This article argues that federally-funded Indigenous teacher preparation programs housed at mainstream, predominantly White universities can be colonial and thus require significant focused work in order to ensure that they are not. The article has three interrelated objectives: first, to discuss efforts to prepare Indigenous teachers for…

The U.S. dominant culture's values and ways of knowing depicted in college curriculum assume that American Indian/Alaska Native college students will assimilate to dominant cultural beliefs and values in order to acquire a degree in higher education. Representative of this hegemonic pedagogical paradigm is the prescribed basic communication course…

Latham's 13 recommendations to improve BIA schools reflect an ethnocentric assimilationist viewpoint that ignores both the history of Indian education and research on Indian, bilingual, and multicultural education. Additive educational programs that teach both English and Native language/culture create the conditions for student success. Contains…

American Indian/Alaska Native college students responded to two surveys: one assessing their overall psychological status; the other, their current commitment to the traditions they learned as children. Students described their psychological status in reliable, yet diverse ways: displaced and lost; comfortable and naturally embedded; sick,…

The differences in the attitudes and values of Indians and non-Indians attending a large western university are examined. (FF)

Navajo college students face the same stresses as White students. Navajo students must also cope with the dilemma of cultural beliefs, values, and self-concepts and with deciding whether to assimilate with the White culture or to maintain traditional cultural ties. (Author/CM)

Indian high school students helped to train educators in Indian language and culture. (MB)

Educational exchange between American Indians and outsiders is examined in three periods. From first contact to the mid-1800s, knowledge was exchanged relatively equally. From the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, acculturation was imposed upon American Indians. The political liberalism of the 1960s spawned renewed interest in Indian culture and rights,…

Utilization of ethnographic models to analyze, compare, and locate conflicts and/or discontinuities between home and school cultures can make the blending of those cultures more harmonious for Native American students. Differentiates between enculturation and acculturation. (CM)

Among 166 American Indian first-year college students studied for 6 years, only 16% graduated during the period. Typical college entrance criteria did not necessarily predict persistence. Interviews with 11 Navajo students examined going-home behavior, early educational intentions, and acculturation, and suggested culturally distinct…

Surveys of and interviews with 182 traditional Navajo, acculturated Navajo, and White parents and teachers elicited perceptions about 10 areas of gifted or talented characteristics and current practices of identification. Perceptions of giftedness differed between groups, according to level of acculturation. Navajos tended to use the term…

Native students must be taught to deconstruct their history of assimilation in order to understand their current struggles and to strengthen their cultural identity. As an example of this, the paper considers how community education was justified, carried out and implicated in Inupiat assimilation practices during the first 20 years that the U.S.…