of changes under the Trump presidency. Migration Policy Institute. https://www. migrationpolicy. org/research/us-immigration-system-changes-trump-presidency.
Red Shirt-Shaw, M. (2020). Beyond the land acknowledgement: College “land back” or free tuition for Native students. Hack the Gates Policy and Practice Brief. hackthegates.org
Reyes, N. A. (2019). “What Am I Doing to Be a Good Ancestor?”: An indigenized phenomenology of giving back among native college graduates. American Educational Research Journal, 56(3), 603-637.
R.I.C.E. (n.d.). RICE – Refugees and Immigrants Community for Empowerment. https://www.facebook.com/RICEsupportgroup/
Shotton, H., Lowe, S., Waterman, S. (2013). Beyond the asterisk: Understanding native students in higher education. Stylus.
Showers, F. (2015). Being black, foreign and woman: African immigrant identities in the United States. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(10), 1815-1830.
Silversmith, S. (2021). Native students finally win the right to wear tribal regalia at graduation ceremonies. AZCentral. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2021/05/14/arizona-law-now-allows-native-american-grads-wear-tribal-regalia/4992740001/
Stein, S. (2020). “Truth before reconciliation”: The difficulties of transforming higher education in settler colonial contexts. Higher Education Research & Development, 39(1), 156-170.
Steward-Ambo, T. & Yang, W. K. (2021). Beyond land acknowledgement in settler institutions. Social Text, 39(1), 21-46.
Streitwieser, B., & Beecher, B. (2017). Information sharing in the age of hyper-competition: opening an international branch campus. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 49(6), 44-50.
Tachine, A. R. (2018). Story rug: Weaving stories into research. In Reclaiming indigenous research in higher education (pp. 64-75). Rutgers University Press.
Taylor, K. (2017). How we get free: Black feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Haymarket Books.
Tesfai, R., & Thomas, K. J. (2020). Dimensions of inequality: Black immigrants’ occupational segregation in the United States. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 6(1), 1-21.
Tohono O’odham Nation. (n.d.). No wall: Background. Tohono O’odham Nation Government. http://www.tonation-nsn.gov/nowall/
Tuck, E., & Yang, K.W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1-40.
United Nations. (2016). The sustainable development goals. United Nations. https://sdgs.un.org/goals.
United Nations. (n.d.). Major groups: Workers and trade unions, women, children and youth and indigenous people. United Nations. https://sdgs.un.org/statements/major-groups-workers-and-trade-unions-women-children-and-youth-and-indigenous-people
Vizenor, G. (1999). Manifest manners: Narratives on postindian survivance. University of Nebraska Press.
Vowel, C. (2016). Beyond territorial acknowledgements. Apihawikosisan. https://apihtawikosisan.com/2016/09/beyond-territorial-acknowledgments/
Wheatle, K. I. E. (2019). Neither just nor equitable: Race in the congressional debate of the second Morrill Act of 1890. American Educational History Journal, 46(2), 1-20.
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387-409.
Wright, B. (1991). The “untameable savage spirit”: American Indians in colonial colleges. The Review of Higher Education, 14(4), 429-452.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The findings, interpretations, conclusions, and views expressed in Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education (JCIHE) are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any manner to CIES, HESIG, or the sponsoring universities of the Editorial Staff. These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. Readers are free to copy, display, and distribute articles that appear in JCIHE as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and JCIHE, it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. All other uses must be approved by the author(s) or JCIHE. By submitting a manuscript, authors agree to transfer without charge the following rights to JCIHE upon acceptance of the manuscript: first worldwide serial publication rights and the right for JCIHE to grant permissions as its editors judge appropriate for the redistribution of the article, its abstract, and metadata associated with the article in professional indexing and reference services.