Ananda Marin

Muskrat theories, tobacco in the streets, and living Chicago as Indigenous land

In this paper, we aim to contribute to ongoing work to uncover the ways in which settler colonialism is entrenched and reified in educational environments and explore lessons learned from an urban Indigenous land-based education project. In this project, we worked to re-center our perceptual habits in Indigenous cosmologies, or land-based perspectives, and came to see land re-becoming itself. Through this recentering, we unearthed some ways in which settler colonialism quietly operates in teaching and learning environments and implicitly and explicitly undermines Indigenous agency and futurity by maintaining and reifying core dimensions of settler colonial relations to land. We describe examples in which teachers and community members explicitly re-engaged land-based perspectives in the design and implementation of a land-based environmental science education that enabled epistemological and ontological centering that significantly impacted learning, agency, and resilience for urban Indigenous youth and families. In this paper, we explore the significance of naming and the ways in which knowledge systems are mobilized in teaching and learning environments in the service of settler futurity. However, we suggest working through these layers of teaching and learning by engaging in land-based pedagogies is necessary to extend and transform the possibilities and impacts of environmental education.

Repatriating Indigenous Technologies in an Urban Indian Community

Indigenous people are significantly underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The solution to this problem requires a more robust lens than representation or access alone. Specifically, it will require careful consideration of the ecological contexts of Indigenous school age youth, of which more than 70% live in urban communities (National Urban Indian Family Coalition, 2008). This article reports emergent design principles derived from a community-based design research project. These emergent principles focus on the conceptualization and uses of technology in science learning environments designed for urban Indigenous youth. In order to strengthen learning environments for urban Indigenous youth, it is necessary, we argue, that scholars and educators take seriously the ways in which culture mediates relationships with, conceptions of, and innovations in technology and technologically related disciplines. Recognizing these relationships will inform the subsequent implications for learning environments.

Community-Based Design Research: Learning Across Generations and Strategic Transformations of Institutional Relations Toward Axiological Innovations

Abstract The socio-ecological challenges facing communities in the 21st century are building towards a critical conjuncture of history, culture, power, and profound inequity. Scholars working in the service of social transformation and improving the wellbeing of communities are calling for creative, deliberate, and consequential interventions. Tharp & O’Donnell (this issue) call for increased engagement between Cultural-Community Psychology and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory to lead this kind of call. Drawing from our experiences in community based design research, we argue for cultivating axiological innovations in research and interventions. We explore three examples including: critical historicity, inter-generational learning, and strategic transformations of institutional relations.

Learning by Observing, Pitching in, and Being in Relations in the Natural World

This chapter describes a central tenet of Indigenous American social interaction, which emphasizes mutuality in collaboration and caring in Indigenous communities. This includes interactions with an agentive natural world, in which more-than-human beings act as participants in the lives of humans and vice versa. We argue that research on childrens learning should take a broader view of interactional partners to include the natural world.