Native American Studies: Education

In his new book, John P. Hopkins examines recent efforts to reform Indigenous education in public schools. Hopkins centers his critique on Montana State’s innovative and bold multicultural education policy called Indian Education for All (IEFA), and demonstrates why Indigenous education reforms must decolonize the curriculum and pedagogy to address the academic inequalities facing Native students. Using tribal critical race theory and culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy, Indian Education for All proposes a shift in the ways teacher candidates learn about Indigenous education and instruct Native students. It explains why teachers and schools need to privilege Indigenous knowledge and explicitly integrate decolonization concepts into teaching and learning to address the academic gaps in Native education. This book will also help non-Native educators engage in productive and authentic conversations with tribal communities about what Indigenous education reform should entail.

"Recovering Native American Writings" in the Boarding School Press is the first comprehensive collection of writings by students and well-known Native American authors who published in boarding school newspapers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Students used their acquired literacy in English along with more concrete tools that the boarding schools made available, such as printing technology, to create identities for themselves as editors and writers. In these roles they sought to challenge Native American stereotypes and share issues of importance to their communities. Writings by Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala-sa), Charles Eastman, and Luther Standing Bear are paired with the works of lesser-known writers to reveal parallels and points of contrast between students and generations. Drawing works primarily from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (Pennsylvania), the Hampton Institute (Virginia), and the Seneca Indian School (Oklahoma), Jacqueline Emery illustrates how the boarding school presses were used for numerous and competing purposes. While some student writings appear to reflect the assimilationist agenda, others provide more critical perspectives on the schools' agendas and the dominant culture. This collection of Native-authored letters, editorials, essays, short fiction, and retold tales published in boarding school newspapers illuminates the boarding school legacy and how it has shaped, and continues to shape, Native American literary production.

Sherman Indian High School, as it is known today, began in 1892 as Perris Indian School with nine students. Its mission, like that of other off-reservation Indian boarding schools, was to "civilize" Indian children, which meant stripping them of their Native culture and giving them vocational training. Today, the school in Riverside, California, serves 350 students from 68 tribes, and its curricula are designed to both preserve Native languages and traditions and prepare students for life and work in mainstream American society. This book offers the first full history of Sherman Indian School's 100-plus years. Sherman Institute's historical trajectory features the abuse and exploitation familiar from the other accounts of life at Indian boarding schools. But this book also brings to light the ways Native children managed to maintain their dignity, benefited from interacting with students from other tribes, and often even expressed appreciation for their Sherman experiences. From the accounts of students, educators, and administrators over the years, Diana Meyers Bahr draws a picture of Sherman students successful navigating a complicated middle course between total assimilation and total rejection of white education.

This text discusses how American Indian educators define their roles and judge their achievements. The author examines the ways they address the complex issues of cultural identity that affect their students and themselves and how educators cope with the pressures of teaching disadvantaged students while meeting the requirements for reservation schools. This book includes personal accounts and candid comments about teacher's choice of profession; their position as teachers, role models, and social service agents; and the sometimes harsh realities of reservation life, offering unique insight into the challenges and rewards of providing an education to Native American students. Native American educators meet daunting challenges with enduring optimism and persistence. The insights these educators offer can serve those in other communities where students navigate a difficult path out of discrimination and poverty.

The majority of American Indian students attend public schools in the United States. However, education mandated for American Indian students since the 1800s has been primarily education for assimilation with the goal of eliminating American Indian cultures and languages. Indeed, extreme measures were taken to ensure Native students would "act white" as a result of their involvement with Western education. Today's educational mandates continue a hegemonic "one-size-fit-all" approach to education. This is in spite of evidence that these approaches have rarely worked for Native students and have been extremely detrimental to Native communities. This book provides information about the importance of teaching American Indian students by bridging home and school, using students' cultural capital as a springboard for academic success. Culturally responsive pedagogy is explored from its earliest beginnings following the 1928 Meriam Report.

This text provides vivid, comprehensive portraits, as well as scholarly quantitative and qualitative research, on the best practices that offer new and practical strategies for teachers to improve the academic performance of Native American Indian students.

Teachers, authors, and all those who teach others of Native American life need a thorough background in the Indian cultures and values. There are few sources as thorough or accurate as this. It is also essential that every teacher who wants Native students to achieve have a good understanding of the background and values of those students and the methods that will inspire them.

Imagine being suddenly uprooted from the family you love and the only home you have ever known. That is what happened to eighty-four Sioux boys and girls in 1879 when they were forced to leave their tribe behind and become students at the Carlisle Indian School. Carlisle was the first institution opened by the federal government for the education of Native American children. The brainchild of former Indian fighter Captain Richard Pratt, Carlisle, like other schools that followed, was established to "civilize" Indian children and teach them the "white man's way," including English, reading and writing, and the practice of Christianity. For some, like renowned Olympian and football star Jim Thorpe and physician Susan La Flesche, an Indian school education led to success and prosperity. But for many others, their boarding school days were often isolating and alienating experiences. Michael L. Cooper examines the purpose and daily routine of the Indian schools and tells the personal stories, often in their own words, of several young students.

