Chelsea Craig and Dr. Anthony Craig on Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Leading

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Alright, let’s jump in. You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast, where we unpack what is new and innovative in education. I’m your host Jessica, and today we’re speaking with Anthony and Chelsea Craig, leaders in the state of Washington, and advocates for indigenous ways of life and leading.

Dr. Anthony Craig has served as a teacher, teacher leader, principal, and central office administrator in suburban and reservation settings in Washington state. He is a professor of practice, educational leadership, and policy studies at the University of Washington’s College of Education, where he directs the Leadership for Learning program. Chelsea Craig is a member of the Tulalip tribe, and has spent her career serving as a teacher

at Tulalip Elementary. Her experiences include being the school librarian, teaching second and third grade, and most recently she has served as the cultural specialist for Quasida Tulalip Elementary. Let’s listen in as Tom, Chelsea, and Anthony discuss the current sense of mutuality, sustainability, and what the modern world can learn from the wisdom of indigenous practices.

Chelsea and Anthony, Craig, welcome to the Getting Smart podcast. Thank you. Thank you. We’re happy to be here. It’s great to have you on the show.

I’d love to start by just having each of you reflect on your journey to education. Maybe what called you to education, when that happened? Maybe Dr. Craig, maybe we could start with you. Sure. Yeah, this is a story that’s really important to me, and I end up reflecting on it quite

a bit. There are immediate connections. My dad was a teacher. He retired from the classroom after about 35 years, and I always have looked up to my dad and continue to.

He’s my main mentor in the field of education. Then I think more broadly to my grandparents. On both sides of my family, my grandparents were educators, but one grandmother was the head cook for the school district. The other was the head secretary.

Both of my grandfathers were actually bus mechanics and ran the transportation departments for the school district that my family grew up in on my reservation on Yakima Nation. My grandparents really instilled in us this notion of how to use education to serve our community, to build the life that we want to live. I believed in that from a really young age.

Then I got to kindergarten, and it wasn’t what I thought it should be. I have these vivid recollections of walking into my kindergarten classroom and looking around and thinking, yeah, this is all right, but it won’t quite do. I decided at that point to be a kindergarten teacher. I wanted to be the very first person that families would meet as their kids started

in this K-12 endeavor. It was my first formal schooling. Like I said, because I had those models and I had grown up walking in and out of classrooms in these really familiar ways, I decided to be a kindergarten teacher. That’s what I did.

My goal was to go teach in the school that my family had been serving on my reservation until I met Chelsea. Chelsea was an educator on her reservation, and it was during my student teaching time that I realized the power in connecting with her as a colleague. Then of course, a few years down the line, we got married.

It was a really good and important introduction to my formal work in education. It’s really that drive to understand what could be. If as Indigenous people, we help shape those spaces, and this wasn’t my thought as a young kindergartner, but ultimately over time, what could we make this schooling experience be for our people, for our community, really given the violent, harmful history of formal

education that my elders and ancestors lived by being removed from home and taken to the boarding school. That included my grandmother’s generation and my grandmother herself, taken from her home and moved to St. George’s Indian School in Tacoma from the Yakima Reservation. She would drop bits and pieces of that experience.

She was in my home. She helped raise us with my parents. I thought I have a responsibility to help make something different and never let that happen to our people again. Anthony, one thing I appreciate about your writing and some quotes that I’ve seen of

you is you have this beautiful sense of being part of a long period of time, of connected to your ancestors and a responsibility to your descendants. It’s beautiful that that’s an important part of your journey to education as well, right? Yeah, thank you. My mom, who’s not a formal educator, but spent so much of our lives teaching us, would remind

us that, and she would say this to Chelsea and me once we were classroom teachers and we’d get really frustrated, well, you have to remember you have to bring it as far as you can. You have to set things up so you can hand it to your children and the people who are their age.

What you just said, Tom, sometimes it’s a set of actions and sometimes it’s dreams that we have, visions that we have for what this could be. And I’m not talking like mystical spirit dreaming. I’m talking about actually what can we accomplish if we dream it forward, if we do the work that sets it up to hand it to the next generation.

