"Racial and cultural diversity of children in the United States has grown dramatically over the past few decades and the rise continues. Because of this change in demographics, educational needs in the United States are also changing, and yet the elementary music curriculum has remained the same. Educators need to revise their curriculum to be more inclusive of the students in their classroom. Some songs need to be taken out of the curriculum for historical reasons and new songs need to be included to reflect the experiences, interests, and diverse traditions of the students. This inclusion will show that the students are a valued member of the learning community ... . The purpose of this project is to create lessons with songs from different countries and cultures that can be used to celebrate the students in the elementary music classroom. The secondary purpose of this project is to shed light on the history of some songs that are still in the elementary repertoire and urge educators to remove harmful songs from their classrooms. By doing the research and using reflective repertoire selection strategies, educators can ensure that their classroom is a safe space for all students."--

The U'mista Cultural Society ('the return of something important') was created to house the potlatch collection upon repatriation from Canadian museums after its 1921 seizure by the colonial government under the Indian Act's potlatch ban amendment. Located in the remote island community of Alert Bay in British Columbia, U'mista's collection is composed of masks and other regalia items used in the celebration of the potlatch, a ceremony that functioned as the crux of the political, social, legal, and economic framework for First Nation communities. This thesis is an investigation, within the framework of U'mista, of the cultural and administrative challenges faced by an indigenous-run heritage organization after repatriation. I will trace the ongoing acculturation within the potlatch ceremony and collection from the time of colonial rule and fervent anthropological prejudicial construction, to today's postcolonial politics of federal restitution, cultural property laws, and the influx of cultural tourism and new forms of information technology, all of which necessitate continuing syncretism. Privileging the view that culture is necessarily hybridized. I will explore how U'mista navigates the tension between tradition and cultural change, both in the display of the collection, and in how the organization frames its objectives a cultural institution. Rather than pitting a global cultural ecumene against the myth of pristine traditional culture, this thesis will consider the cognitive dissonance inherent in issues surrounding postcolonial heritage as a means of considering potential frameworks for parity, protection and cultural revitalization in the present. These tensions exist in the discursive space in which colonial and ethnographic/anthropological assumptions and practices converse with First Nation conceptions of heritage, cultural identity and the lingering colonial impact on museums, historical narrative and cultural policy.

Many gifted education experts have found that Black, Hispanic, and Native American students are less likely to be identified for gifted programs than Asian American and White students. A study was conducted to ascertain the degree of underrepresentation of these groups in gifted programs in Utah. Using state-collected data from 14,781 students in six representative school districts in Utah, it was found through multiple logistic regression analysis that there was no statistically significant difference in the likelihoods that Black, Hispanic, or Native American students and White students would be identified as gifted; Asian American and Pacific Islander students were more likely to be identified as gifted than White students. After controlling for academic achievement and SES, it was found that all diverse demographic groups of students were more likely to be identified as gifted than White students, although the differences did not reach statistical significance for multiracial or Native American students. Further research into the nature and causes of disproportionate representation in gifted programs is suggested.