What Matters to Us?: Contemplating a Holistic Indigenous Identity Framework Through Four Framing Questions

This article introduces a conceptual framework for Indigenous college student identity development, addressing the limitations of mainstream student development theories rooted in Western, Eurocentric worldviews. Drawing on Tribal Critical Race Theory and relationality, we propose four guiding questions—Where are we? Who are we? Who am I responsible to? How do we know what we know?—to illuminate the intersecting cultural, historical, and social complexities shaping Native students’ identities.