WHITENESS AND THE ERASURE OF INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Whiteness has systematically erased Indigenous peoples and their perspectives in higher education. White supremacy is a system of oppression normalizing discrimination, violence, and unequal distribution of power that has allowed whiteness or the normalization of white supremacy to permeate the institutions that sit on Indigenous land to infiltrate the very existence of Indigenous people. Whiteness has systematically erased Indigenous peoples and their perspectives in higher education by allowing only measurement based on the values of the dominant narrative. The purpose of the 2011 National Indian Education Study (NIES) was to describe the condition of and support the improvement of education for Indigenous students in the United States. The NIES contains a representative sample of Indigenous students in the United States. However, researchers based the sample on the school determination of Indigenous students, meaning that in some cases, schools excluded some Indigenous students from the study based on the school’s knowledge of the student’s ethnicity.