So we try to make that also very practical and precise in what we do. Chelsea, what was your journey to the classroom? Well, I think about one particular moment in time. I was a senior in high school and all my friends around me were being called to the counselor’s office to figure out their college plans and I never got that invite.

And so I made an appointment, I went to the counselor myself and I said, I want to go to college. I’m first generation, I don’t understand how to do that. And he looked at me and said, I’m sorry, you don’t have the grades it takes to go to college. You don’t have the money or resources it takes to go to college.

And in that moment in time, I could have felt defeated, but I felt this strong sense of not only am I going to go to college, but I’m going to come back and take your job. That was exact feeling I had. And I did just that I didn’t take his job, but I came back and served in the same community that I, I survived that system.

And I say survive because I started as a kindergartner where they labeled me as a juvenile delinquent. And I landed in special ed programs where I wasn’t able to read till I was in fifth grade. So my my personal experience drove me to want change for my people.

But what most importantly drove me into education is to liberate the soul of my grandmother, who survived the Tulalaporting school, who’s was forced removal from her home has long lasting effects for every generation since then at a cellular level, and is the case for all indigenous people on in the United States and Canada. And I believe that healing needs to happen.

And the first step is acknowledging where education began for our people and how it has not really changed since then. And what I mean by that is we still have a colonized oppressive system that is currently damaging our children and our cultures and our community. So everything I do, I hold that center.

But also with that intention that Anthony talked about of Senate seven generations out. So the work that we’re doing now is going to set the path for my son when he becomes a teacher and are in the next generations to make it easier for them to know who they are as indigenous people. And for us not to get lost in the system.

I’m really brought into education to be an interrupter and healer, I believe. Thank you, Chelsea. I think I’d love to just dive right into the work that you’re currently doing at Quocita to Lila. Could you tell me about your role there and also how you think about the mission of that

school? Sure. So I’m currently the cultural specialist at my school and I’m not in a classroom. I’m there to support classroom teachers and to support cultural work happening at our school and at a district level through since time immemorial curriculum.

And really to talk about our mission, I first have to tell you that in order to do that, we had to reimagine what leadership looks like at our school. The formal systems that have been in place since school started, the structures need to be adapted and changed to meet the needs of our community. Because most often they are not leaders that come from the community.

They don’t have that background information and they need community members. They need the voices of the families and communities sitting side by side with major decision making really at every step. So the first thing that we did this last spring is reimagine what that could look like. So I actually have my administration credentials, but I currently am not pursuing that line

of work yet. But I have been invited to be a part of the administrative team at my school and they value the knowledge, the ancestral knowledge that I carry and the lived knowledge of a system that needs to be interrupted. They know that my voice is needed, my community’s voice is needed.

So we began our journey of reimagining who we are as a school through our mission and vision work. And we centered to lay up history, ancestral knowledge and to lay vision that the tribe runs their organization on when we began this work and made sure that all voices were at the table for this process.

And by centering and recognizing that, we’re realizing we needed to write our own story, our own way of being. So we started with traditional story. We started with a story that is well known in the Coast Salish territories. It’s called Lifting Up the Sky.

And we listened to that story and what messages that had to tell us and that brought us on a journey of it’s not a mission that we needed to write, it’s our own traditional story. So our mission is maybe looks like a traditional mission, but it’s actually a traditional story that’s rooted in knowledge of the cedar tree and its importance and what we can learn from that.

And canoe knowledge and protocols and cedar basket tree imagery and it’s really telling the story of how we’re growing our children and everything we need to do to help provide everything for the time they leave us in fifth grade. And our mission is, I want to read it to you because I think that it tells you a little bit about who we are.

QCT family actively works to change the story of education for the Tulalip community while working towards healing and decolonizing educational practices that will continue to empower and motivate every member to learn, grow and promote our students to be safe, healthy, positive within the community. And what I think is the most significant part in there is that we’re decolonizing our education

because if we don’t recognize that, then we’re going to continue to perpetuate the same practices, the same leadership moves and the same results. So understanding that there’s an interruption that needs to happen and we actually call it reclaiming space. And what I mean by that is there are moments in our school system that we have reclaimed

as Indigenous spaces and practices. And if it’s okay, I’m going to just go ahead and name one of those practices. And this actually started with the leadership when Anthony was the principal about 10 years ago. We started a morning assembly. So every single day, our whole school meets in the gym.

