Introduction: Giving Voice to Multicultural Literacy Research and Practice

For more than two centuries, the stories told in school to Native American learners have glorified Western cultural traditions while seeking to recast Indigenous identities according to Euro-American ideals. Teresa McCarty, a non-Indian educator and cultural anthropologist, has worked at and with Rough Rock since 1980 as an ethnographer, curriculum developer, and consultant to the school. This chapter begins with the assumption that the Navajo language is a tremendous intellectual, social, cultural, and scientific resource to its speakers and humankind. Its goal has been to support and capitalize on local linguistic and cultural resources, and to incorporate them into the school curriculum in transformative and liberatory ways. One of the most important innovations introduced by Kamehameha Early Education Program (KEEP) was the concept of reading and writing as integrated processes rather than products resulting from the application of decontextualized skills.