16 November 2009
Educating Indigenous Latin American Youth
Washington — How does education outside their communities help indigenous youth to lead their people, preserve their cultural heritage or assimilate back into their villages?
If “it takes a village to raise a child,” what happens when the child leaves the village and returns as an educated individual to help his people? How easy is it for the student to become a contributing member of his society? Paul Silva of Georgetown University and José Barreiro of the National Museum of the American Indian addressed these questions with America.gov.
Silva is a senior staff member with Georgetown University’s Center for Intercultural Education and Development and project director for the Scholarships for Education and Economic Development (SEED) program. He has designed and managed activities of international development projects for the education of rural indigenous youth in the Caribbean, Central America and South America.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recently awarded Georgetown a five-year cooperative agreement to administer the SEED program in the Caribbean and Central America. Silva told America.gov that the scholarships “build human capacity in rural communities.”
He looks for isolated communities with indigenous youth, and builds a relationship with the community elders and the youth so the young people can receive scholarships, are educated outside their countries and return to help their families and take leadership roles in their villages. “The community makes a commitment,” Silva said.
The students return, experienced in leadership, volunteerism, technical skills and English. The SEED program helps the students find entry-level jobs. Most earn enough money to help support their families and continue with their education.
When these types of programs began more than 20 years ago, Silva explained, there was hesitation and resistance among communities and their leaders. The fear was that the young people would return changed, unable to assimilate back into their culture and people.
But Silva said that when students return to their indigenous communities after two years (in schools in major cities in Latin America and the United States) they are confident in the skills they have learned. They have received encouragement from the studies to help their communities, and have shared experiences with other indigenous youth from all over Latin America in the SEED programs.
Silva described the returning students as “full of enthusiasm and leadership ideas,” eager to engage their friends and family members in community betterment, volunteerism and service projects. Officials in Argentina, Silva said, were so pleased with the first 20 students sent through a SEED program that the government funded five more students.
Indigenous women students, Silva told America.gov, are his preferred participants in the programs. “They can multitask so well,” he said. More than half the current scholarship winners are women. Silva cited success stories among the women students who have returned to their communities committed to entrepreneurship and to help others.
The SEED program, Silva said, has “worked for so long in countries now that their communities know and trust me, and we’re seeing great development.”
A promising scholarship student from Haiti, Marie Laurette St. Fleur, received funding to study teacher training in the United States. More than a decade later, she has taught more than 380 school principals and 2,500 teachers in southern and eastern Haiti. She encourages educators as well as families to commit to the goal of parental involvement in children’s education.
GROWTH OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES THROUGH LEADERSHIP
Born in Cuba of Taino heritage, and now the assistant director for research at the National Museum of the American Indian, José Barriero has traveled and worked extensively researching indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. While a professor of Native American studies at Cornell University, he was active in the education of Native American and Latin American indigenous youth and their subsequent re-entry into their communities.
“There is strength and impetus in the communities today,” Barreiro said, “to preserve their identities through families, medicinal practices and tribal traditions.” Barreiro said that within indigenous groups “there is a need for leadership to create a consciousness” that preserves and protects cultural practices and heritage. “They have to create a consciousness on a deeper level, and then there is the potential for sustaining their traditions. Then there is survival.”
The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian recently helped inaugurate the first indigenous-community museum in Peru, in the town of Pisac in the Sacred Valley of Cusco. It was a five-year process that culminated in a community-run museum.
The museum markets indigenous crafts to eliminate middlemen and increase the profits of community craftsmen. “The project is a source of pride to the community,” Barreiro said, “and an example of the leadership of the indigenous people of the area.”
Barreiro sees that indigenous groups in Latin America are moving beyond old prejudices. “Old schooling,” Barreiro said, “maintained the approach that the child was an empty vessel and needed to be filled with the ‘right ideas’ that didn’t include tribal identity.” During Barreiro’s tenure as a professor at Cornell University, he witnessed numerous examples of students receiving education and returning to their indigenous communities to contribute to their heritage. Barreiro spoke of the “full circle program” where the university worked with native communities so that the graduates would return and “give back.”
Barreiro pointed to the case of an American Indian doctoral student in veterinary medicine who returned to her tribal lands to work within her community rather than accept a far away but higher-paying job in the commercial sector.
“She made a conscious decision to return to her people,” Barreiro said, helping tribal leaders in the preservation of local lands where the environment had been devastated by mining. Barreiro sees the problems that the young indigenous person coming from a traditional family faces when education today is “skewed toward Westernization.”
“The person’s attitude, and the community’s attitude about that person, will shape the future of that society,” Barreiro said. “Leadership is needed. It’s not insurmountable. Native communities need to benefit from interactions with the mainstream society while still maintaining their cultural identity, and educated indigenous youth have an important role in developing their people’s future.”
