Jess Yusko Interview with Dawn Barron MFA, PhD, Director of Native Pathways Program
This month, Dawn Barron, Academic Director of the Native Pathways Program and faculty member, generously made time to speak with me at the end of the academic year to share an Indigenous perspective on AI use in higher education. I have been hoping for the chance to hear more about Dawn’s views ever since I heard her speak at the AI Symposium during the Summer Institutes of 2025. I also hoped I could make use of this platform to amplify and uplift her perspective, because I think what she has to say is incredibly important.
As an institution which states “the ability to demonstrate integrative, independent, critical thinking” as one of the Six Expectations of an Evergreen graduate, I feel like this conversation is both meaningful and timely. Students and educators alike should be able to question why this technology is something that is being forced upon us, and the general assumption that we have no choice but to go along with it.
From there, it stands to reason we should question who is forcing this upon us without our consent, and why? Who benefits? Once we answer these questions, we can begin to look deeper at the sociological implications and the environmental impacts that this consumption will have in the long term.
Here at Evergreen, we have a great resource: our connection to Native voices and the traditions shared through the Native Pathways Program. I always believe when we are looking at serious social issues and ethical practices impacting the earth, we should go to Indigenous members of our community to ask questions, and to listen. I believe the past has taught us that ancestors and elders, and the Indigenous stewards of the land hold the wisdom and teachings we need for sustainable living on this planet.
In the interview, italics are used to convey emphasis in the speaker’s voice. Brackets are used by the writer to add clarification.
Interview with Dawn Barron, May 12th, 2026
Jess: I hoped we could talk about the role of AI in education development and curricula planning. I am concerned about AI development companies who are contracting with the government and selling these curricula to other countries. I see it as a very colonising sort of endeavour, whoever has the wealth and the power and the resources are hoarding them and utilising them in this way, so that they can then enact power over others. The government is referring to this as patriotic education. In academia, this practice is being called educational imperialism. From my perspective, it is something I see as a new form of colonialism.
So with curriculum development companies, they’re taking this particular narrative or version of history they have written, and then they’re making government contracts and selling it to other countries. I feel like in this way, they’re controlling the narrative and the history that they want told. I definitely question the developers, when they are choosing to contract with the government. What are their intentions? What are they wanting to be taught?
Dawn: And I mean, you gotta think in this day and age with the United States government in the state that it is, (we’ll leave that open for interpretation) who in their right mind could possibly trust anything that this government is doing, in terms of knowledge?
I mean, when we talk about the death of expertise, we’ve got the entire presidential cabinet that doesn’t have any expertise in any of the things that they are doing. Having a loud voice and a very opinionated viewpoint does not make you efficient or competent.
Jess: And they’ve openly said they want to dismantle and destroy, (they have actually used the word destroy) higher education.
Dawn: Interestingly enough, yeah, they want to do that. But then who would get to go? Still the wealthy, right? So then it goes back to what education was in the beginning. Education was founded for white men. That is why higher education came about; then they started allowing [women]. I mean, women couldn’t vote until 1920. Native Americans couldn’t practice their own religion and cultural practices till 1978. That is not that long ago. Civil rights was not that long ago.
So we’re not that far off from these really dark parts of our country’s history. I feel like it’s an easy slide to go back, and I feel like AI is the vehicle for that. I mean, I think that it’s a hard sell to tell people that because they’re like, “it’s a computer program, it’s not going to do that,” but you have to think about who developed it, who owns it, who’s getting the profits from it.
Who and what are they putting those profits back into? It’s certainly nothing good for the common person. And that’s never been the idea of education until recently… something that should be accessible to all people and that everybody had a right to go and ‘get learn-ed’ right? [laughing]That was never the point of education.
It was simply for the elite to stay elite. So, [that] makes sense, right? “Yeah, let’s have this AI platform everywhere. Let’s start it in K-12. Let’s really get in there and then let’s dismantle and destroy the whole education system.” Because then we’ll say, “Oh well, nobody can pass tests because they’re not learning anything – because they’re only learning this one thing from generative AI. They don’t know how to go out and do research, they don’t know how to write. They don’t know how to communicate effectively, (written or verbally,) because they have no practice and no teachings in that.
