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 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.…

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 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 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…

This study investigates the effects of the Family and Child Education (FACE) prekindergarten program on school readiness. The FACE program is located in Bureau of Indian Education-funded schools on some of the most rural American Indian (AI) reservations in the United States. It explicitly integrates the language and culture of the communities in…

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…

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…

This study examines the motivations of American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) educators currently enrolled in an educational leadership preparation program aspiring to educational leadership positions within AI/AN communities. Understanding the motivation of AI/AN educators to become school leaders may assist in increasing the pool of AI/AN school…

One aspect of building Native nations entails motivating American Indian/Alaska Native youth to become committed to their communities so as to sustain and move forward with the goals of American Indian/Alaska Native nations. This study determined the impact of one Native American Studies department on its Native students' life goals. Through its…

This paper is an analytic essay that examines the treatment of the Cherokee Trail of Tears in a North Carolina fourth grade textbook. I begin by offering a satiric look at an imaginary textbook's treatment of the Holocaust that is based closely on the actual narrative of the Trail of Tears written in the fourth grade text. Following this, close…

In this interpretive analysis elucidating fundamental tensions of the implementation of the 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act within Native-serving schools, we point to ways in which NCLB further limits the already contested sovereignty tribes exercise over how, and in what language their children are instructed. We discuss issues related to…

This study is about a community computing lab established by a U.S. Department of Commerce grant to bridge the Digital Divide in a rural Arizona American Indian community, a project called "Native Connection" (a pseudonym). This paper describes the process of integrating new literacies associated with a high-tech computer lab into the…