SESP Faculty

Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy

Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy (Lumbee) is dean of the School of Education and Social Policy and the Carlos Montezuma Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.  

Brayboy came to Northwestern from Arizona State University, where he was the President’s Professor in the School of Social Transformation and vice president of social advancement. From 2007 to 2012, he was visiting President’s Professor of Indigenous Education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

A member of the National Academy of Education and a fellow of the American Educational Research Association, Brayboy’s research focuses on intersecting knowledge systems that illuminate the ways that institutional structures simultaneously hinder and enable the success of underserved students, staff, and faculty.

An anthropologist, Brayboy also explores how culture and cultural practices mediate and support Indigenous student learning and community self-determination.  His most influential scholarship is Tribal Critical Race Theory or TribalCrit, a groundbreaking framework he developed in 2005 to help explain Indigenous peoples’ complex experiences with education, colonization, and racism.

In addition to TribalCrit, a globally cited classic in Indigenous studies, Brayboy’s research on Indigenous knowledge systems in schools has shed light on how people learn, teach, and define themselves in relationship with powerful systems and structures. It also offers new ways of moving institutions to think and behave differently, so that they are more open, humane, and suitable for people to thrive.

He is the author or co-author of more than 110 scholarly documents, including nine edited or authored volumes, dozens of articles, book chapters, and policy briefs for the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Sciences.  

He has been a visiting and noted scholar in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway. His work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Ford, Mellon, Kellogg, and Spencer Foundations, and several other private and public foundations and organizations.   

Over the past 20 years, Brayboy and his teams have helped prepare more than 165 Native teachers to work in American Indian communities and more than 31 American Indian PhDs.

• 2023 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Servant-Leadership Award, Arizona State University
• 2021 Co-Chair, Indigenous Education Initiative, Spencer Foundation 
• 2021 Panel Member, National Academy of Education, Civic Education Report Committee 
• 2020 Fellow, PLuS Alliance 
• 2018 Member, National Academy of Education
• 2018 Fellow, American Educational Research Association 
• 2017 Rosa Parks Award, American Association for Access, Equity, and Diversity 
• 2017 G. Mike Charleston Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Indigenous Education, Indigenous Peoples of the Americas Special Interest Group, American Educational Research Association  

Vaught, S.E., Brayboy, B. McK. J., & Chin, J.A. (2022). The School Prison Trust. University of Minnesota Press.

Brayboy, B. McK. J. and Bang, M. (2019). Section Editor of Capacity Building section (10 chapters of 65 total) for Handbook on Indigenous Education (E. McKinley and L.T. Smith, Eds.) Paris: Springer Press.

Blackhawk, N., Brayboy, B. McK., J, Deloria, P.J., Ghilglione, L., Lomawaima, K.T., Medin, D., and Trahant, M. (2018). The American Indian: Obstacles and Opportunities. Daedulus.

Huaman, E.S. and Brayboy, B. McK. J. (eds.). (2017). Local Knowledge and Critical Research in Higher Education: American Indian Innovation. Amsterdam: Sense Publishers.

Brayboy, B. McK. J. (2022). A New Day Must Begin: Tribal Nation Building and Higher Education. Journal of American Indian Education. 60(3): 95-113.  

Ruth, A., K. Mayfour, J. Hardin, T. Sangaramoorthy, A. Wutich, HR. Bernard, A. Brewis, M. Beresford, C. SturtzSreetharan, BMKJ. Brayboy, HJF. Dengah II, CC. Gravlee, G. Guest, K. Harper, P. Mahdavi, SM. Mattison, M. Moritz, R. Negrón, BA. Piperata, JG. Snodgrass & R. Zarger. (2022). Teaching Ethnographic Methods: The State of the Art. Human Organization. 81(4).  

Ruth, A., Woolard, K., Sangaramoorthy, T. Brayboy, B. McK. J., Beresford, M., Brewis, A., Bernard, H.R., Glegziabher, M. Z., Hardin, J. Harper, K., Mahdavi, P., Snodgrass, J. G., SturtzSreethan, C., Wutich, A. (2022). Teaching Ethnographic Methods for Cultural Anthropology: Current Practices and Needed Innovation. Teaching Anthropology.  

McCarty, T.L. & Brayboy, B.McK.J (2021). Culturally Responsive, Sustaining, and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Perspectives from Native American Education. The Educational Forum: 429-443.  

Brayboy, B.McK.J & Tachine, A.R. (2021). Myths, Erasure, and Violence: The Immoral Triad of the Morrill Act. NAIS. 8(1): 139-144.  

Litts, B.K., Searle, K.A., Brayboy, B.McK.J, Kafai, Y.B. (2020). Computing for All?: Examining critical biases in computational tools for learning. British Journal of Educational Technology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13059  

Brayboy, B. McK. J. & Chin, J.A. (2020). Being and Indigenousness: An Essay on the Development of Terrortory. Contexts. 19(3): 22-27. 

Anderson, J. D. Bang, M. Brayboy, B.McK.J, de los Rios, C.V., Guitiérrez, K.D., Hicks, D., Ho, L, Lee, C.D., Lee, S. J., Santiago, M., Walker, V.D., Williamson-Lott, J.A. (2021). Agency and resilience in the face of challenge as civil action: Lessons learned across ethnic communities. In C.D. Lee, G. White, and D. Dong (Eds.) Educating for Civic Reasoning and Discourse. Washington DC: National Academy of Education.  

Tachine, A.R., Notah, T., Skeet, B. Dance, S.L., Brayboy, B. McK. J. (2021). Turning Points: Imagining and Designing Place and Belonging for Native Students. In F. Bonner (Ed.) Square Pegs and Round Holes: Alternative Student Development Frameworks and Models for Higher Education and Student Affairs. Hampton, VA: Stylus Press.  

Searle, K.A., Litts, B.K., Brayboy, B. McK. J., Kafai, Y.B., Casort, T. Benson, S., Dance, S.L. (2020). Indigenous Youth Making Community Tours. In M. Nathan & Y.B. Kafai (Eds.). Designing Constructivist Futures (pp. 177-184). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  

Castagno, A.E., Solyom, J., & Brayboy, B. (2020). Culturally Responsive Schooling as a Form of Critical Pedagogies for Indigenous Youth and Tribal Nations. In S. Steinberg & B. Down (Eds.) The SAGE handbook of critical pedagogies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526486455.n71  

Chin, J., Brayboy, B. McK. J. & Bustamante, N. (2019). Carceral Colonialisms: Schools, Prisons, and Indigenous Youth in the United States. In E. McKinley and L.T. Smith 10 (Eds.). Handbook on Indigenous Education (pp 575-604). Paris: Springer.  

Brayboy, B. Mck. J & M. Bang (2019). Societal Issues Facing Indigenous Education: An Introduction. In E. McKinley and L.T. Smith (Eds.). Handbook on Indigenous Education). Paris: Springer.  

Solyom, J.A., Chin, J., Brayboy, B. McK. J., Ben, C., Poleviyuma, A. Tom, M., Abuwandi, S., Richmond, A., Bang, M. (2019). Systems of Support: What Institutions of Higher Education can do for Indigenous Communities. In E. McKinley and L.T. Smith (Eds.). Handbook on Indigenous Education (pp. 1-25. Paris: Springer.