Episode 42: Artful Teaching Podcast Special Episode: Native Voices Framework
Heather 0:00
Welcome to the artful teaching podcast! It's been a while. This is Heather Francis and I am back as a co-host for this show to produce a special episode with my friend Stephanie West. She and I are going to be discussing a framework that she has developed as part of her doctoral studies. It's called the Native Voices Framework. She's going to fully describe it in just a moment, but to get listeners right on the topic of what Native voices are: There's the Tribe. You have a Sovereign Nation. They have someone that they've appointed to speak for the Tribe. It's someone sanctioned by the Tribe to be their voice. That is an official type of voice. But then you can have a neighbor who lives next door who has Native heritage, and they have Native experiences and perspectives to share as well. Then you might go into your student’s or child's school and see a Native artist presenting something, and they are another type of Native voice to share. So it's important in education, when we're looking to amplify Native Voices, that we understand these different voices and the different values that they evoke and share with us.
Stephanie West 1:29
You talked about the Native Voices Framework as being part of my doctoral work, and yes, it is, but this really started before then. We've shared content about this for years, so I can't say that this is my work, but more that I have been given the privilege of expanding on it as we've continued to learn more about these different perspectives that are available to us, as well as some missing pieces, which I'll talk about in a second, that help us to clarify how teachers might frame those perspectives and understand how those different various voices, Native voices, can impact their teaching of Native topics.
Heather Francis 2:11
This framework is coming out of content that our program coordinator and program manager have been presenting in workshops for several years. And it's really great, Stephanie, that you're formalizing it. We love to see this kind of deep research and thinking. So the first question is, what is the framework?
What is the Native Voices Framework?
Stephanie West 2:31
A framework is something that helps us to organize the information that's available to us and make it more applicable to our own work. The Native Voices framework, the image that we've created, which you can see on our website, is in the form of a circle. We felt it was really important to communicate both visually as well as through words. That is more of an Indigenous pedagogy, to also use shapes to communicate information. We have this circle that has a ring of individuals around it that have their hands connected. There's also some coloring to that circle. There's a deep red color as well as a black color, and they kind of blend into each other. It's concentric circles. The image that we currently have is two dimensional. I would love to have it recreated in a three dimensional shape. If we were to see it three dimensionally, I would see it as more like a cone, where it's wider at the base, and comes up to a point at the top. That point at the top is the focus. But the base visually communicates the different values that influence both our teaching of Native topics, as well as the different values that might influence different Native perspectives. We put that on a continuum of both Native values as well as Western values. And most educational systems are Western.
Heather Francis 4:15
Yeah, that's the world we exist in. When we say there's Native perspectives and Western perspectives, we're not saying that it's this against that. We know our own culture, that's one of our guiding principles. We do operate in a very western perspective, and it has certain values underlying it, just like Native perspectives have certain values underlying them. We're just including both of them in this framework.
Stephanie West 4:41
One piece of this framework that's helpful when it comes to the values is that, yes, we put it on a continuum, because they're not completely contradictory, but they can be very different. It's also helpful when you have a framework. We don't necessarily, as teachers, think about, how does this value influence the way that I teach? Often, we just have values, and they're just part of our lives. But by having this framework, it encourages teachers to be able to consider, “Oh, this might be the reason why I'm choosing to do it this way.” By making it more evident, we hope that teachers can be more thoughtful in the ways that they include those different values in their teaching. Especially with Native teaching, because for it to be accurate and authentic, you have to make sure that it aligns well with Native values.
Native Values of Community, Relationship, Responsibility, Reciprocity, & Holism:
Stephanie West 5:40
I looked at lots of different content and als...