And that’s rather than meeting in classrooms, we all convene in the gym and have one, ideally, eight minute assembly to launch the day in a good way. We start with a traditional song that first when we first began was my own family song, but now has grown to many different community songs that we sing. We do that in the name of our ancestors for what they were not allowed to do,

for what they were actually jailed and our children were harmed in the boarding school era. And then since then, our culture did not exist in the schools. So by making that commitment to start every day with a traditional song is reclaiming that space. So for two minutes of our day, we’ve reclaimed that space. And our goal is to think about how, where else in our school system can we interrupt and reclaim?

Thank you, Chelsea. I love the mission. I quote Cida to Layla. I love the focus on interruption that you talked about and then empowering and motivating every member to learn, grow and promote.

And to be a positive member of the community. So it’s a beautiful mission statement. Chelsea, are your learners predominantly from the Tulalip Nation? Yeah, we we fluctuate around 70% native from our community. And we also have a lot of other diversity in our school as well.

That’s great. And I’m sure it’s a beautiful space for all learners, right? It from the sounds of your mission statement. Dr. Craig, I didn’t I didn’t know that you had been principal there. That’s that’s interesting.

This it’s it’s a beginning of the answer to this question. I’m curious how you began to study indigenous models of leadership. And and how you now think about that and how that might be different than traditional Western modes of leadership or leadership thinking. Yeah, that, you know, the answer can can change in terms of like where we’re trying to go on any given day based on sort of teachings that we’re centering.

And by teachings, we mean sort of these traditional knowledges that we try to enact. When as we learn them because it’s it’s our sort of life’s work to be more proficient in our own culture or cultures from our our tribes that Chelsea and I come from. I think it started for me in recognizing that the way I wanted to run my kindergarten classroom was different than what I had been trained to do. So to think about what it would mean to run a classroom that felt true to who I was as a Yakima person, but also reflective of what to layla people were asking for as they entrusted us with their young people, so I had this class of 25 kids vast majority were to layla tribal members. And I had this notion that I couldn’t just march through curriculum and I had a principal who believed believed in me and and also realize that there were other ways to do things.

He was not native, he was a Mexican man who I his son was in my class, so this was an idea that wasn’t just good for native people to center humanity to Center love. To see individual students as part of a really complex broad beautiful strong family structure those indigenous ideas can be really abstract, but they can also become really precise and concrete when you try to put them into action. So indigenous leadership models for us for Chelsea and me. And this is the way our families work as native people actually came from sitting at the feet of her grandfather. So Chelsea’s grandfather who’s now gone was really influential in moving us from sort of this. Unchecked critique of Western system, so we had lots of issues with what we were being asked to do the way we’re being evaluated based on our children’s children’s performance our students performance on tests and other assessments or attendance.

Until we brought over time brought these complaints home to grandpa Bernie so one day he finally it’s like he had had enough of us just complaining or just being a victim to the problem he’d say well stop being a victim you already have ways forward you already have life ways. That if you just stopped critiquing and instead started to act you you would you would realize the power and beauty of. Instead of marginalizing our indigenous ways marginalize all the Western ways being imposed on us and center the indigenous ways. So that was our start our start was with grandpa Bernie and also grandpa’s reminder that. My elders had been preparing me for this my grandmother. I used to ask her what did you want to do grandma.

When you grew up, well I wanted to be a teacher, but you know Indians couldn’t go to college then. So her leadership happened through that secretary seat to be the head secretary of a district most of us in formal education understand the power and leadership in that role. My grandfather’s power as the head bus driver the head mechanic the person who figured out the logistics for transportation. He was going to get all of these young Yakima people to school every day that was his leadership. So it wasn’t seeking a position. It was really understanding this.

