Education as Cultural Continuity: Wyandot Strategies of Survival and Self-Determination, 1790–1915
The second 2025-2026 Indigenous Learning Forum will take place October 2, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. ET on Zoom. This talk will be given in English with Spanish translation.
This event is open to all but registration is required.
Tarisa Little (she/her) is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University. An ethnohistorian of Indigenous ways of knowing, Settler colonialism, and historical memory, she is committed as a Settler scholar to ethical, community-centered research that foregrounds Indigenous sovereignty and knowledge systems. She is co-editor of the forthcoming volume Reclaiming the Chalkboard: Indigenous Education Reimagined and has published in American Indian Quarterly, Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires, and Active History. Her current research explores Wyandot witchcraft histories. Across her work, she emphasizes relational accountability, methodological integrity, and the transformative power of Indigenous education.
Education as Cultural Continuity: Wyandot Strategies of Survival and Self-Determination, 1790–1915
This presentation examines how the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation used education as a strategy for survival and cultural continuity between 1790 and 1886. By establishing and controlling schools in Ohio and Ontario, the Wyandot prioritized Indigenous language, kinship, and spiritual life within colonial systems. Through biographical case studies of prominent Wyandot members, this presentation demonstrates how schooling became a tool of sovereignty rather than assimilation, functioning as a site of resilience, adaptation, and intergenerational knowledge transmission. It emerges from my current book project, Scholars of Aataentsic: Wyandot Education Strategies, which draws on extensive community archival and family history research conducted in collaboration with the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation. This research challenges dominant narratives of assimilation by highlighting Indigenous-led models of education and intellectual continuity.