Using that Good Tech Medicine: An Indigenous Autoethnographic Recount of Teaching and Learning with Elders During COVID-19

The author shares his lived experiences of teaching and learning with Elders during the COVID-19 pandemic while working in a residential Bureau of Indian Education boarding school. While navigating the challenges of transitioning to online and digital platforms as everyone adapted to rapidly changing environments, people all learned together through lessons of reciprocity. In other words, as much as Kelly taught Elders the nuances of technology, they taught him just as much about what it means to be Apache and Kiowa, and how to be patient and respectful as a teacher-learner. His stories of adaptation with peers and Elders during times of change help everyone involved deepen their understanding of the layered intergenerational learning that occurs in these transitions. Through this storytelling, his experiences provide informal lessons of reluctant leadership, cultural resilience, and his sense of Indian humor as Medicine.