Today, I have an op-ed at The Hechinger Report about the benefits of culture-based education, for Native youth and all students. The piece was inspired by work our evaluation team did with The National Indian Education Association at Riverside Indian School, the nation’s oldest federally operated American Indian Boarding School.
An excerpt from my op-ed:

Culture-based education provides a path to healing and responsible citizenship for all of us. It helps students become aware of and comfortable with other belief and value systems. It furthers the goals of democracy and leads students of all ethnicities and races to think more deeply about their own cultural identities while also broadening their understanding of the experiences and perspectives of others.
Finally, the fruits of culture-based education can help us understand this country’s moral debts and how to pay them. Native Americans have for too long lived in a country controlled by men who, for nearly 300 years, have consistently “elevated armed robbery to a governing principle.” Through forced removal, boarding schools and relocation, our government stole and erased Native Americans’ languages and cultural knowledge. An investment in recovering, restoring and revitalizing lost and stolen indigenous cultural knowledge could guide us in understanding this country’s bloody history and place us on a path toward reconciliation and equity.

Read the rest of my piece at The Hechinger Report, and read more of my writing about Native education here.