In April 2026, Northeastern State University hosted the on its campus in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
Dr. Clint Carroll, a member of the Cherokee Nation and Associate Professor of Native American and Indian Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, has worked with community elders and leaders to design a model of Indigenous education that is very different from the one that has traditionally been imposed on them.
He recently spoke at the 53rd Annual Symposium on the American Indian about his work with Cherokee Nation Medicine Keepers to develop a culturally responsive model of learning rooted in four guiding principles designed to promote Native sovereignty and push back against the colonial models of education by centering Cherokee cultural practices and knowledge in the curriculum.
John Ross, a member of the Cherokee Nation who was in attendance at the symposium, has been championing for a decade a proposal for a 10,000-acre Cherokee National Park that would be tribally owned and managed, and house a full Cherokee land-based university on the grounds.
But while that goal is still a ways off, there is much that institutions can do now to ground learning in Indigenous students’ lived experiences and cultural histories.
In his remarks, Carroll told attendees of the April 2026 event hosted by Northeastern State University how he gathered with a small number of elders within Cherokee Nation and the staff of the Cherokee Nation Environmental Resources Department for a two-day workshop. Together, they discussed developing a land-based education curriculum for Cherokee youth to prepare young people in their community to tackle environmental challenges, while centering the knowledge, language, and land-based practices of their ancestors.
During the workshop, elders reflected on their experiences with both “informal” education – learning passed down from their family, community, and teachers – as well as the “formal” education received from Indian boarding schools during their youth. Their time in Indian boarding schools serves as a reminder that “the assimilatory policies and projects of the settler-colonial state were not distant occurrences,” said Carroll.
What resulted from that convening was a model for educating Indigenous students that is rooted in both the “necessary act of cultural survival and a political assertion of Indigenous sovereignty” and is based on four guiding principles, Carroll said.
The first, building a strong relationship to the land, builds upon the belief in Cherokee culture that “we are all related.” This relation extends not only to other human beings, but also to the land, water, and all life. According to Carroll, medicine keeper Gary Van stated, “We were always told, ‘You come from the land, and everything you need comes from the land.’” Rooting education in a sense of place honors the connection the Cherokee people have with the land and their responsibility to maintain that connection, Carroll said.
The second guiding principle of culturally responsive Indigenous teaching practices is to leverage the Cherokee language, which is deeply important in conveying culturally specific knowledge and values, Carroll said. One benefit of teaching in Cherokee is the language’s descriptive properties, which lessen the need for detail-oriented lessons.
In Cherokee, the word for teach most accurately translates to the English “show,” illustrating their cultural emphasis on hands-on learning. Cherokee leaders often teach by showing, and pupils learn by doing. Carroll said elders will often simply say, “Come help me do this,” and gradually work their way to a point where their student realizes that they are no longer being guided and are now capable of doing a task on their own.
The third principle is tapping into Indigenous students’ communal and spiritual values; working together should be a guiding principle of any Indigenous education program, he said. They emphasize the need to be “in accord with each other and all creation in order to live right spiritually,” said Carroll. Additionally, it is important to the community leaders that students in the program learn to see one another as family and depend on their community.
The final principle is having a good time. The Cherokee leaders recognize the importance of enjoying the learning process, laughing, and having a good time while learning from the land. “They recalled that traditional Cherokee education always made plenty of room for storytelling and good-natured joking,” Carroll said. In modern times, this commitment to laughter and joy can be seen as a radical act, when considering the “relentless, historical, and ongoing colonial attempts to assimilate Indigenous peoples and dispossess them of their lands.”
Carroll’s ongoing work with elders and leaders resulted in the establishment of the first-ever tribal conservation area, the Cherokee Nation Medicine Reserve, which opened in April 2024. The reserve is an 800- acre tract of tribal trust land, where the students and medicine keepers can put the model into practice. These guiding principles envision a thriving future for the Cherokee people, with good relationships to the land, learning, and community that perpetuate Cherokee knowledge and life.
