This article emphasizes the importance of understanding local contexts to provide appropriate education for teachers about literacy instruction. The author reviews general problems that follow from extrapolating from unrepresentative research samples and the errors and deficit conceptions that follow from assuming that all cognition takes place…

Hawai'i is a small place on a large planet; Kanaka Maoli, the Indigenous people of the islands, today comprise just 20% of the total population within the state, and less than 1% of the total U.S. population across the nation (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). Yet Hawai'i, promoted for centuries as an exotic tourist destination, and Hawaiian culture as…

In an art world dominated by non-Indian curators and experts, being "Indian" was confined to an ethnographic fiction of storytellers, dancers, and medicine men attired in traditional clothing and regalia, in which the colonization of indigenous lands and peoples is left to the margins like an Edward S. Curtis portrait. These are the…

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…

Publishing in the Sami languages has always been difficult. The Sami are currently spread across four countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. There are nine different Sami languages, some of them with only a few speakers. The Sami publishing industry is entirely dependent on government funding as it does not have its own funds nor is there…

One of the best-studied, least-discussed texts of Native American oral literature is a long Mojave "epic" taken down from a man named Inyo-kutavere by Alfred Kroeber in 1902 and published in 1951. The text was published in twenty-nine pages along with forty-eight pages of commentary and twenty-five pages of notes. In 1999, Arthur Hatto, an…

Pre-colonial traditional societies in Sub-Saharan Africa were mostly oral societies whose languages were not written. In the African context, especially, it was clear that the mostly oral traditions of these societies' languages were neither being appreciated nor promoted as media of communication, or means of education by the invading Europeans.…

In this article, the author proposes to offer the narrative "The Boy Who Could Not Understand" for review and criticism as a manifestation of Native philosophical organicism. It is his contention that the tale represents a form of Native auto-criticism resulting from experiential encounters with youth who had returned from white boarding schools.…

Presents three teachers' recommendations for works of literature that use a strong oral tradition. Discusses each of the teacher selections: "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J.K. Rowling); "Cuentos: Tales from the Hispanic Southwest" (compiled by Juan B. Rael); and "The Way to Rainy Mountain" (N. Scott Momaday). (SG)

One of the major challenges facing South African higher education institutions is to deal with the learning preferences and styles of an increasing diverse student population. Although much research has been conducted on the identification of learning styles theories for classroom application, little attention has been devoted to the investigation…

This paper examines the role of myths and symbols in society through the use of a hypothetical dialogue. The paper begins by explaining what myths are and the functions they serve. Mythology and mythical symbols of past and present are compared. These changes in the nature of mythological symbols are explored through a dialogue between an artist…

Offers a brief historical overview, playfully presented, to remind the reader of the relationships between orality, literacy, and the current electronic social condition. (SR)

Evoking storytelling as a human tendency, suggests that stories involve sight, sound, rhythm, voice, and spontaneous imagination. Claims that because stories appeal to children's inner lives, they are optimal for communicating "life and human relationships and the totality of the natural world." Also claims that stories encourage…

A connection with nature constitutes the difference between Western science and indigenous perspectives of the natural world. Understanding the synchronicity of natural and astronomical cycles is integral to Anishinaabe cosmology. Examples show how the Anishinaabe cultural worldview and philosophy are reflected in their celestial knowledge and how…

Suggests that major works of orally grounded literature, like "Beowulf," are the result of collective engagement with the question of what wisdom is. Claims "Beowulf" is the result of a set of cultural transformations and a means by which such transformations took place. Suggests it speaks to traditional verse's role in the consolidation of new…