Remaking, reweaving and indigenizing curriculum: Lessons from an American Samoa Head Start program

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on how indigenous Head Start teachers in American Samoa, an unincorporated territory of the US located in the South Pacific negotiated imported policy and curricular models that were not always congruent with local, indigenous approaches to educating young children. Here we place our focus on the negotiation of curriculum within these spaces and in doing so, show that through the reweaving of curriculum, western discourses and influences from the US were altered. We conclude with implications for US territories and other contested spaces across the globe.