A result of the initial meetings in the1980s and early 1990s was the identification and articulation of four core values which cross generation, geography and tribe. We have come to call these four core values the Four R’s: Relationship, Responsibility, Reciprocity and Redistribution. Each of these values manifests itself in a core obligation in Indigenous societies.

Relationship is the kinship obligation, the profound sense that we human beings are related, not only to each other, but to all things, animals, plants, rocks—in fact, to the very stuff the stars are made of. This relationship is a kinship relationship. Everyone/everything is related to us as if they were our blood relatives.We, thus, live in a family that includes all creation, and everyone/everything in this extended family is valued and has a valued contribution to make. So, our societal task is to make sure that everyone feels included and feels that they can make their contribution to our common good. This is one reason why we value making decisions by consensus because it allows everyone to make a contribution.

I believe “the Native issue” is, in fact, one of our most pressing concerns. It matters deeply, profoundly, and continuously. For many reasons to be discussed further throughout this book, it is central to our mission.

For starters, there’s the simple shared humanity of it. We care about Alaska Native and other indigenous students. We want them to feel comfortable on university campuses, to be engaged in their classes, and to graduate in numbers commensurate with their potential. We want them to have the knowledge and skills they need to survive and thrive in the dominant culture. We also want them to maintain deep and meaningful connections to their communities and cultures. We want their individual investments of time, money, and effort to be well-spent and the sacrifices made by their families and communities to have been worth the cost. We hope to enrich, rather than drain, their individual and collective lives.

Then there’s our responsibility. We are part of a higher education system—in Alaska and beyond—that has for centuries marginalized Native cultures and peoples. Despite significant and laudable initiatives to the contrary, the vast majority of us still are impoverished by a worldview that reflexively considers indigenous cultures and ways of knowing as other or alternative or exotic or primitive. Too few see them as what they are: living bodies of knowledge and wisdom that can enrich teaching and learning and inform humanity’s attempts to grapple with the most pressing problems of the modern world, a key mission of universities.

Land is a central component to many Indigenous epistemologies (Simpson, 2014; Twance, 2019; Wildcat et al., 2014). Land education is about engaging in “conversations with the land and on the land in a physical, social, and spiritual sense” (Wildcat et al., 2014, p. 2). This approach sees the land as the “mode of education” that can teach us (humans) how to be in relationship with each other (p. 2). Engaging in land-based practices can build reciprocity with the land and promote spiritual healing and grounding. These practices ultimately must be grounded in the local contexts and land where they are taking place (Wildcat et al., 2014). Whereas some place-based pedagogical approaches emphasize the innocence of non-Indigenous students in settler colonialism (Twance, 2019), land education confronts settler colonialism and other forms of power such as heteropatriarchy. Land education is based in Indigenous epistemologies and sovereignty to highlight how the land has been and is used to dominate communities, commit violence particularly against Indigenous women and other women of color, and enforce both patriarchy and heteronormative relationships (Sepulveda, 2018; Twance, 2019; Wildcat et al., 2014). This recognition also calls attention to the internalization of Western and Eurocentric religious values replacing/erasing Indigenous values and practices. Additionally, this recognition highlights how those with the most access to funds thereby have greater access to the land and its resources (Wildcat et al., 2014).

This book, in helping us reclaim our interconnected histories, will take us to a place of becoming good relatives. We are all related, and we will see in the next chapter that all creation stories tell us this. But what does it mean to be good relatives-to not only recognize our kinship but to be good kin? Because, for Indigenous peoples, kinship is not simply a matter of being like a brother or sister to somebody. It carries specific responsibilities depending on the kind of relationship we agree upon. An aunt has different responsibilities than a brother. If we are going to be kin, then we must accept that these relationships come with responsibility. In our settler-colonial context, relationships between us are built on a paternalistic foundation: charity and good works, helping the less fortunate. Those who are part of the society that created the problem become the ones who think they can solve it. So we must move from recognizing the fact of our relationship to actually existing together in reciprocal relationships.

How do we restore relationships and balance to what has been made so precarious? The promises of the white Christian West have failed to materialize, and we are, socially and literally, on a precipice. How do we go from living in isolated silos to becoming good relatives? How does the church stop running wild and unshod and put down roots that reach deeply into the ground? We can draw on everything that our roots have pushed through and around and pulled forward. Rather than cutting off our roots because we are ashamed or afraid of what we will find, we can learn our history. We can reimagine the relationships we have inherited, and we can take up our responsibilities to each other.

This book examines the tensions and intersections between dominant modes of critical educational theory and issues relative to American Indian education. Though at the forefront of educational struggles for equity and social justice, critical theorists have failed to recognize and, more importantly, to theorize the relationship between American Indian tribes and the larger democratic imaginary. This failure has severely limited their ability to produce political strategies and educational interventions that account for the rights and needs of American Indian students. To compound the issue, American Indian scholars have largely resisted engagement with critical educational theory, concentrating instead on the production of historical monographs, ethnographic studies, tribally centered curriculums, and site-based research. The combined effect of external neglect by critical scholars and internal resistance among indigenous scholars has kept matters of American Indian education on the margins of educational discourse.

This lack of interchange has additionally raised a series of important questions: How has the marginalization of critical analyses within American Indian education contributed to the "culturalization" of American Indian issues and concerns? How has the focus on "cultural" representations of Indian-ness contributed to a preoccupation with parochial questions of identity and authenticity? And, finally, how has this preoccupation obscured the socialpolitical and economic realities facing indigenous communities, substituting a politics of representation for one of radical social transformation?

If a fountain could jet bouquets of chrome yellow in dazzling arches of chrysanthemum fireworks, that would be Canada Goldenrod. Each three- foot stem is a geyser of tiny gold daisies, ladylike in miniature, exuberant en masse. Where the soil is damp enough, they stand side by side with their perfect counterpart, New England Asters. Not the pale domesticates of the perennial border, the weak sauce of lavender or sky blue, but full- on royal purple that would make a violet shrink. The daisylike fringe of purple petals surrounds a disc as bright as the sun at high noon, a golden- orange pool, just a tantalizing shade darker than the surrounding goldenrod. Alone, each is a botanical super lative. Together, the visual effect is stunning. Purple and gold, the heraldic colors of the king and queen of the meadow, a regal procession in complementary colors. I just wanted to know why.

Why do they stand beside each other when they could grow alone? Why this particular pair? There are plenty of pinks and whites and blues dotting the fields, so is it only happenstance that the magnificence of purple and gold end up side by side? Einstein himself said that “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” What is the source of this pattern? Why is the world so beautiful? It could so easily be otherwise: flowers could be ugly to us and still fulfill their own purpose. But they’re not. It seemed like a good question to me.

But my adviser said, “It’s not science,” not what botany was about. I wanted to know why certain stems bent easily for baskets and some would break, why the biggest berries grew in the shade and why they made us medicines, which plants are edible, why those little pink orchids only grow under pines. “Not science,” he said, and he ought to know, sitting in his laboratory, a learned professor of botany. “And if you want to study beauty, you should go to art school.” He reminded me of my deliberations over choosing a college, when I had vacillated between training as a botanist or as a poet. Since everyone told me I couldn’t do both, I’d chosen plants. He told me that science was not about beauty, not about the embrace between plants and humans.