Navajo Nation, Penn State team receive grant for Indigenous character education

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Associate Professor of Education Hollie Kulago has received a grant to lead a collaboration between the Navajo Nation’s Department of Diné Education (DODE) and the University’s Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative to study Indigenous character education. The concept, known as K’é among the Navajo — or Diné — community, refers to kinship and gaining the insight and skills to become a responsible member of the community.

The grant — a total of $268,646 over two years — comes from the Brady Education Foundation, which works to support collaborations focused on closing educational opportunity gaps associated with race, ethnicity and economic status. The funding will help amplify the partners’ efforts to build on a successful 2022-23 pilot year, during which the team collaboratively developed a character-building curriculum for Navajo Nation students.

Headquartered in Window Rock, Arizona, DODE supervises and supports the Navajo Nation’s tribally controlled schools. Based at the Penn State Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative helps educators teach a variety of difficult topics and issues, including human rights abuses and trauma.

“Partnering with the Navajo Nation to do research and curriculum building that is led by, useful to and supports the sovereignty of the Diné people is a part of decolonizing efforts and provides insights into critical research methodologies, pedagogies and partnering processes,” said Kulago, who is also an affiliate faculty member of the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative and a member of the Navajo Nation who researches Indigenous and decolonizing curriculum and pedagogies and partnering with Indigenous communities. “I’m grateful to know that organizations like the Brady Education Foundation and the partnering entities value this necessary work.”

During the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, the partners will support participating Navajo teachers’ work with character education in the Diné Bikéyah (Navajoland), which includes portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. A traditional Diné perspective has guided the development of the character education curriculum, according to the collaborators.

“K’é is the foundation of our Diné existence,” said Dorthea Litson, senior education specialist with DODE and the project’s key community collaborator. She explained that k’é concepts root and guide the character-building curriculum development. “K’é starts with the individual and extends out to immediate family, relatives and surrounding people.”

Besides Kulago, an affiliate faculty member of the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative, the core partnership team includes DODE senior education specialist Dorthea Litson, who serves as the project’s key community collaborator, and Logan Rutten, an education specialist for the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative. Elizabeth Hinchcliff, a research assistant for the initiative, joined the team earlier this summer in a supportive role.

“This project reflects a shared commitment to collaborative inquiry that supports the educational goals of the Navajo Nation and ultimately serves Diné youth,” Rutten said. “Through this research, we aim to learn more about processes of respectful, responsible collaboration that advance the vitally important work that Indigenous communities are already doing.”

The initiative has been committed to partnering with the Navajo Nation since early conversations in 2021, said the initiative’s director, Boaz Dvir, associate professor of journalism in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications.

“We’re grateful to the Brady Education Foundation for recognizing and strengthening this partnership’s incredible potential,” Dvir said. “And I’m grateful to Hollie, Dorthea, Logan and Elizabeth for going above and beyond in their roles.”