Well before Mneesha Gellman was a highly regarded political science professor at Emerson College and director of the Emerson Prison Initiative, she was an idealistic teenager in northern California, fighting the logging industry to save the coastal redwoods with the hope of changing the world.
It was during this formative time that Gellman learned the value of speaking up and being politically aware. The biggest lesson she learned, she said, is that policies don’t “magically appear from on high” — they are handed down by humans, and therefore can be changed.
Ever since then, Gellman says she has tried to use her voice to help others harness their own power to advocate for policies that are fair and ethical.
Gellman has two new books out. In “Indigenous Language Politics in the Schoolroom: Cultural Survival in Mexico and the United States,” she examines the importance of culturally relevant classes in public schools for Indigenous students. Her other book, “Education Behind the Wall: Why and How We Teach College in Prison,” is a how-to manual.
The interview
Your new book, “Indigenous Language Politics in the Schoolroom” is about the power public schools have in shaping youth culture and identity. How can school policies and curricula harm kids?
Public schools in the United States are bastions of assimilation. They’re a primary space where regular, everyday people encounter the state for hours and hours each day in the K through 12 system. So schools and their curricula play a tremendously important role in forming the norms and social rules and conceptions of self that young people carry with them into the world as adults.
The book has a chapter that looks at the policies of forced assimilation in both the United States and Mexico, documenting the role of boarding schools as sites of what I call culturcide — the killing of culture — and the intentional destruction of Native American culture. Schools are not this benign entity. We often, myself included, think of education as something that is transformational, a meaningful way to gain upward social mobility. But for people from Indigenous backgrounds or other Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities, schools can be damaging spaces where they are not welcome to enter with their full culturally-based identities intact.
The book really tries to show the meaningful impact on youth identity and participation when they feel validated in the classroom. I look to Indigenous language classes as one space in the curriculum where that validation is happening.
Can you discuss the benefits of Indigenous language classes in public schools?
Access to culturally relevant curricula offers a number of benefits for students across demographic backgrounds. For Indigenous students in northern California’s Humboldt County, access to Yurok or Zapotec language classes facilitates a sense of well-being that translates into increased self-esteem. That increased self-esteem opens up pathways for students to increase their participation, civically, culturally and politically. Students enrolled in Indigenous language classes who are heritage speakers say things like ‘I feel like I can bring my whole self to school, so I’m more likely to join a club or to sign a petition or to go do something in my community, because I feel proud of who I am.’
In the book, you talk about the benefits for white students and those from minority backgrounds. Can you speak to that, please?
Many of the students who identify as white said to me in interviews, ‘Before I took this Yurok language class, I felt that Native Americans were extinct in this area. I hadn’t been taught that Native Americans were my neighbors and that they were still actively maintaining their culture. It was only in this Yurok language class that I learned about Native American history and Native American presence.’ That is hugely important when we think about the benefits of heritage language curricula, not only for heritage language speakers but also for the ethnic majority in a given area.
Students from other minority backgrounds, not heritage speakers and not white students, said things like ‘Being in the Yurok language class made me want to go back and talk to my grandma or talk to my auntie and better understand my history and culture.’ Across the board, the book shows the net positive effect for all students from all backgrounds having access to culturally relevant curricula interventions, which also can be an ethnic studies class or Native American history class. It doesn’t have to be a language class.
How prevalent or what’s the scope of how many schools offer Indigenous language classes?
That’s a great question that I can’t answer. The bottom line is they’re not available enough. We need more culturally relevant curricula in order to support young people, particularly BIPOC students, and white students who identify as a part of an ethnic majority group. These curricula are also absolutely helpful in helping them see the world as it is rather than replicating the kinds of white myths of supremacy that much of the U.S. public education continues to imbue in young people.
What do you think about Indigenous language and other culturally relevant classes being taught in afterschool?
