Description
In To Remain an Indian: Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education, a fascinating portrait of American Indian education over the past century, the authors critically evaluate U.S. education policies and practices—from early 20th century federal incarnations of colonial education through the contemporary standards movement. In the process, they reveal the falseness of fears attached to notions of “dangerous cultural difference,” and convey the promise of diversity as a source of national strength. Featuring the voices and experiences of Native individuals that official history has silenced and pushed aside, this text: Proposes a theoretical framework of the “safety zone” to explain shifts in federal educational policies and practices over the past century; Offers lessons learned from Indigenous America’s fight to protect and assert educational self-determination; Overturns stereotypes of American Indians as one-dimensional learners; argues that the struggle to revitalize and maintain Indigenous languages is a fundamental human right; and Examines the standards movement as the most recent attempt to control the “dangerous difference” allegedly presented by students of color, poor and working class students, and English language learners in U.S. schools. K. Tsianina Lomawaima is Chair of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. Teresa L. McCarty is the Alice Wiley Snell Professor of Education Policy Studies at Arizona State University.