Konaway Nika Tillicum Native Youth Academy: Enacting a medicine wheel educational framework.

Native American youth need educational experiences that promote positive, healthy development, which requires decolonizing current educational experiences. Konaway Nika Tillicum Native Youth Academy (KNT) offers a holistic approach to education, incorporating Tribal cultures and values along with valuing higher education. Across two complementary studies, we seek to understand how the Medicine Wheel framework supports the design of educational experiences and the effectiveness of this design on positive development factors, including cultural identity development, self-esteem, and academic optimism.