UC Berkeley

By utilizing Indigenous, decolonial and most importantly Na:tinixwe methodologies, this dissertation documents the ongoing settler colonial history of schooling in Na:tinixwe, charts a community vision for the education of Na:tinixwe youth, and lastly documents ongoing praxis of these community visions. The Hoopa Valley Tribe, or Na:tinixwe (Hupa people), reside in the far reaches of Northern California. Na:tinixw (Hoopa Valley) has been our homeland since time immemorial. Before the time of major European contact, around the 1850s, the Na:tinixwe lived along the Trinity River in 12 different villages. Each village was composed of different family groups. They lived their lives in the traditional Na:tinixw way, which included distinct political, social and economic systems. Education was a life-long process guided by teaching from ninisa:n, the land, kisdiya:n, elders and kixuna:y, the spirit ancestors (Nelson, 1978). In 1893 the Hoopa Valley Indian School was established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs with the mission of teaching Na:tinixwe children how to be civilized, in the hopes of killing off all that made them Hupa through military bootcamp tactics (Nelson, 1978). One major part of this was to force them to speak English only and punish any use of Na:tinixwe Mixine:whe (Bushnell, 1968). This technique of Indigenous linguistic elimination was widely employed by government funded Indian schools and reflects an incredibly important piece of the settler colonial drive to eliminate its Indigenous population (Iyengar, 2014). Following the conversion of the boarding school to a public school, in the same location, Hupa language and knowledge continued to be suppressed and marginalized while settler curriculum remained at the center. Today like many other publicly funded schools serving Native American children across the nation, Hoopa Valley Elementary School and Hoopa Valley High School are “underperforming”, underfunded and understaffed. The majority of the teachers are non-Native and Na:tinixwe traditional knowledge is highly marginalized, if present at all within the curriculum. This dissertation brings together the voice and visions of the Na:tinixwe to chart (re)envisioned pathways and praxis for education in our community.