In her book, Indigenous Survivance in Public Schools, Leslie Sabzalian (Alutiiq) calls for educators and those working within institutions of learning in the United States to develop “a relational awareness.” In part, this means coming to recognize our place within a larger web of interconnected histories and our shared relationships to institutions, people, and the policies that inform our collective actions. This talk will emphasize how Indigenous peoples have historically experienced and “refused” Euro-American colonial dominance, and the ways they contemporarily continue to do so. By using education and schooling as a type of prism for understanding the past and present, we can gain a stronger sense of our own relationship to Indigenous history, and most importantly, to the lessons we can learn from Native peoples’ ongoing presence and colonial refusal.

Speaker Bio

Nathan Tanner is a PhD Candidate in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. An emerging educational historian and policy scholar, Nathan’s research critically examines the politics of place, race(ism), and religion in the construction of educational and schooling configurations for, and the experiences of, Black and Indigenous youth in the American West, past and present. Prior to his doctoral studies, Nathan worked as a middle school social studies teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah, and as an ESL teacher in Tianjin, China. Nathan has published his work in History of Education, History of Education Quarterly, Religions, and the Handbook of Social Justice Interventions in Education. He is also the co-editor of and contributor to the recently published book, Preparing to Lead: Narratives of Aspiring School Leaders in a “Post”-COVID World.

Format: Zoom