Top 10 of 2015: Fulbright grant connects Oakton with indigenous communities (3)
Oakton Community College was the only U.S. community college to receive a highly respected Fulbright-Hays grant in 2014, funding a study of indigenous communities in the summer of 2015. The experience and findings land at No. 3 on the top 10 Oakton stories of 2015.
“It has been an amazing experience getting to learn about the native peoples of the Andes Mountains and the Amazon rainforest in Peru and Bolivia. They make their lives in such harsh environments, and yet they live in harmony with each other and nature,” said Katherine Schuster, Ph.D., professor of education and coordinator of the global studies program at Oakton Community College. “As indigenous communities disappear and assimilate throughout the world, it is a vital opportunity to interact with these communities and learn from their perspectives.”
Schuster and her co-leader, Eva de la Riva, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology, were awarded the $90,000 grant last year from the U.S. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to lead a group of educators on a five-week seminar to study indigenous people in Bolivia and Peru.
“These are very strong indigenous cultures that have survived for thousands of years, and we have a lot to learn from them,” said de la Riva. “For example, one of the things I found most striking was how people of the Aymara culture are encouraged at the earliest stages of their education to speak for themselves and express their own ideas. The community structure, called ayllu, encourages all members to be heard. Since this ‘speaking one’s mind’ begins in childhood, by the time the students reach the university level, it is remarkable how well the students have developed their critical thinking skills. They are impressively independent and confident students.”
The anticipated outcome of the program was that the participating educators would use this life-changing experience to develop exciting new classroom content and curriculum. In this way, the enriching experiences of the few can reach hundreds of high school and college students each year.
The group that traveled to Bolivia and Peru included five Oakton professors, six teachers from in-district high schools (Maine East and West, Niles North, and Evanston Township), a College of DuPage professor, and one from Madison, Wis. A year before the trip, the team began meeting to share discussions and to study the history, science, languages, and cultures of the area.
The trip was organized to provide an intensive and deeply immersive experience. The 35-day schedule included opportunities to study native languages and cultural practices, to learn about native and medicinal plants and agricultural techniques, to meet with educators and university officials in indigenous areas, to meet with government and NGO officials to examine how government policy affects indigenous communities, to investigate micro-lending programs and to meet with community organizers and learn about indigenous women in social movements. The group had the opportunity to listen to many oral histories of the area and also visited archeological sites, including Machu Picchu.
Among the highlights of the trip was the personal contact educators shared with the indigenous community during their three-day home stay with Aymara host families in Tocoli, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, and the overnight stay in a Peruvian rainforest rustic lodge before hiking through the forest to visit the community of the Huacaria, a Machiguenga ethnic group.
Since returning, members of the group have attended conferences to discuss their findings, given presentations to fellow educators, and created new curricula, such as a new honors course introduced at Oakton. Developed by Paul Gulezian, assistant professor of biology, and Lindsey Hewitt, lecturer in anthropology and humanities, the course combines their disciplines to examine how cultural and agricultural practices can affect biological systems and ecology.
“Globalization is rapidly changing the world we live in. By studying its effect on indigenous communities, we also gain perspective on how our own communities are affected,” Schuster said. “What we learned also helps close the knowledge gap in our curricula. In the typical western civilization versus eastern civilization model, there is little understanding of the experiences of indigenous people.”
This was Oakton’s second Fulbright-Hays Grant. In 2008, the college led a group of educators to study the history and outcomes of Gandhi’s nonviolent protest movement in India.