And so what happens? Yeah, the education system is dismantled and destroyed, and the elite still are the elite, and get to go – because it’s not like all the colleges are going to close, right? There’s still going to be this thing called Higher Ed. that will then go back to serving what the original intent was.
So it’s almost like all the progressive social work that people have done and all the revolutionary actions to get to the point that we’re at right now (which is rapidly crumbling and pulling apart at the seams) – I think the lesson is: it wasn’t safe. And so we always have to be cognizant, and we always have to be protective of the common peoples’ rights to basic things: water, food [etc.] Our food sources are being polluted. Food is kind of like AI too, right, like we’re splicing and dicing all these things in food and then we’re like, “I don’t know whether there’s any nutrients in there? I think that AI is kind of like that. It’s filler. It’s like eating twinkies all the time. It tastes good and it’s going to make you sick, if you keep eating it, you know. Bad analogy, but it’s like there’s no nutrients in it. I can’t really see the positive.
And if people are saying in education, “Oh, well, I use it to curriculum plan.” That’s your job. You should be curriculum planning. You aren’t going to know it the way you would know it if you planned it yourself; it’s not organically going to be processed through, so that you can also be learning while you’re doing it.
I think if you’re using AI to grade that is a huge infringement on students’ rights, [privacy violation] that they’re not giving permission to. Also part of your job. I think I heard Elon Musk say something like, “Yeah, once AI robots are all around, then people will just have vacations. They won’t have to work.” Well, we still need to make money and eat. So I mean, that’s strange.
Jess: [laughing] People like him won’t have to work.
Dawn: And I just think of the apathy around it. I mean, it’s the apathy that’s around most social issues. (I think of this as a social issue.) Systematic racism in institutions, our childcare system, our healthcare system, our education system, all of those systems, [with] all of those social systems, people get really apathetic and think, “Individually, I’m not going to make an impact. So why would I waste my time learning and fighting about this? Or, my little bit of use isn’t going to be detrimental or harmful to anyone.” I think there needs to be a reset.
The Indigenousity piece of it would be, the decolonising and indigenising would be: No, we are a community of people, no matter if I live here in Olympia, Washington and you live in Sandpoint, Idaho or you live in Chico, California. We all have something to lose from this and not much to gain.
You might gain in the short-term because you’ve got your paper written or used it to do accounting or something, whatever, and it made your job easier in that time frame – but it’s not. It’s not going to be the best for humanity.
Jess: And at what cost to life on earth? [At what cost] to the sustainability of our environment, to the climate that’s already at the brink…
Dawn: But that’s the thing, half of our country doesn’t believe there’s climate change. I’m like, you see it happening. What do you think is happening? … Who always has the power levels? I think we need to think about that. And I think that hurts people’s brains. They’re just like “I can’t change it.” It’s just like when people say “I’m not going to vote. It doesn’t matter.” Well, it does. I mean, the only way that change comes about is by numbers, big numbers of people. So I think it’s the same thing with AI, which is why it worries me [about] colleges (same thing with the DEI stuff) [if] you fold, then you’re going to fold for everything. If you don’t take a stand on something, what are you going to do?
Self-confirmation bias in the algorithm and the so-called ethics of AI
Dawn: So, if you can just look up something on ChatGPT or an AI platform instead of going and talking to a colleague, or talking to a friend – you are immediately in a relationship of sorts (a one way relationship, but you think it’s a two way relationship). Because ChatGPT or those platforms can give you advice in whatever, based on what you’re asking, so it’s just mirroring you.
How are you ever going to grow, or build community, or be in community? And it’s even going to further isolate folks, and really solidify that individualism, which is definitely a foundational issue and foundation of the United States, right? Based on this individualistic ideology, [where] you just look out for yourself and you just do for yourself… which also goes back to what we were talking about with the environmental impacts.
There’s no reciprocity or relationality in it, it’s simply mirroring back. [Online] you really can find those like-minded people, so if your view is already skewed to be, let’s say racist or something, and you’re on a platform, and you’re asking questions – you’re going to get that back, [which] reinforces what your view is.
For instance, if you ask: “Is it bad to have the Confederate flag flying in your yard?” I don’t think the nuances in the historical accuracy of what that meant and the connotations of that flag are going to come back to that person. [AI] will be like, “It’s a flag, it symbolizes this___. It’s fine.”
