Overview
There is a crisis in education for urban Native youth, over 90% of all Native students attend public schools but the average national graduation rate for these students is 40% while also being disproportionately disciplined and suspended. We at the National Urban Indian Family Coalition (NUIFC) know this is not the students that are failing, it is the current system of education that is failing.
To respond to this need, the NUIFC is proud to announce the continuation of the Resurgence Urban Indian Education Initiative, which is reimagining K-12 education for urban Indigenous students. This work focuses on incorporating traditional Native values, knowledge, and pedagogies in order to support the social, emotional, intellectual and academic development of urban Native students.
The Resurgence Initiative is composed of two strategies:
Resurgence Practioner Network (RPN): a first of its kind cohort, bringing together the vanguard of urban Native K-12 educators from across the country
Resurgence Schools: A comprehensive summer programs for urban Indigenous youth that culturally contextualize the primary domains of learning.
Goals
Through the Resurgence Initiative, our aim is to influence systems of education nationally to center Indigenous ways of knowing and teaching. The overwhelming majority of Native students attend schools that use Western educational methods and teach from a Euro-centric perspective. The NUIFC commissioned a report on this subject called Resurgence: Restructuring Urban Indian Education Report. This rigorous study definitively outlines how the denigration of Native culture has been a primary goal of American education since the development of the earliest formal education systems.
While our primary focus to on serving urban Native students, we will work so that all children may have the opportunity to evolve from the extractive, transactional Euro-centric knowledge systems of the present so that they may become the next generation of leaders to equitably shape our socio-ecological futures.
Inquires and media requests around the Resurgence Education Initiative can be sent to Nathan Ratner at nratner@nuifc.org.
