Benham, M. (2002). Bringing out the stories: Lessons about engagement. Journal of the American Indian Education, 41(2, 2002).
What is Sacred:
Maenette Benham, a native Hawaiian scholar is the editor of this special edition and she also writes the introduction. For some unknown reason, that is all I have is the introduction but I need to read every day, so sometimes I grab things not realizing it is a partial something. The object of this exercise, though, is to make do with what comes before me so here goes. . .
The introduction explains the outline of their project to collect stories from different "tribal colleges" and weave those stories into stories about engagement of Indigenous students in higher education. I only quote tribal college because BYU Hawaiʻi is one of the colleges they are sharing stories about, and you know, we Hawaiians are not tribes which makes it difficult to have conversations around money with other native peoples. Anyway, nothing to do with the introduction. What it does is confirm my belief, based on observation, gut, and Edward Said, that storytelling is a way to share research data.
The process of storymaking requires the collection and analysis of data, and framing these data in a way that best present the work of a community of people.They did not have space to share their method, but they shared the outline that each college used to do their own "storymaking." Each of the main 4 sections also had prompts or questions attached.
- The initiative
- The partnerships
- The leadership: wisdom of practice
- So what can we learn?
I really like the last two main sections mainly because some of the mana wahine are writing a chapter about the empowerment from our dissertation in practice. We each will do a few pages which means I have to write a short, short story or a vignette so I needed an outline (due on May 14). One of the mana wahine already did her outline and I am just not an outline kind of girl, so the prompts in this article give me more outwardly recognizable structure.
3.the leadership - c. - If you can, talk about how leadership processes are supporting the following values: . . .(4) empowerment matters
4. so what. . .a. About how to make the learning experience valuable; b. About how native ways of knowing can drive learning and teaching, determine methods of problem-solving and decision-making, and at the same time be inclusive of diverse ways of knowing.
This does not write my outline for me, but I think this is the path, or rather this WILL be the path, I just have to trust that.
Note to self: In Evernote Abstracts/Proposals folder
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