This case study of a Native American high school senior focuses on one of the final assignments he completed before dropping out of school early in the school year. The task was to draw a life map--a nonverbal text that identified 10 key life events on his journey to that point--as part of a larger unit on identity for his senior English class.…

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 purpose of this study was to explore the postsecondary education transition experiences of graduates of Choctaw Central High School (CCHS) who received support from the tribal scholarship program (TSP), to better understand the barriers to successful postsecondary completion and means of overcoming barriers. A total of 87 TSP-supported…

This article presents the keynote address given by Dr. Monty Roessel, Superintendent of the Rough Rock (Navajo) Community School, at the Center for Indian Education Relaunch Celebration held on the ASU Tempe campus May 6, 2011. Here, the author reflects on the legacy of the Center, co-founded by his father, Dr. Robert A. (Bob) Roessel, Jr., who…

Scholars and university administrators have noted significant disparities in the rates at which Native students graduate from college in a timely manner relative to students from other racial/ethnic groups. It has been posited that this is because in order to succeed, Native students must negotiate the contradictory values of Western and Native…

While a number of challenges contribute to the American Indian population's disconnect from information technology (IT), the most glaring is the low number of American Indian students pursuing computer science (CS) studies--a degree essential to IT's entry into and diffusion across communities. Yet, research is scant on factors that contribute to…

This article describes the influences of William Demmert's formative years growing up in Alaska and his years as an educator of Native American students upon his career in Native education policy. It focuses on Alaska Native education during a ten-year period between 1980 and 1990 during which time he served as the director of the Center for…

This article analyzes the strategies that a sample of Maya men and women of Yucatan, Mexico used to avoid dropping out of school. Data from in-depth interviews, focus groups and life stories were analyzed using grounded theory techniques through a non-essentialist gender approach. Among the Maya, statistics show that women drop out of school…

This article describes 40 years of interactive friendship and work between William Demmert, Jr. and Rosemary Christensen, who met during the First Convocation of American Indian Scholars in March 1970 at Princeton University and then in the fall of that same year as they both arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts as graduate students in the first…

The aim of this article is to examine the origin of perceived discrimination as it appears in the discourse of Mapuches living in Temuco and Santiago, and how that discourse is related to the evaluation of "kimeltuwun" (educational knowledge). A qualitative design was used to survey Mapuche emigrants to these two urban centers, where…

This article traces the work of William Demmert, Jr. in the Arctic and Subarctic as a member of the Steering Committee on Cross-Cultural Education in the Circumpolar North. It seeks to fulfill in part Demmert's wish that the work of the steering committee, of which he was the last chairman, be chronicled. From the time of the first planning…

In light of attempts to build a stronger appreciation for knowledge that is often constructed by the dominant Western culture's standards, this article focuses on the efforts to create agency among classroom teachers who teach in rural Alaskan schools. In discussions around the theories of assessment--the focal point of a summer course examined…

This article traces the Native American education policy career of William Demmert, Jr. from the development and implementation of the Indian Education Act of 1972 through the implementation of the Executive Order on American Indian and Alaska Native Education signed by President Clinton to the initiation of a unique research partnership to…

This second article in "JAIE'"s new "Reports from the Field" section1 explores a culturally based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) program at a northern Minnesota Bureau of Indian Education high school. Engaging American Indian youth from disenfranchised communities in STEM programs has been challenging.…

Recognition of the disproportionately high failure rate of American Indian students in local public schools caused Tribal officials to consider development of a reservation-based charter high school. Eagle High School opened its doors August 30, 2004. This article presents the findings of a two-year study, which examined the struggles of the…