Taken

Barriers to a Better Education

By the 1960s and early 1970s, activist movements across the country had begun to call for better national policies to support minority groups and the government made attempts to some of the wrongs of the past. But it didn’t always lead to success. So let’s dive in, and talk about the gap between the government’s policy intentions for Native American communities and its not-so-effective execution.

Note: We would like to issue a content warning for this episode. Some parts of this episode may not be suitable for younger audiences.

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Host: Sharon McMahon
Executive Producer: Heather Jackson
Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder
Writers and Researchers: Heather Jackson, Amy Watkin, Mandy Reid, Kari Anton

Host: Sharon McMahon
Executive Producer: Heather Jackson
Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder
Writers and Researchers: Heather Jackson, Amy Watkin, Mandy Reid, Kari Anton

Guests

K. Tsiannina Lomawaima

K. Tsianina Lomawaima (Mvskoke / Creek Nation descent), scholar of Indigenous studies, is retired from the professoriate where she served as faculty at the University of Washington (1988-1994), the University of Arizona (1994-2014), and Arizona State University (2014-2020). She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Education. Her scholarship on the federal off-reservation boarding school system is rooted in the experiences of her father, Curtis Thorpe Carr, a survivor of Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, where he was enrolled from 1927 to 1935. Relevant publications include the 2018 special issue of JAIE (Journal of American Indian Education) “Native American Boarding School Stories” Vol. 57 #1; “To Remain an Indian”: Lessons for democracy from a century of Native American education (2006; with Teresa McCarty); Away from home: American Indian boarding school experiences (2000; with Margaret Archuleta and Brenda Child); and They Called it Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School (1994).