I’ll use the word complex over and over because I want people to understand. It’s not like you can pick up an indigenous model and set it down on top of something else or to step into it. There’s this understanding you have to have about the relationship between people about taking a traditional teaching that might come from us, like one of the stories Chelsea was mentioning, or something an elder says, or a word in our indigenous language, and then you have to decide and what do I do with that. So our study is often moving from sparks that we get from indigenous words or ideas so my language is each ishkan Chelsea’s is la chute seed. We’re not fluent speakers. We have to really approach. Reclaiming our languages from an English mindset and recognizing the depth in our words so it might just seem like vocabulary, but to unfold those words to say wow that everything we need to write a vision and mission is right there in this phrase so grandpa Bernie’s phrase for us in the chute seed was

the chute. We already have a way that’s our way of life. So it. So then we never rest. So then, in a beautiful way like we never rest to reclaim these spaces, and lots of indigenous people scholars have written about this for Chelsea and me. One of our heroes is Linda Smith, who is a Maori scholar from New Zealand and we were rereading together Linda Smith’s book it’s actually sitting right here the colonizing methodologies, and this idea that we read again very recently was to leave no spaces neutral. So in our work, if you leave it neutral, it’s going back to what grandpa told us was being a victim. If you leave a space, an idea, a moment of the day, a practice neutral, then it gets gobbled up and claimed by the settler system.

If you go claim it as indigenous, then you’re much more likely to hold on to that space and replace it with something that’s undeniably more powerful than just the Western status quo. Dr. Craig, I want to ask you this complicated question about the purpose of education. Do you work with a group of doctoral students, many are aspiring system heads. As part of your role at the University of Washington. If one of them said Dr Craig, how do I think about the purpose of education or how with my community do I recreate a common sense of, of what that should be how would you answer them. I think that that’s a hard question.

Yeah, there’s a book like that to that right. It is necessary to acknowledge that there will be lots of answers to that question. So diversity isn’t about counting up the number of black, brown or indigenous people in a space or doing work or in a school system. So diversity is really about understanding the power and beauty that comes with all of these ancestral traditions that sometimes we move with and we’re not even aware, because part of the settler colonial complex is to scrub all all of us clean of any sort of ethnic or cultural or linguistic diversity in order to conform assimilate to these Western models that place white men at the pinnacle. So there’s that so understanding that the ways to liberate ourselves from settler colonialism or structural racism will take the beauty and power and intellectual traditions of all sorts of people, all peoples.

And what you’ll see in me it’s to say, these lands and waters that we occupy. There are lands and waters. What will make sense for these territories actually comes from our people starting there doesn’t mean that we push out marginalized ignore it just means that’s that has to be the center. So rather than just complaining or critiquing or being sad that white patriarchal structures are in our way, we just push them to the side and understand if we center our languages our leadership models. That’s what school is for. It’s for liberation from settler colonialism. It is for power and empowerment and seeking beautiful life for all sorts of people. And no longer maintaining the hierarchy that, from my opinion, undeniably places white men at the very top of the settler colonial pyramid, and then everyone else falls into line beneath that. And what we’ll see talks about interruption and disruption. And as we grow as leaders and educators and people were really pushing beyond disruption to say and we, we can replace those harmful violent

with things that are actually expansive and beautiful and inclusive. So that’s the purpose of education is to create and nurture over time. These spaces that are inclusive expansive beautiful rich in language. So, yeah, it’s a book like and book length answer Tom, that I’ll just boil down to there has to be more to schooling and education than achievement of individuals, and more about this, the potential for beautiful life and that’s frustrating to some people who want this precise answer that answers the question what do I get out of it. And I just ask back what do we get out of it. What do the future generations get out of what we’re doing with education. And Chelsea centering that liberation for our grandmother souls. In what ways are we using school to liberate what our grandmother survived liberate our grandmothers from that extreme violence. I’ll stop there Tom I, I could spin out of control but I’ll stop right there.