Academic grouping techniques are often subtle methods of discrimination that allow schools to sort students into homogenous groups. Findings indicate that American Indian students are overrepresented in lower-ability special education classes and in suspensions. Conversely, American Indian students are underrepresented in gifted classes and in graduations. A model, including American Indian representation, education, and income, as well as school district size, explains the amount of second generation discrimination faced by American Indian students. School districts that have greater American Indian political power have greater political representation on the school board and hence greater representation in school administration and in classrooms. The most important and consistent factor limiting the amount of second-generation discrimination that American Indian students experience is the presence of American Indian teachers.

How do cultural differences and real-world issues affect the education of students, in this case, American Indian students? What approaches have real teachers found that work well with American Indian students? This books answers these and more thoughtful questions about teaching in today's diverse school communities. This book captures the collected wisdom of nearly 60 teachers of American Indian students, their frustrations, joys, and challenges. It provides in a very real way, a portrait of the issues that challenge these students, as well as the successes some teachers have in working with American Indian students. It provides new and fresh perspectives on learning styles and literacy issues. It is also the first book to confront issues of historic oppression and its impact on contemporary Indian education. New and practicing teachers seeking to enhance their awareness and teaching methods to meet the needs of today's diverse classrooms.

Fascinating excerpts from government documents, court decisions, letters from commissioners of Indian affairs, and eyewitness accounts trace the white man's effort over the years to educate and assimilate Native Americans into the Euro-American culture. Beginning with a description of Indian education before contact, DeJong's highly informative and readable selections dramatize a struggle that continues today-a struggle ultimately aimed at the control of a people. From the first tentative efforts of the missionaries, to the successful schools of the Five Civilized Tribes, to the shocking inhumanity of the boarding school era, these readings reveal in minute detail the dark past of Indian miseducation. The reader will come to understand how decades of cultural ignorance on the part of white society has affected the past, present, and future of today's tribal nations.

Fry bread is food. it is warm and delicious, piled high on a plate. Fry break is time. It brings families together for meals and new memories. Fry bread is nation. It is shared by many, from coast to coast and beyond. Fry bread is us. It is celebration of old and new, traditional and modern, similarity and difference. Told in lively and powerful verse by debut author Kevin Noble Maillard, Fry Bread is an evocative depiction of a modern Native American family, vibrantly illustrated by Caldecott Honor winner Juana Martinez-Neal.

A child describes what daily life is like for his Navajo family living in a hogan built long, long ago by his great-grandfather.

Even more than a new name, Little Pranskter Girl wants to learn how to weave, so she decides to teach herself.

In 1764, when Kaya and her family reunite with other Nez Percé Indians to fish for the red salmon, she learns that bragging, even about her swift horse, can lead to trouble. Includes historical notes on the Nez Percé Indians.

Shedding fresh light on a tragic chapter of American history, this book documents a shameful episode in the 1860s, when U.S. soldiers forced thousands of Navajo to march 400 miles from their homeland to a desolate reservation.

A collection of traditional tales originally told in the Hopi pueblos of Arizona, featuring animal characters.

A young Navajo girl enjoys every part of the annual Shiprock Fair, including the dances, parade, carnival, exhibits, contests, food, and the chance to visit relatives.

A scarred face does not prevent the Rough-Face girl from seeing the beauty of the earth around her, nor does it disguise her beautiful, kind heart in this award-winning retelling of a powerful Algonquin Cinderella.

Fifteen-year-old Anita Whiterock, a Navajo teenager living on a New Mexico reservation, struggles with conflicting forces as she tries to reconcile traditional Navajo ways with her desires for progress.

Native children across North America are straddling two cultures - traditional Native American and modern day. Many are struggling with the clash caused by retaining Native ways while growing up in contemporary American society. What happens when Virgil, a Mohawk boy, walks on a high beam, trying to imitate his father? Louis, a Cree, never thought he would be building the new family canoe after his father falls through the old one. Betty, who is Koyukon from Alaska, wants to stay home and watch TV with her best friend, but she's in for a real surprise when she experiences her first potlatch. These contemporary Native stories - some funny, some sad - show children bridging the gap between two worlds in surprising and touching ways.

A biography of the Oglala leader who relentlessly resisted the white man's attempt to take over Indian lands.

Kids discover traditions and skills from the people who first settled this continent, including gardening, making useful pottery, and communicating through Navajo codes.

Anxious to be given a name as strong and brave as that of his father, a proud Lakota Sioux grows into manhood, acting with careful deliberation, determination, and bravery, which eventually earned him his proud new name: Sitting Bull.

A child living in the Arctic learns that a mother's love is unconditional.