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panel
Indigenous education during COVID-19: negotiations, tensions and anthropologists' responsability across the Americas
keywords:
americas
indigenous peoples
education
The global pandemic has acutely underscored the shortfall of educational policy in solving larger social, economic, and digital inequities in the Americas for decades; inequities which continue to hit Indigenous students the hardest. The physical conditions of domestic spaces, food shortages, health inequalities, and economic precarities are some factors that have made it impossible for school-based education during the pandemic to be the same for everyone. We also recognize that in Indigenous education it's necessary to identify the diversity of contexts and situations, of relationships between Indigenous actors with the state and the many practices of community resistance developed across time. As ethnographers and educators who have participated in and collaborated with Indigenous educators, students and communities before the pandemic, we come together to dialogue about the present-day negotiations and tensions experienced around Indigenous education across a range of contexts and to reflect on our responsibilities as anthropologists. This roundtable seeks to bring together a diverse group of established and young scholars of educational anthropology to discuss the many experiences of school-based education of Indigenous students in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic across the Americas. The roundtable opens up a multilingual space for intergenerational dialogue within the field of educational anthropology, and is organized by two 2020-2021 CAE Concha Delgado fellows. In line with the meeting’s theme, we seek to highlight how anthropological research, as well as anthropologically informed pedagogy and practice has met and can meet the present demands of Indigenous education. Particularly, participants will comment on how school-based Indigenous education has been transformed during the pandemic, and highlight the many ways in which educators, students and families have negotiated these changes, bringing to the fore the protagonism of diverse actors. We will also discuss the tensions deepened in this scenario, as well as emerging ones. Discussants’ commentaries will draw on ethnographic, critical, decolonial and Indigenous perspectives as they reflect on what equity, diversity and accounting for power relations means from pre-school to higher education experiences. The roundtable will begin with two rounds of commentaries (totaling 60 minutes) to be followed with engagement from all participants with audience questions (35 minutes). The questions guiding each of the round of commentaries are the following: 1. How has school-based Indigenous education - including teachers, community authorities and students - faced the closing of schools and negotiated the educational alternatives proposed by governments? How have you been involved in Indigenous education during the pandemic (including maintaining existing relationships and partnerships and developing new ones)? 2. What insights have you gained/developed regarding your role as an anthropologist of education in this context? What can we learn from these insights in order to engage in anthropological research, pedagogy and practice that can craft and support Indigenous education in our current contexts and coming years? This roundtable welcomes a diverse audience, including researchers and practitioners, and seeks to visibilize Indigenous education experiences in the pandemic as well as reflect on educational anthropologists’ roles and responsibilities with the various communities and individuals we work with.