Brayboy Champions Abundance Over Scarcity in AERA Lecture
The history of American schooling is tied to the forced removal of Indigenous peoples — and U.S. institutions must confront that legacy to build a fairer, more just future, School of Education and Social Policy Dean Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy said during the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Distinguished Lecture, one of the signature events of the 2026 Annual Meeting.
Indigenous people have been removed from lands, historical accounts, collective memory, and national consciousness, said Brayboy, a member of the Lumbee tribe and the Carlos Montezuma Professor at Northwestern University.
“Restoring our full presence across all these domains is necessary not only for securing the future of Indigenous peoples but also for securing the future of the planet," he said. “Indigenous ways of knowing — rooted in reciprocal relationships with land, water, and life — offer insights the world can no longer afford to ignore.”
In his talk, titled “Re-memory, Genealogy, and Dreams for the Future,” Brayboy argued that the past, present, and future are inextricably linked. Schools, he said, should be more than places focused on academic skills — they should be spaces where young people learn to be human, build healthy relationships, and grow through curiosity.
Drawing on his own experience being told by another scholar to just boil down “the essence” of Indigenous knowledge, Brayboy argued that it's impossible to separate wisdom from the people who carry it. The same impulse to extract value from Indigenous peoples while dismissing their presence has driven U.S. policy for centuries, through extermination, segregation, and absorption, he said.
He traced this history through colonial scalp bounties, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington's land-seizure strategies, the Morrill Land Grant Act, and Indian boarding schools. Then there were these recent examples — a 2020 CNN graphic that categorized Native Americans as “something else,” and a 2025 political speech that erased Indigenous peoples entirely from the story of how America was built.
Schools and universities, meanwhile, built on stolen Indigenous land, continue to operate on myths that have hardened into accepted truth through repetition, Brayboy said. “Traces of history are scattered in our memories and in the ways we think about education, schooling and related policy,” he said.
His prescription is a shift from a scarcity mindset — where some must lose for others to win — to an ideology of abundance, where freedom, self-determination, and full civic life are available to everyone. Remembering the true history, he said, is the necessary first step toward building that future.
Brayboy’s vision extends to colleges and universities, which he said benefited from the removal and near extermination of Native Americans. Moving beyond land acknowledgements and symbolic gestures, institutions must honestly reckon with how forced removal shaped their origins, what promises were made, and how they can better serve Indigenous communities, he said. Scholars and educators across disciplines also have a responsibility to teach more honest, nuanced histories rather than repeating myths as truth.
Rather than getting stuck debating the best pathway forward, educators and institutions should work towards creating conditions where all individuals and communities can thrive. This means replacing scarcity-based models — which normalize hierarchy and limited opportunity — with models of abundance that reject zero-sum thinking and open space for everyone to flourish.
"What if we committed to agendas of an abundance of freedom?" Brayboy asked. “Of choice? Prosperity? Of being seen? We can do this. Our future demands it.”
A member of the National Academy of Education and a fellow of the American Educational Research Association — where he was elected to the Council and Executive Board in 2024 — Brayboy explores how institutional structures support or hinder underserved students and the role of race and diversity in higher education.
In 2023, he received the George and Louise Spindler Award from the American Anthropological Association's Council on Anthropology and Education.
He is the author of more than 110 scholarly works, including nine edited or authored volumes in addition to articles, book chapters, and policy briefs for the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Sciences.