Culture, place, and power Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy [electronic resource] : engaging the histories and possibilities of American Indian education /

I am honored and humbled to have the opportunity to consider the role of history and its relationship to “American Indian education” in this special issue of the History of Education Quarterly. Before I offer some commentary and ideas, I want to offer a caveat—or a confession—that should inform the way my paper is read. My caveat/confession is that I am not a historian, let alone a historian of education. Instead, I am an “Indigenous” anthropologist of education. Of anthropologists, Vine Deloria Jr. has written, “Into each life, it is said, some rain must fall … But Indians have been cursed above all other people in history. Indians have anthropologists.”1 My own thinking about anthropology is that much of Deloria's disdain is well placed. Some of what anthropologists do, however—listen to stories and engage with people and place—is useful to conversations about what American Indian education is and can be. In this case, sometimes rain feeds growth.2 It is from this viewpoint of growth and possibility that I offer my thoughts on the role of history, its methods, and what this might mean for American Indian education.

My intent in this commentary is not to summarize the articles in this volume. I do want to note, however, that the articles and the commentary are rich, thoughtful, and provocative. I am grateful for them because they have forced me to think deeply about the ways that history and education and their interaction are related to Indigenous education. I want to try to respond to the articles by arguing two basic but important points. First, the notion or concept of education is at once all too familiar, and simultaneously deeply complex. This issue of the History of Education Quarterly illuminates this point and I will return to it below. The second point is that learning is ubiquitous. Learning happens all over, and it is enabled, engaged, and enhanced in myriad ways and processes. It is to a further elaboration of these two points that I now turn.