Grace Mukupa welcomes TCU faculty to AIHEC’s Indigenous STEM Pedagogy Institute.

Tribal college scientists and educators met at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, July 29-30, for the Indigenous STEM Pedagogy Institute, hosted by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC). The institute is part of AIHEC’s Tribal College and University STEM Student Success Collaborative, which seeks to promote and support problem-based and culturally relevant STEM pedagogy at tribal colleges. AIHEC’s Grace Mukupa, Deborah His Horse Is Thunder, and Al Kuslikis organized and facilitated the event.

Native science is guided by spirituality, extended relationships, mutualism, reciprocity, respect, and restraint, says Dr. Cajete.

The institute began with the presentation “Native Science—Back to the Future” by Dr. Greg Cajete (Santa Clara Pueblo) of the University of New Mexico, one of the world’s foremost thought leaders on Indigenous science and the creation of culturally responsive science curriculum. Cajete observed that climate change and the escalating degradation of our planet has opened the door to more diverse ways of understanding the natural environment and, hence, Indigenous science, which is rooted in ecological interdependence and axiology. Cajete, who taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts for 20 years, lauded AIHEC and the tribal colleges for blazing new trails. “AIHEC is the only group that is looking at this [Indigenous science] systematically,” he observed. “No other group nationally is doing comparable work.”

Rather than simply serve the interests of external researchers, science conducted on Native lands should work to uplift tribal nations, states Dr. Davis.

Longtime tribal college leader Dr. Carol Davis (Ojibwe) built on Cajete’s presentation, illustrating the application of Indigenous science in Native communities. Davis, along with former Turtle Mountain Community College president Dr. Gerald Monette, spearheads the Tribal Nations Research Group, which has enabled the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians to take ownership of scientific research and study on their reservation and to make that study applicable and beneficial to tribal members. Moreover, Davis noted that through the group’s Native American Tribal Undergraduate Research and Education (NATURE) program, the number of students declaring science as a major increased from 31 students in 1998 to 187 in 2008.

Ted Williams, former academic dean at Northwest Indian College (NWIC), spoke about the development and application of Indigenous science and curriculum at NWIC. Williams offered an overview of the college’s Longhouse Model, which is rooted culturally in Lummi and Salish peoples’ ways of knowing. Williams stressed the importance of building bridges between Western and Indigenous science traditions.

Nader Vadiee of Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI), Teresa Newberry of Tohono O’odham Community College, and Lisa Bosman (formerly with College of Menominee Nation) gave presentations on problem-based learning and science curriculum at tribal colleges. Institute attendees toured SIPI’s STEM facilities and took part in a series of discussions that explored faculty development, outreach and recruitment, research, retention, and curriculum development.

TCU attendees took a moment for the camera following the first day of AIHEC’s Indigenous STEM Pedagogy Institute.