The Contemporary Native American Issues: Pathways of Action Symposium, March 2 and The Southwest Tribal Youth Conference, March
The University of Arizona American Indian Studies Graduate Student
>Council Is sponsoring The Contemporary Native American Issues:
>Pathways of Action Symposium, March 2 and The Southwest Tribal Youth
>Conference, March 3 The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
>
>_______________________________________________________________________
> Keynote Address by James Riding In, Ph.D., Arizona State University
>The UA AIS Graduate Students would like to invite you to the 5th Annual
>American Indian Studies Symposium. The AIS Graduate Student Council
>will be reviewing abstracts for papers that discuss "Contemporary
>Native American Issues" and/or "Pathways of Action." This is an
>opportunity for graduate students in American Indian Studies, or
>related fields, to share their proactive solutions, ideas, or goals to
>addressing contemporary Native American Issues.
>
> Topics may include, but are not limited to the
>following:
> ? Practical Use of Indigenous Knowledge
> ? Decolonization and Cultural Preservation
> ? Language/Cultural/Spiritual Revitalization
> ? American Indian Spiritual Revolution
> ? Health Issues in Indian Communities
> ? American Indian Education
> ? Contemporary Indian Art
> ? Popular Culture in Native America
> ? Tribal Government Reform and Revolution
> ? Tribal Economic Development
> ? American Indian Activism
> ? American Indian Feminism
> ? Other topics will be considered
>
> Deadline for abstracts: February 10th, 2006
>
> Mail Materials to: Send Materials Electronically
>to:
> American Indian Studies jpitre@email.arizona.edu
> Graduate Student Council
> Harvill Bldg., Rm. 218 For questions contact Josh
>Pitre:
> P.O. Box 210076 jpitre@email.arizona.edu
> Tucson, AZ 85721-0076 (985) 665-1278
>
> Visit the American Indian Studies Grad. Student Council
>website:
>
>
> If your abstract is selected, then you will be asked to bring two hard
>copies and one electronic copy of your complete paper to the symposium.
>It will be automatically submitted for review for publication in the
>next issue of Red Ink: A Native American Student Publication. Visit
>the Red Ink website at
www.redinkmagazine.com.http://aisp.web.arizona.edu/Student_council.html
presented at conference
Please share your abstracts for this conference.
I presented this paper at the conference:
Vygotsky and Indigenous Cultures
We will begin exploring the theoretical analysis of Culture Based
Education element number six as defined by William Demmert (2001):
Knowledge and use of the social and political mores of the community.
Examining the social and political mores of indigenous communities and
the dominant society, the core of this story begins comparing the
inherited and established practices with Vygotskian theories and
indigenous cultures in education today.
Vygotsky has ?turn(ed) Western tradition on its head,? as Dr. Jim
Lantolf stated in his introduction to social cultural theory on
October, 2003 at the LRC Brown bag series. Vygotsky approach to
education supports what many indigenous nations have been saying for
centuries: Western tradition has been in direct opposition to Indian
tradition. Researchers such as Mary E. Romero, Jerome Bruner, Teresa
McCarty, and many others have focused on ?theorizing from practice?
as an approach to valuing indigenous education. Luis Moll calls these
approaches, ?trends in action? (2001), which incorporate the
Vygotskian educational model. These teaching methods and pedagogies
have been a part of indigenous history centuries before the United
States decided to assimilate American Indian into the American culture
instead of annihilating them. Many indigenous learning models
incorporate heritage languages for a powerful reason that language is
the foundational structure that links us to our past and ancestry.
Language is a crucial element of our social and psychological being