ERIC Number: EJ937265
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 23
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0730-3238
EISSN: N/A
Native Avatars, Online Hubs, and Urban Indian Literature
Estrada, Gabriel S.
Studies in American Indian Literatures, v23 n2 p48-70 Sum 2011
Teaching American Indian literature with online resources can help diverse urban Indian and multicultural students connect with American Indian cultures, histories, and Nations. This online-enriched pedagogy adopts Susan Lobo's sense of the city as an "urban hub," or activist community center, an urban area linked to reservations in which Native American peoples adapt their cultures in ways that resist mere cultural assimilation into US metropolitan society. Building upon Lobo's ideas of the urban hub, Jennifer Ladino finds that urban Indian literature can reinforce "a fluidly defined community" that "can emerge to combat alienation and provide emotional and material support". Ladino argues that urban hubs are especially important given that the two-thirds of the total US Native American population reside in cities. What this essay adds to Lobo's and Ladino's sentiment is a sense of how teaching American Indian literature in a face-to-face classroom blended with online technologies can add to Native urban hubs. This essay builds upon multiple insights and suggestions regarding blended pedagogies that can enhance the appreciation of American Indian literature. The author discusses the ways in which "NativeWiki," "Second Life," author e-mails, American Indian Nations web pages, and other online resources form Native online hubs that can help students to better evaluate urban Indian literatures such as "Flight" and "Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon" and American Indian activist oral traditions. (Contains 2 notes.)
Descriptors: American Indian Literature, Oral Tradition, American Indians, Urban Areas, Community Centers, Urban American Indians, Educational Technology, Computer Uses in Education, Teaching Methods
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A