Teaching and Learning with Indigenous Oral History: Intergenerational Truthtelling of Boarding Schools in Oklahoma

In the context of preparing for and undertaking K–12 teacher professional development in collaboration with the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, the Chilocco History Project, and the Chilocco National Alumni Association, among other partners, we consider the importance of place-based approaches to engaging oral history as a practice of Indigenous truthtelling of Native American boarding school histories, acknowledging that Chilocco is one of more than one hundred boarding schools—which are diverse in composition, administration (federal, missionary, tribal), size, lifespan, and more—across what is now Oklahoma. We suggest the importance of collaboration with boarding schoolers and their descendants in our work as a practice of healing and as a process of acknowledging and actively addressing continued experiences of epistemic harm, agency, and survivance of Native children and communities within the contemporary education system. We highlight three constellating lessons for Indigenous oral history outreach: the significance of pedagogical approaches to oral history that listen with the heart; the value of engaging multi-sensory forms of oral history and embodied listening; and the importance of collaboration with tribal communities (and, in our case, boarding schoolers and descendants) for engaging oral history as part of the present and future-oriented work of tribal self-determination. Ultimately, we argue that educators’ ethical engagement with Indigenous oral histories and oral traditions requires a willingness to examine contemporary public education as an ongoing site of struggle for decolonization and sovereignty that is entwined with Indigenous boarding school histories.