Cultural diversity within educational communities is becoming more visible, discussed, and promoted than ever before. Interest in diversity has escalated as educational communities become increasingly globalized. While progress is noted the reality persists that across international contexts, young people from Indigenous cultural groups continue to experience a Western, conventional form of schooling as alienating, dispiriting, and inequitable (Battiste 2002; Castagno and Brayboy 2008; Penetito 2010). Within Western ‘colonial settler societies’ (Veracini 2010), institutional cultures, curricula, and teaching methods of mainstream schooling are typically based on a worldview and pedagogical framework that does not recognize, and generally fails to appreciate, Indigenous principles, teaching methodologies, knowledge and value systems, and identity perspectives (Kawagley, Norris-Tull, and Norris-Tull 1998; Macfarlane et al. 2008). This visionless positioning on the part of mainstream schooling has resulted in significant disparities in educational outcomes for Indigenous youth in both the United States and Aotearoa New Zealand (US Commission on Civil Rights 2003; Goldsmith and Howe 2004; Ministry of Education 2008).

Culturally responsive practice (CRP) by teachers has been posited as a promising pedagogical framework for creating positive learning contexts to mitigate these inequities. Yet, often the conceptual frameworks that are promoted to support educators in developing CRP do not consider or critically engage with key Indigenous constructs such as sovereignty and self-determination, colonization, cultural and language revitalization and preservation, or Indigenous epistemologies. Thus they are not fully able to prepare educators to be responsive to their Indigenous students and families, nor to the wider communities and contexts within which they work.