“You Take the Punches”: Native Youth Experiences of School Pushout

Research suggests a crisis in Native American education. Disparities in academic success are well-documented and have persisted despite myriad intervention efforts. Utilizing a decolonial Youth Participatory Action Research methodology and mixed-methods design, a team of youth researchers and adult collaborators conducted iterative rounds of participatory education, data collection, and analysis. Through this process, we generated evidence of Native-specific school pushout practices or what we call “punches” delivered by the institution: schooling designed for dispossession, curricular harm, disproportionate discipline, and microaggressions/racism. Collectively, our findings support alternative interpretations of the crisis in Native American education and suggest the institution itself must be placed at the epicenter; schools must be accountable to their co-creation of this crisis. We recommend strategies to address these structural factors and pursue educational justice for Native youth.