Jess: Oh, I see what you mean, because if you’re asking a question to ChatGPT or something, for example, and you’re saying, “Is this bad?”, How can we trust that? I mean, where’s this coming from? Those types of moral or ethical judgments – that would be like a human sort of perspective on something. But it’s just filtering information…
Dawn: Right, it could be somebody’s blog. And so, that goes into [the issue] that you’re not getting primary sources. You’re not able to really figure out or evaluate if those sources are appropriate; If they’re valid. There’s that whole issue. Then, you’re just perpetuating that ideology, by asking and receiving that information. That’s very dangerous; and also, nobody can ever tell me that AI is going to have ethics or morals, or understand what the concepts of good and bad are, or understand that there’s multiple perspectives to history.
We still teach in our history books, a very disenfranchised history of Native Americans across the United States, and Black history, and immigrant history, and the soft border in Mexico (along the southern border; we still don’t accurately represent that because it’s one voice, typically, (one conglomerate voice). Hegemony, again. And AI will reinforce that; ChatGPT will reinforce that. As opposed to – what’s the whole point of learning? We’re taking the learning away; (learning as multi-perspectives [is being taken away].) You learn to synthesise; you hear other perspectives that are not of your own or nothing you’ve heard before. You do research, you read, you have your own lived experience and perspective, and then you put that all together and figure out where you stand on an issue or a concern or an event in history. So we’re going to lose all of that.
We’re going to lose the story.
And so, the way humans have interacted all throughout and transferred information all throughout history is by story, whether that’s been through poetics, or singing or plays, it’s all through the arts and humanities right? We have story. What story is ChatGPT gonna tell?
And people might say, “Oh, that’s valid. They’ll have their own story.” It’s one perspective.
[Then we have all the other issues] then all of the other things, the environmental racism, the environmental destruction, the classism, the overt racism, the sexism, all of those things.
Jess: And from an anthropological [sociocultural] perspective, thinking of the context within specific histories. If it’s just presented in this one sort of whitewashed way, then the origins of these things, the context, the real anthropological history from the source [the emic, or insider’s view] will be lost. And I feel like that is where we will really lose the essence of a lot of wisdom and teaching – things that we could potentially learn from.
Dawn: You won’t even get them right? Because, … there’s 574 tribes, and they all have very different cultures; and that’s not including the bands and clans and tribes that are unrecognised federally and dispersed all throughout the country.
And there are stories for public consumption. There’s culture for public consumption, and then there’s stories that are unto the tribe, right? And so who’s to say something that’s sacred won’t get out and be misused?
And people will be misinformed, which further corroborates that whole [agenda] that history is from one perspective…
History is a story, also, right? There’s facts, and events that have happened – and then there’s the story around the events. And if we’re only getting one view, which is what ChatGPT would get, because it’s pulling from all these years of just having that one view.
We can barely change that in our K-12 education system, let alone our college system, let alone in our own lives, trying to go out and do that. So how would we possibly expect ChatGPT or you know, generative AI, “yeah, you’re going to fix this thing.” You have no ethics, no morals, and no buy-in. There’s no investment.
That’s the other thing, there’s no investment in humanity with AI.
Jess: Yeah, that’s so true.
Dawn: So right then and there, why would you do it?
Dawn Barron is the author of ESCAPE GIRL BLUES (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Emeritus Professor Roger Green (Onzm) Top Thesis Award, 2024. Dawn earned her PhD from Te Whare Wananga O Awanuiarangi – New Zealand, in 2024, M.F.A., Creative Writing, from Queens University of Charlotte, in 2009 and B.A., Sociology, from Washington State University, in 1994. Dawn is the current Director of the Native Pathways Program at the Evergreen State College.
Jess Yusko completed her B.A. with dual emphasis in Visual Studies and Culture,Text and Language from the Evergreen State College in 2025. She is currently a post-baccalaureate student and Student Learning Partner at The Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education. She is the author of “Evergreen faculty promoting inclusion,” (Issue i, Volume i, published by the Learning and Teaching Commons, 2026) and has two art exhibitions (Onkochishin 温故知新 and The Cloud Recesses) currently showing at the Daniel J. Evans library.
