"To Remain an Indian"

“Offers a balm against despair (and) provides an inspiring theoretical frame for those who continue to fight for indigenous control.” —Tribal College Journal (of first edition)

"This second edition is essential reading for reckoning with the ongoing attempts to diminish Indigenous nations’ languages and cultures through schooling.” —Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

“To Remain an Indian” traces the footprints of Indigenous education in what is now the United States.

Native Peoples’ educational systems are rooted in ways of knowing and being that have endured for millennia, despite the imposition of colonial schooling. In this second edition, the authors amplify their theoretical framework of settler colonial safety zones by adding Indigenous sovereignty zones. Safety zones are designed to break Indigenous relationships and impose relations of domination while sovereignty zones foster Indigenous growth, nurture relationships, and support life.

This fascinating portrait of Native American education highlights the genealogy of relationships across Peoples, places, and education initiatives in the 20th and 21st centuries. New scholarship re-evaluates early 20th-century “reforms” as less an endorsement of Indigenous self-determination and more a continuation of federal control. The text includes personal narratives from program architects and examines Indigenous language, culture, and education resurgence movements that reckon with the coloniality of U.S. schooling.

Book Features:

• Enriched theoretical framework contrasting settler colonial safety zones designed to control with Indigenous sovereignty zones designed to nurture Indigenous futures.
• The voices of activists and educators who are linked together in a genealogy of Indigenous educational self-determination.
• Developments in Indigenous schooling contextualized within the Piper v. Big Pine and Brown v. Board desegregation cases.
• Empirically updated case studies of ongoing language, culture, and education resurgence movements.
• Recent scholarship highlighting Progressive Era continuities in federal powers over Native Peoples and the impact of the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act.
• Visual imagery, including historic and contemporary photos of people and programs, curricular materials, and schools.

K. Tsianina Lomawaima (Muscogee/Creek Nation and German Mennonite descent) is a scholar of Indigenous studies and a retired professor. Teresa L. McCarty is Distinguished Professor and GF Kneller Chair in Education and Anthropology and faculty in American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Offers a balm against despair (and) provides an inspiring theoretical frame for those who continue to fight for indigenous control.”

—Tribal College Journal (of first edition)

“In this must-read second edition, Lomawaima and McCarty elaborate how settler safety zones are fundamentally about usefulness and domestication while highlighting the generative possibilities of Indigenous sovereignty zones, which are based on self-determination and relational abundance. Through robust archival and ethnographic research across multiple generations and diverse contexts, readers come to understand both the persistent attempted dismembering of Peoples, lands, and waters, and the sustained relational survivance of Indigenous communities and Native nations.”
—Angelina E. Castagno, professor, Northern Arizona University

“’To Remain an Indian’ has been a foundational text for understanding the landscape of settler colonial control in which Indigenous educators and activists have long asserted their visions of education. This new edition updates this genealogy of activism to highlight the everyday and collective ways that Indigenous people continue to mobilize zones of sovereignty in education on Indigenous terms and promote the resurgence of Indigenous languages, lifeways, and ultimately, Indigenous futures."
—Leilani Sabzalian, associate professor of Indigenous studies in education, University of Oregon

"Lomawaima and McCarty explore the deep ties between colonial education and land theft in America’s past, while bringing us close to Native educators, families, and leaders who continue to carve out zones of educational sovereignty. Essential reading for reckoning with the ongoing attempts to diminish Indigenous nations’ languages and cultures through schooling, more than a century on."
—Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, professor of Indigenous politics, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Contents

Series Foreword  James A. Banks  xi

Acknowledgments  xvii

Preface to the Second Edition  xxiii
Indigenous Sovereignty: Lessons for Democracy and Much More  xxiv
Indigenous Nations and the United States  xxv
Lessons for Democracy  xxvii
Goals for the Second Edition  xxviii
What Does “To Remain an Indian” Mean?  xxx
Where Do We Stand?  xxxi
Overview of the Book  xxxiv

1.  Illuminating Safety Zones and Sovereignty Zones in a History of Native American Education  1
Schools as “Civilizing” and Homogenizing Institutions  5
Safety Zone Theory: Explaining Policy and Its Development Over Time  8
Methodological and Theoretical Approaches  13

2.  The Strengths of Indigenous Education: Overturning Myths About Native Learners  19
Indigenous Education Versus U.S. Schooling  19
How and Why Do Stereotypes Endure?  20
Native Voices Teach Lessons of Shared Humanity  24
Indigenous Knowledge Guides Human Societies  25
Carefully Designed Educational Systems  29
Language-Rich Contexts for Education  32
Learning by Doing  38
A Return to Choice and Local Control  41

3.  Women’s Arts and Children’s Songs: Domesticating Indigeneity, 1900–1928  44
Indians as Children: “Insensible Wards”  46
Boarding Schools Versus Day Schools  49
A Political Economy of School Practices: The “Dignity of Labor”  50
Race and the Safety Zone: Designating the Right Place  53
Attempts to Domesticate Indigeneity  60
An Unprecedented Possibility: “To Remain an Indian”  65
Conclusion  68

4.  Power Struggles Over How “To Remain an Indian,” 1924–1940  69
Indian Citizenship Act of June 2, 1924  71
Piper v. Big Pine: An Early Ruling on School Desegregation  73
The “New” Vocational Education  75
Native Teachers in the Federal Schools  82
The Revival of Arts and Crafts Instruction  86
The Keystone of Control: Reforms Versus Business as Usual  90
Conclusion  95

5.  Control of Culture: Federally Produced Curricular and Bilingual Materials, 1930–1954  96
“Indian History and Lore” Courses  96
The Bureau’s Indian Life Readers Series  100
The Pueblo Life Readers  105
The Sioux Life Readers  107
The Navajo Life Readers  111
The Hopi Life Readers  112
Native Translators and Interpreters  115
New Developments: Publication of Authentically Diné Stories  120

6.  Carving Out Zones of Sovereignty: Bilingual-Bicultural Education and “Who Should Control the Schools”  123
Contours of the Safety Zone, 1950–1960  124
The Seeds of Transformation  126
Rough Rock—A School “The People Made for Themselves”  129
Rock Point Community School—Making the Most of a “Window of Opportunity”  135
The Peach Springs Hualapai Bilingual-Bicultural Program—“A School of Choice”  139
The Hard Labor of Sovereignty Zone Construction  143

7.  “For the Benefit of My People”: Mobilizing Sovereignty Zones in Indigenous Language Reclamation  146
Mohawk Language Resurgence: “Our People Have Latched Onto the Idea of Becoming Speakers of Their Own Language”  149
Hawaiian Language Resurgence: “We Knew It Was Urgent and We Had People Willing to Take the Risk”  155
Diné Language Resurgence: “Giving Students Access to the Goodness of Being and Speaking Navajo”  163
Myaamia Language Resurgence: “We Must be Conscious Gardeners If We are Going to Have a Community Harvest”  168
A Genealogy of Sovereignty Zone Builders  173

8.  Landscapes of Sovereignty Zone Opportunity  178
Landscapes of Opportunity in K–12 Schools  180
Landscapes of Opportunity in Postsecondary Education  189
Lessons in Democracy  197

Notes  201

References  207

Index  233

About the Authors  250