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ASU announces Pueblo Indian doctoral project


Bryan Brayboy and Elizabeth Sumida Huaman
September 05, 2012

ASU’s School of Social Transformation announced today it is launching a Pueblo Indian doctoral training project as part of its graduate programs in Justice and Social Inquiry.

Conducted in partnership with The Leadership Institute at the Santa Fe Indian School, the program will build local capacity within the 19 New Mexico Pueblos by facilitating the training of practitioner-researcher-scholars committed to developing Pueblo peoples and communities in the U.S. Southwest and beyond.

Two cohorts of Pueblo doctoral students will participate in the intensive three-year degree program, with one group of 10 beginning in 2012 and another in 2015.

The Pueblo Indian doctoral training project will be led by School of Social Transformation faculty members Elizabeth Sumida Huaman, assistant professor of Indigenous education and a senior researcher with The Leadership Institute, and Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Borderlands Associate Professor of Indigenous Education and co-director of the Center for Indian Education

In close collaboration with Mary Margaret Fonow, director of the School of Social Transformation, and Mary Romero, professor and faculty head of Justice and Social Inquiry, professors Sumida Huaman and Brayboy have co-designed a doctoral training program within the Justice and Social Inquiry curriculum that highlights The Leadership Institute’s work on the issues of Pueblo governance, the environment, land and cultural resource protection, health, language, education, art, economic and community development, family, and Indigenous law and jurisprudence.

The program will be delivered through a mixture of video-conferencing, online and in-person courses. Also included are community visits, training in critical Indigenous research methodology and fieldwork, and training in writing for publication. Upon completion of studies, the cohort as a collective will produce a formidable alliance around the most critical issues facing Pueblo peoples, with both local and global application for other Indigenous communities.

“This project gives the School of Social Transformation an opportunity to rethink the way we construct and carry out doctoral education with Indigenous peoples,” observed Bryan Brayboy. “At its core, we’ve developed a program that is rooted in assisting Pueblo communities in building their local capacity to address the pressing problems in front of them.

"Dr. Sumida Huaman and I agree that projects like this are firmly embedded in ASU’s mission and our responsibility to serving others. We feel both honored and humbled by the opportunity to work with these communities and with The Leadership Institute.”

"The training of Pueblo doctoral students is a critical part of the strategic planning at The Leadership Institute, the Santa Fe Indian School, and in Pueblo communities,” said Carnell Chosa, co-director of the institute, whose award-winning multi-layered vision of community development includes doctoral education for Pueblos.

“That Drs. Sumida Huaman and Brayboy were also considering doctoral education with Indigenous peoples made for a beautiful fit at the right time,” Chosa said. “We highly regard their personal experiences, academic expertise, and most importantly the respect and humility they have shown in supporting the Institute in building a program aligned with our vision of capacity-building. As The Leadership Institute is engaged in program development and research to serve Pueblo children and communities, we are tremendously excited about this partnership with the School of Social Transformation, where there are outstanding faculty working under a vital mission to engage in social change. These are the reasons we are very pleased to partner with ASU."

Regis Pecos, former governor of the Pueblo of Cochiti and co-director of The Leadership Institute, added: "We are looking forward to have ASU collaborate with the Institute in our efforts to have more Pueblo peoples earning PhDs. It is a natural and mutually beneficial partnership."

The project, said Professor Sumida Hauman, is special for its intense emphasis on respecting and building on Indigenous knowledge. “There is very strong Indigenous knowledge still present in each Pueblo,” she noted, “that is on par with and even supersedes Western knowledge. I think that's why our project is so unique – this project values the knowledge in the Pueblos while offering additional opportunities and access in formal education.”

In addition to support from ASU’s School of Social Transformation in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the doctoral program will be carried out with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Santa Fe Community Foundation, Chamiza Foundation, and the McCune Foundation.

To learn more about The Leadership Institute at the Santa Fe Indian School, visit lisfis.org.  For more information about ASU’s School of Social Transformation, visit sst.asu.edu.