DLE students explore Indigeneity and cultural context
LAKESIDE, California — The low winter sun illuminated a canopy of gnarled oaks in an ethereal glow. As indigenous drumming and singing filled the air in Louis A. Stelzer County Park in the San Diego County backcountry, a group of future bilingual educators sat in a semicircle and soaked in the scene.
If the idea was to transport these San Diego State University teaching credential students to another place, another frame of mind, there could not have been a better setting.
On Jan. 16 and 17 — just days before the start of the Spring 2026 semester — the Department of Dual Language and English Learner Education brought 56 students on a cultural journey. Organized in collaboration with Unci Intertribal and Future Educator Support, the experience included a visit to the Barona Cultural Center on the Barona Band of Mission Indians reservation, a reflection and nature walk at Stelzer and a visit to San Diego’s iconic Chicano Park, the local epicenter of the Latinx civil rights movement.
The idea was to both explore Native culture and encourage students to deeply examine the community contexts in which they will soon be teaching.
“We, as a department, recognize that the credential program is more than just assignments and reading,” said Guillermo Castillo, DLE multiple subject program online coordinator and lecturer. “They have to experience. There is a clinical practice, but that by itself is insufficient.”
The DLE department has long engaged its credential candidates with experiential learning, including an annual transborder visit to schools in Tijuana to gain a deeper understanding of the students who experience the educational systems in both countries.
During those visits, the group from SDSU made connections with the Kumeyaay community south of the border. That got Castillo thinking about Indigenous communities and how it was an under-explored aspect of border policy.
“When you talk about a border, Indigenous people don't see it that way,” Castillo explained. ”There's a community, the Kumeyaay, that was literally divided, and it has impacted their lives dramatically, especially in the last 15 to 20 years. Before, there was a little bit more access, and now there is little to no access.
“I want our students to identify through these experiences a sense of identity, Who am I? What is my relationship with Indigenous communities? How has my culture created biases, and how do I address these biases?”
In its training of future teachers, DLE believes that understanding context is an essential part of teaching. Credential candidates are taught the importance of performing community scans. Don’t just look at your school site, look at the neighborhood.
Are there plenty of parks and libraries? If not, why not?
Is there easier access to liquor or vegetables? What does that tell you?
The group’s visit to Chicano Park — the site where the state of California bisected the proud Latinx community of Logan Heights with a freeway flyover leading to the Coronado Bridge — was meant to hammer home the point.
“Our hope is that it gets our students asking questions,” Castillo said. “The expectation isn’t going to be that they have the answers, it’s to make them reflect and hopefully continue to learn because these are complex questions and perspectives.”
Sitting under the oaks at Stelzer after a lunch of fry bread and soup, Allen De Leon took part in an Indigenous sewing activity while listening to a presentation on the Native worldview by Luis Anaya, a Sicangu Lakota-ordained chief and cultural advisor for Unci Intertribal.
Like about two-thirds of the students present, Allen De Leon is a student in SDSU’s Classified Employee Grant distance learning program, which prepares bilingual educators all across the state. Though he has lived in San Diego most of his life, he said this was his first time visiting the reservation.
“Since I teach history and ethnic studies, it hit me perfectly,” De Leon said. “A lot of the stuff that we talked about could be directly applied. If I do ever have to teach (ethnic studies) again, or if I teach U.S. history, I think this just provided an extra level of insight that we're missing.”
That perspective would surely be music to the ears of Sofia Han-Hernand, executive director of Unci Intertribal, who helped to facilitate the SDSU visit
“Oppression, struggle and plight are part of the story, although not the central one,” Han-Hernand said. “Centering community voices and stories helps us all heal from oppression, which allows us to humanize people instead of making them objects of suffering.
“The natural world is what shapes Indigenous identity, and being immersed in this living, vibrant heritage, which is intricately tied to nature, allows us to all collectively walk a path toward peace, healing and unity for all living beings.“
