As the U.S. Supreme Court prepared to rehear the case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1953, the 83rd Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 108, a policy to terminate federal treaty and trust responsibilities to Native American peoples. And, even as post-Brown desegregation went into effect, thousands of Native American children continued to attend segregated, English-only federal boarding schools. This lecture considers the Brown legacy, and broader issues of education equality, in the context of research, policy, and practice in Indigenous education. Focusing on a core argument in Brown—that equality of opportunity is a prerequisite “so that any child may succeed”—Dr. McCarty examines hard-fought pathways toward educational justice forged by Indigenous educators, parents, leaders, and allies; the larger colonial project in which those efforts are embedded; and the ways in which Indigenous initiatives are braided with those of others. Key to this analysis is recognition that equal access and uniformity of education approach are not synchronous with equity. Dr. McCarty concludes with ongoing challenges in fulfilling the promise of Brown—in particular, the simultaneous homogenizing and stratifying effects of current education policy—and what can be learned from diverse models of contemporary Indigenous education practice.
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