Tohono O'odham Education Chronicles: Persistence, Resilience, and Strength

Abstract

These student stories serve as illustrations of O'odham reasoning and understanding that Tohono O’odham education is first and foremost about how Place, Community, Language, Story, and traditions interconnect as a unified Indigenous knowledge. The study focuses on the value of incorporating Indigenous language and culture into education practices and institutions, which fosters resilience. This story of O’odham education presents a journey in Perspective, Resilience, and Strength; with a look at lessons learned. The study chronicles the strength of examination as a mechanism for devising culturally responsive curriculum and more importantly: culturally responsive evaluation. The study reinforces the enduring message of cultural resilience, which empowered our O’odham ancestors. The Tohono O’odham Himidag (lifeways) is important to the development of successful Tohono O’odham educational policy. We remember the past because the threat to American Indian self-education and sovereignty remains a critical issue in the 21st Century. A selected portrait of Tohono O’odham education history, with personalized O’odham tribal member experiences, reveals that the O’odham culture as part of an evaluation mechanism is one path forward; yet it remains the antagonist of authoritarian leaders and challenges academic social and behavioral conventions in the revealing. The O’odham (Papago) Democracy perspective, with the Himidag’s reliance on consensus among education partners, parents, and extended family discussions — has fortified O’odham resilience, empowered the humuchum (communities), and resulted in the increase of high school graduation rates (especially from 2008-2013). Through reports and memoir research of specific O’odham education experiences; the study examines the institutional development of O’odham education systems, which built upon one another from the early Mexican day schools, and the competing Catholic and Presbyterian day schools and boarding schools. The power of gathering up these voices from the past is the ability to view a moving portrait of O’odham survival and adaptability, with an understanding of the importance of the strength of the O’odham interconnected worldview as a form of unified Indigenous knowledge. The study also includes Tohono O’odham education policy recommendations regarding the expansion of a tribal government internship program; increasing the Bernard Fontana 1957-1997 Tohono O’odham Bibliography, the importance of continued community support of the TON Museum, Himidag Ki, a research-proven intuitive technique to reduce student stress, and a respectful appeal for a formal compliance review of all Tohono O’odham education related tribal resolutions, policies and procedures in order to ensure responsible operations for current and future generations.