And, you can add anything you’d like to that but I also to make this super tangible for folks at an elementary school, one, two of the things that you talk about are valuing your growth mindset and meeting learners, where they are, maybe you could describe what that looks like at that. Sure. Well, first of all when we think about like growth mindset, I want to acknowledge that our people have had a growth mindset and had a way of thinking and learning since time immemorial. So, we really are trying to center that work. And then we also have that around 10 years ago again under the administrative guidance of Anthony and Kristen do it. We’re working on a journey of really exploring growth mindset and understanding what that means for for our community and it starts with the adults that we have to have that that idea of growth mindset that that we have the power to get better at things and work towards

things. If we don’t have that, then we will be fixed in our thinking and not believe that we can make change. And over time that has evolved to a through many different changes in our school. Part of a new new framework that we’re working towards which is, we call it the qualsita to lay up elementary resiliency framework. And really that is centered around the medicine wheel and understanding that all parts of ourself have to be present in every part of our school system. And growth mindset has is not an isolated idea.

SEL works not isolated academics, it all has to mesh and connect together around addressing all parts of ourselves. I love that integrated integrated vision. Anthony in your work at the University of Washington with aspiring system heads I wonder if you have any, any practical advice about the way in which they could better engage their community. The communities that they’re serving or their communities that they’re planning to serve. What does that leadership look like today. Yeah, thank you, I think that there are really straightforward ideas that I learned from elders until Laila.

When I was a teacher when I was an administrator. Now that I’m here, these elders still hold on to this notion of showing up and being present. So number one for someone who’s stepping in as a leader of a school school district or a school system or a leader within that space is to be present. There are, it can feel geographical, but it’s really this spiritual and cultural connection that it’s not about counting up how much time you’re there so to lay up and, for example, so many educators except for Chelsea and me, drive in and out of that community every day. So, Chelsea is the only person who’s from and of to lay up, you know, at this point in time now there are several others. But to be mindful about working to be an insider in that space, and that’s not to co-op or to claim something that’s not yours or be an explorer discovering this community it’s really about your honest commitment.

And your ethic around getting to know elders, young people, formal leaders in that space. So I encourage my students to understand who are the people that you have in mind when you write or enact a policy, or when you look at data, like connect the actual humans there and not just the student. And that’s not true of just indigenous people all of our students are products of this broader existence a broader network of people. So number one, be present, and that can look lots of different ways. Number two, have really blurred those lines of insider outsider. So, if you’re present in the community, you’re much less of an outsider, you’re, they folks expect to see you there over time you build relationships, you’re not someone who just drives in and drives out at the end of every day or, you know, once the school day is done you’re no longer part of the community. But it’s also true the other way, you must have people from and of the community you’re serving, making decisions within your system. So not just consultants that you have these monthly or quarterly meetings. Once you get to know people that are formalized and informal ways to understand the weight of decisions around resources about the vision and mission like Chelsea talked about, and really understanding that it won’t be clean, it won’t be straightforward it can’t be run on western

projects around counting up the number of committee members are running an agenda, a very particular way, but really exploring those tensions between how most western people, or products of western systems because this happens to all of us regardless of ethnic background, get really conditioned to believe the way schools run are the only ways they can be run. But if you press pause on that long enough to try something, invite people in to say let’s try this decision making model together. So those are two examples to be present outside your system as a leader, and to, to make sure the spaces you’re holding shaping cultivating over time are always inclusive of people who are from and of the community you’re serving. I love that Anthony that that real sense of being present in the moment and then I want to quote something that you said in a prior interview about doing this work is to welcome and honor our ancestors and continue their work in service of my descendants and to do so with humility and humility so being present in the moment but connected to your ancestors and in service of your descendants is a really beautiful description.

Yeah, Tom I want to add one thing thank you for reminding me of how awesome I am. I want to add that there is sort of this. There’s a Western logic that teaches us that we are the knowers so if you have a certificate or a degree or you hold a position that you’re somehow responsible for, whether it’s cultivating new ideas or maintaining the status quo. But in fact, if you are humble in inviting in not only your ancestors but the ancestors that that come in and the way I make that concrete is those ancestral teachings are what we, it was what we’re missing today, it’s what we’ve suspended for so long that if you include the community in there, they’re automatically going to come in with logics that come from their grandparents and beyond, and also hold the future generations to come, like it’s just how it works. If you make a space that says here’s the sorts of ideas we’re looking for the community members and I’m thinking largely of to lay low but it’s true of other communities I’ve been in and heard of as well that people will come say yeah we’ve had a solution