I have two kids in Boston public schools and I do not think that they are necessarily being as well served by the curriculum as they could be, and because we have economic privilege, we are able to pay for a range of afterschool activities. Afterschool activities are very important. However, the legitimacy to the minority culture that comes with integrating things like Indigenous language classes or culturally relevant curricula into the formal educational school day is different than offering it as an afterschool project. The symbolic messaging that happens when schools include an Indigenous language class, for example, into their standard school day is different than when that same class may be offered as an extra, outside of class hours. Afterschool classes play very important roles in the lives of young people, but it’s not the same messaging to the community as when it’s included in the regular school day.
On the far other end of the spectrum, some people want to criminalize ethnic studies and critical race theory. Are you surprised that schools have become a battleground for these kinds of political and cultural topics?
I’m not surprised at all that schools are battlegrounds for culture wars because, again, they are primary interfaces between citizens and states. The surprise for me is how much everyday people tune out the fact that schools are playing this highly politicized role. Many people send their kids to school with the assumption that best practices and pedagogy and a thoughtful curriculum will be presented. The labor that teachers do should not be undermined by my critique here. There are so many dedicated educators who are out there doing their best, day after day, but the highly politicized content of what is taught and the way that flies under the radar of the general public and even of many parents is surprising to me because I really see it as ground zero in looking at how we’re forming the next generation.
I imagine you get into a lot of debates.
I have lots of debates all the time. Culture change is hard, difficult work. I teach human rights at the college level. Everything I teach is a contentious topic, from mass incarceration to immigration policy to education policy. I identify as a white person, and for white people to talk critically about white culture is very scary. It undermines our own power, right? I benefit from white privilege in the United States. For me, to critique the role that plays in the oppression of others can be a very difficult thing to do. I can be critiqued from every side.
I’m really trying to be data-driven in looking at what young people are telling me through interviews, focus groups and surveys. What the data shows is young people describing how this toxic school culture or this racist incident or the slurs being said to them when they’re playing on the football team in a predominantly white town affects their interest in getting up in the morning and going to school, their interest in getting involved politically or their interest in even moving outside of their home area where they may feel safe. I return back to the data and empirics to support arguments, recognizing that they’re not going to always be popular, but that’s culture change and it is not a comfortable process.
What are your thoughts on the recent expansion of Pell grants to people who are incarcerated?
We are thrilled that Second Chance Pell grants have been reinstated as of 2023 and will allow people who are incarcerated to receive grants for higher education. I have some concerns around Pell and we’ll see what the landscape looks like in a few years. Wherever there is money, there are people looking to exploit those economic opportunities as well. We’ve already seen the increase in predatory for-profit educational enterprises coming in to deliver college in prison but not necessarily having the integrity of a degree behind it. These programs take the Pell money and the students end up with just a loose assortment of credits. There needs to be a viable degree pathway.
The details
Residence: Boston
Title: Associate Professor of Political Science, Emerson College; Director of the Emerson Prison Initiative
Family: Married, two kids ages 7 and 11
Hobbies: Cooking, learning about food and where it comes from, gardening
Recent reads: “America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States,” by Erika Lee
Volunteer: Expert witness in U.S. immigration court cases for people seeking asylum (Since 2016, she’s worked on 97 cases.)
First paid job: Slinging pizzas at Papa Murphy’s in high school
Education: Doctorate in political science from Northwestern University; Master of Arts in international studies/peace and conflict resolution from the University of Queensland, Australia; Bachelor of Arts, Bard College
Books published: “Democratization and Memories of Violence: Ethnic Minority Social Movements in Mexico, Turkey, and El Salvador;” “Indigenous Language Politics in the Schoolroom: Cultural Survival in Mexico and the United States;” “Education Behind the Wall: Why and How We Teach College in Prison”
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Brian Rinker is a San Francisco-based freelance writer and journalist. He covers public health, child welfare, digital health, startups and venture capital. His work has been published by Kaiser Health News, Health Affairs, The Atlantic, Men’s Health and San Francisco Business Times. Brian received master’s degrees in journalism and public health from UC Berkeley.
