Journal of School Leadership

With culturally sustaining pedagogies gaining momentum in our evolving educational landscape, the political backdrop of sovereignty and the pursuit of self-determination through education for Indigenous peoples creates a truly unique leadership context. The purpose of this conceptual article is to introduce a working model for educational leaders in Native nations to liberate educational sovereignty by engaging in broad and dynamic systems thinking that centers on their nation’s cultural and governance systems. From this positionality, this model then calls for leaders to engage in the iterative work of (a) assessing the educational landscape and identifying community assets, (b) fostering professional growth across systems, and (c) engaging in ongoing systems development and alignment advocacy. Furthermore, this model calls for leaders to incorporate critical Indigenous education frameworks and philosophies into these efforts, as well as foster a healthy community of practice across all systems of education to cultivate conditions for ongoing learning and connectivity among professionals. Through these efforts, over time leaders in Native nations can increase their ability to liberate educational sovereignty by creating an army of change agents working to (re)center systems of learning around Native nation’s cultural and governance systems, and pull learning systems away from the assimilationist trajectory found in the status quo of settler-colonial education.

Recent studies of Indigenous educational leadership have contributed instructive conceptual insights to decolonize public schools. Building on these theoretical insights, we investigate the organizational and policy constraints leaders face when attempting to enact decolonial strategies. Combining “safety zone theory” and Critical Policy Analysis, we examine how one Apsáalooke educational leader, Cummins negotiated and challenged institutionalized practices delimiting “safe Indian-ness.” These include: (a) transactional, policy inscribed relations between schools and Native communities; and (b) tepid district implementation of pro-Native legislation, such as policies expressing a commitment to preserving Native American cultures. We convey how Cummins made, unmade, and remade new policy meanings through local leadership practices, such as creating more humanizing Apsáalooke-defined spaces for community-school engagements and orchestrating local pressure to move district leadership to fulfill policy commitments to serve Native students. Data includes 18 interviews with Apsáalooke tribal members, education policy texts, and collaborative auto-ethnographic memos. Based on these findings, we develop the notion of dangerous leadership: a decolonial leadership praxis that challenges settler–colonial conceptions of safety and negotiates material, communal, and personal threats that such acts of subversion tend to provoke. We conclude by discussing implications for dangerous leadership amid nonideal and constantly shifting settler-colonial school contexts.

This article discusses the efforts of the Indigenous Knowledge for Effective Education Program (IKEEP), at the University of Idaho, a predominately white institution (PWI) of higher education, and its struggle to create space in higher education for intentional support of Indigenous self-determination, sovereignty, and Tribal nation building through the preparation of Indigenous teachers. In doing so, we examine the contentious and local work of reimagining education, from the bottom up and top down, to develop leaders to serve the needs of Indigenous youth and communities through the vehicle of mainstream institutions. With data from a multiyear ethnographic documentation, we examine the experiences of IKEEP program administration, teacher mentors, and students through the conceptual lens of Tribal nation building in higher education. Our findings underscore how teacher education programs at PWIs need to engage in a radical shift toward seeing Indigenous teachers as nation builders and to prioritize the infrastructure and programmatic collaboration to support them and their communities as such.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to gather the perspectives of educational leaders in the United States and Australia on strategies for transforming an almost exclusively Westernized curriculum into a curriculum that honors Indigenous worldviews. The research design was exploratory in nature and involved an examination of the ways in which culturally sustaining leadership may be employed to support the resilience of Indigenous students across borders. The methodologies of dialogue and reflection provided a way to engage participants in an international exchange. Participants were 11 aspiring administrators enrolled in an educational leadership program in the United States and five visiting educators from Australia. Participants pre-assessed their understandings about culturally relevant curriculum, engaged in dialogue, submitted journal reflections, and presented final testimonies. Findings from the thematic analysis revealed the value of designing curriculum grounded in cultural humility and a holistic worldview. Respondents concluded curriculum must be linked to the resiliency of Indigenous students and focused on the interconnected relationships of country, place, culture, and people. The implications suggest there is an opportunity for systemic change when networks of Indigenous leaders and allies come together in a global exchange of ideas. These findings may be important for other collaborators who aim to draw upon the knowledge traditions of Indigenous communities across borders. Additional multicountry study is needed to expand the knowledge base and make Indigenous worldviews central to the mission of schools and communities in the United States and across borders.

As a field, school leadership has maintained a colorblind stance, marginalizing practitioners’ awareness of culturally sustaining practice, and erasing the experiences of Indigenous and other minoritized groups of students, teachers, and families. Looking to research and practice that attempts to embrace racial and cultural difference in order to make schools more culturally sustaining places to be is imperative in order for the field to respond to the growing diversity in schools. This article specifically explores culturally sustaining and Indigenous school leadership practices. Using data collected from interviews with ten school leaders in Aotearoa (New Zealand) as well as school documents, this article presents new insights into the implementation of culturally sustaining school leadership, which has implications for theory and practice in the field of educational leadership, which has been too long dominated by white ways of knowing.