for this exact problem for ever and you’re the first person who’s listened to me. You’re the first person who listened to me for longer than one committee meeting or community meeting or a survey, but instead to say I’ve been carrying solutions that could have helped this district or system or organization for a really long time. And now someone’s listening. Chelsea, this is really for both of you Chelsea and Anthony. As we wrap up I’d love for you to reflect on ways that you continue to develop as as a teacher and a, and a leader. Any, any tips for how to keep growing as a educator and a professional Chelsea I’ll start with you. I really, I really center what my ancestors have to bring to the table that they have lessons that I can apply to any setting, and I, and I actually find that same example out of amazing people who are who are who lived life, bringing the best out of people.

It might even be in my CrossFit gym, listening to my coach. He has something to offer in this setting. So, be aware that there are teachings all around us that that your parents probably have teachings that guide you in your work today, your grandparents. That is something that I always, I get the most from, but also continuing constantly to try to read and stay cutting edge and listen to our colleagues, listen to the people in the frontline and watch what they do successful. So, think about the that one teacher every school has those to handful of teachers that just have all the combinations, we need to be studying them because they’ve, they’re naturally figuring this out. So, studying the strengths of our people I would say, thanks Chelsea Anthony, what would you add.

Well, I learned just from Chelsea right now so I think colleagues are necessary and building these communities of practice, where we ask concrete questions like what happens if we change the schedule to be this what happens if we engage families in this way so those, what happens if we questions are really important, and ask them over time and it could be a text group, Chelsea and I are and a few of those it could be running into each other and just asking how it’s going but be curious about what your colleagues are doing and what your colleagues think about what you’re doing. And Tom when you first asked us that question, there is a Yakima teacher she’s been at it for about 20 years, and it strikes me how often, and she teaches first grade. She reminds me that I learned from my students. So the depth of understanding can get can go from concrete can go from abstract to concrete and precise by paying attention to six and seven year olds. So when when Miss Strom in the accommodation at Hera elementary is asking herself what happens if I her main source of information can be her students in that moment.

And what what she has mentioned to me a few times I really admire her practice is that then those kids come back so now that she’s been there for nearly 20 years and the community she grew up in and she’s known as Miss Strom, that you know the kindergarten first grade teacher, kids and come back to her and she’s still in this relationship that she cultivated when they were very young so I’ll say pay attention to students over time, even when they’re not on your class roster. So that’s this Western idea that we reject and try to replace. And I learned from my doctoral students, they are amazing people. I had the same feeling I had what when I was an instructional coach at to lay look so I did lots of jobs there. So I had lots of chances to explore. What are what are other what are teachers doing that I can then carry with me in in sort of this traditional ancestral way of being the linker of information so in our cultures.

So I think that the way that Blue Jay is known for being the carrier of information, and that’s one of the main jobs that I have in the position I’m in is to link folks to Oh, this is where you can go for that learning it’s why we say yes to people like you. If we can meet people through this opportunity. It helps with that networking. And the last thing I want to add just for me is I’m learning my tribe’s language, and to be a learner of something that was they attempted to erase through schools is really empowering and powerful. It’s also full of sadness and frustration that this has been missing from our community for so long. And it helps me with solving a problem I wasn’t completely aware of which is English is so limiting to me. If I’m thinking about something indigenous. It’s more the case that I’ll need indigenous words and phrases and energies behind it.

So learning my language has is how I continue to learn and remember how little I know. Anthony Craig thanks for the gift of your time and your wisdom today we really appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you and we say to people who see us thank you for seeing us. We’re not perfect we don’t know it all. And thanks for asking what it is we’re up to. Thank you Dr Anthony Craig and Chelsea Craig for joining us today. We are continually inspired motivated and renewed by indigenous ways of knowing and leading and hope to bring more conversations on this topic to you in the near future.

We also want to give a brief shout out to the Highline School District. We appreciate the way that they have planned the maritime high schools and acknowledged and co-authored this experience with the native muckleshoot people. This is a great example of a school design process that honors both communities current and historic. That’s it for today listeners. Thanks for tuning in for the Getting Smart podcast. This is Jessica signing off.