This article takes form following an exchange of letters in which the Chickasaw and Hopi authors reflected on an Indigenous mentorship relationship in higher education as the embodiment of a carved-out space for Indigenous ways of knowing and being. They begin the story of their faculty mentor-doctoral mentee relationship with the memory of the…

This article examines Indigenous-language immersion (ILI) schooling, an innovative approach in which most or all instruction occurs in the Indigenous language, with a strong culture-based curriculum. With the goals of promoting language revitalization, academic/holistic wellbeing, and cultural identity and continuance, ILI is a form of sustainable…

Fifty years after the U.S. Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA), Native Americans continue to fight for the right "to remain an Indian" (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006) against a backdrop of test-driven language policies that threaten to destabilize proven bilingual programs and violate hard-fought language rights protections…

In this chapter, the authors offer a critical examination of a growing field of educational inquiry and social practice: the reclamation of Indigenous mother tongues. They use the term "reclamation" purposefully to denote that these are languages that have been forcibly subordinated in contexts of colonization. Language reclamation…

In Native American communities, the "global here and now" (Appadurai, 2001) is linked to twin movements for standardization and English supremacy, resulting in the decline of Indigenous languages and persistent educational disparities. This article takes up Appadurai's call to democratize research on globalization, juxtaposing theories that…

Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine in "Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages" state that indigenous peoples represent about 4 percent of the world's population but speak at least 60 percent of the world's languages. They point out the reality of an ominous linguistic crisis of global proportions--languages die and continue to…

Despite having been immersed in the Hopi culture throughout their lives, many of today's Hopi youth do not understand or speak their heritage language. This article highlights the notion of "affective enculturation"--the development of an emotional commitment to Hopi ideals--cultivated through the myriad practices that comprise the Hopi oral…