I want to try writing some analysis of our Audio for Inclusion audio narratives to prepare for a journal paper. The two lenses by which I will be commenting are: 1) the figured worlds (or cultural worlds / social worlds) that students experience (and that faculty may not see or misunderstand) and 2) the critique and critical narrativization students employ when telling these stories (that provide feedback or reframing useful for faculty).
[00:00] Enola points out that her indigenous ancestry has become more salient to her as she shifts from a home context where everyone she knew was “in a tribe” to a college context where “everyone is confused and they don’t really know about indigenous people.” This shift in the identity salience of a student who moves away for college seems like a common experience, by nature our hometowns and K-12 educations can be a bit more consistent with and homogenous with our family and socioeconomic and other identity backgrounds, and a shift out of that context for college can create new identity salience. With this lens, the question “where are you from” is more predictable as a microaggression for any exoticized demographic. Similarly the feeling of being tokenized/ essentialized “as a spokesperson for all Indigenous people” is common with other demographics.
Though Enola doesn’t point out the irony, the question “where are you from” and the experience of being exoticized is particularly ironic in a white supremacist United States, where Enola could rightly say “from America” more accurately than most of the people who ask the question. Enola has a sense of awareness of this disconnect but not true critique. She seems to want to process what the cultural transition and identity salience mean for her, in terms of her career path etc. She also particularly does not critique or challenge the role as being a representative for all Indigenous people, she seems to want to study and distill her identity into forms that help her provide that role / information to non-Indigenous people. In some ways, this helps her provide the spokesperson role for our project, as we learn from and listen to her story. In another way, perhaps we would expect or encourage Enola to resist more, to see the disconnections and tokenizations as a problem, to help correct the record. We don’t see Enola engaging much of a critical narrative so far, but more of a recognition of the changing context and roles she is asked to take on.
[00:56] Enola points out that while her Indigenous identity is very important to her, it doesn’t really come up and she doesn’t bring it up in engineering class. In a French class, where discussions of culture and identity are more common, she may share her perspective as an Indigenous person more readily. One can imagine the co-figuring of this world then, each member of the engineering class figured world is co-constructing a norm where identities are not as discussed, a more depersonalized space. Notably, Enola is acculturated into engineering such that she does not problematize the depersonalization. One could understand if she silently critiqued the depersonalization of engineering, and saw the power dynamics of the dominant majority and the professor to mean she could not subvert the dynamic with much agency. However, the cultural reality of engineering is such that it presupposes speaking up about ones identity. Her interview generally does the opposite of critique– it notices the disconnects but says “it’s not really an issue for me, i don’t really feel i’m being left out at any point.”
She does see some small opportunities to bring up Indigeneity, such as a lesson on the environment, comparing environmental engineering techniques to traditional Native American techniques for protecting the environment. She imagines this is participation is part of what allows professors and peers to see her as a Native American person, without sharing in this way others likely perceive her as a different ethnicity / not Indigenous.
[2:12] The watermelon smashing event Enola tells probably surprises some listeners due to its unearthing a cultural logic / framework that is not white and Western. Enola saw the event as problematic because of food insecurity and because of the sacredness of watermelon in her religious and cultural traditions, which focus on eating only locally grown and in season foods. In the US engineering classes are usually grounded in a more Western cultural logic and perhaps rely on food as fun, food as building material, snacks as motivators, etc. Enola provides two good reasons (possible student food insecurity and possible religious traditions around food) that could give professors pause when planning these types of activities. Since many of these identities around food insecurity and/or religion are typically invisible to professors, we can imagine the professor imagining these cultural landscapes beyond their own powers of knowing to help create more inclusivity and/or we can imagine a professor inquiring with students to ask about scenarios such as these that could cause harm.
Enola shares how Covid weighed on her more than some other students, due to Indigenous and Hispanic identities. The intergenerational trauma that has been passed on to her was heightened because as Covid hit her community she also had the weight of elders’ knowledge and linguistic traditions going extinct. This serves as another reminder of how many of the students’ cultural worlds and meanings attached to events are relatively unknown and invisible to professors.
Tying back to the classroom, Enola points out that this depth of grieving and mental health challenge she was experience is not well ameliorated by a simple and short stint in counseling. She phrases it that her sharing of her challenges “doesn’t really mean anything to them” further representing this disconnect between their worlds.
[04:22] Enola suggests that professors be “required to learn a bit more about their students’ backgrounds,” that is, to have more formal knowledge of their identities and to better understand their cultural / figured worlds. Although she was hesitant to imagine the engineering classroom culture looking differently or to leverage much critique, the suggestion she makes here would be a radical departure from the culture she has presented and in some ways normalizes. Enola pivots her reasoning around the importance of understanding the backgrounds to a related identity group, Muslims, who also have religious practices related to food, fasting during Ramadan. By better connecting with and understanding the identities of their students, Enola thinks professors can better understand why they might be having a hard time and what might not be helpful (offering snacks). Of course, this scenario is a specific one out of many possible, but it does represent the opening a professor would have to better support their students if they had more individualized knowledge.
Enola also brings up a land acknowledgement, perhaps tied to what professors should be required to do and/or to what students should be required to learn about. She likens this learning to a cross cultural learning assignment she enjoyed in one engineering class. In some ways, this gives more work to students like Enola, and perhaps it is simply learning she enjoys doing. But, one can also imagine that requiring students to “consistently and constantly learn about other cultures and make sure that whatever you’re doing you’re considering multiple aspects” is also a suggestion for a way that the constituents of engineering culture could better understand and support her.
Finally, Enola reflects on her tribe and their challenges and whether and how the courses she’s taking will benefit the tribe. She asks, “how is thermodynamics going to save my people from all these problems they’re facing?” In a way, it’s a bid for cultural responsiveness, to have her engineering education clarify why their tools and content matter to her own life and culture. It is not phrased as much of a critique, again, but if you imagine where the question is coming from and the lack of alignment she is feeling, it’s a powerful question, questioning the structures and content of her own education. She looks towards conducting research as a way of making her engineering knowledge (alternate / sustainable energy) relevant to local tribes and tribal issues. This partial resolution helps us see at least one way forward for creating culturally responsive education for students like Enola– by empowering her tools to connect to meaningful problems for her own community, by modeling a process of education more similar to independent mentored research, a student like Enola can learn how to use her “engineering experience and knowledge” to help her community.