This paper reviews the meaning and content of various First-Nation self-government discourses that have emerged over the last 40 years. Based on a detailed thematic analysis of policy papers, reports, and self-governance agreements on this issue of First-Nations control of education, this paper presents a coherent and defensible understanding of…

Interviews with students, administrators/faculty, and the Cree community in Manitoba explored delivery of postsecondary community-based education. The model of community-controlled education includes Cree culture (indigenous knowledge and traditions), university culture, and the negotiated interface of innovative delivery and instruction and a…

This book presents the voices of Navajo parents, students, educators, administrators, school board members, and politicians in Rough Rock, Arizona, home of a community based school for American Indian students. The Rough Rock Demonstration School, started in 1966, is lauded as an exemplary "experiment" in American Indian education. It…

Discusses conditions which led to the establishment of tribally controlled colleges, including the lack of an appropriate place in higher education for American Indians and conflicts with Euro/American value systems. Describes efforts of five tribal colleges and suggests that these programs help break the cycle of poverty on reservations. (MAB)

Through a series of organizational and instructional changes, comprehensive planning aims to make it possible for all children to reach the same high academic standards. Educators and parents of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students, as well as other members of tribal communities, must participate in this planning to ensure that the…

A tribal college president describes how partnerships with international companies (such as one that changes slaughterhouse waste blood into protein additives for animal and human foods) may be lucrative but conflict with tribal traditions, culture, and integrity. States that globalization does not always serve the purposes of tribal colleges.…

The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwas in Minnesota developed casinos and invested the huge revenue in two new schools that teach their language, history, and culture. The article provides a history of the development of the schools and several tribe members' opinions of the casinos and the way the revenue is used. (SM)

States that Helen Scheirbeck has been an educational advocate for American Indians in Washington D.C. and in various academic settings since the late 1960s. Reports that, in particular, she pushed for change in political and bureaucratic processes and attitudes to help American Indians exercise more sovereignty over their educational institutions.…

Modified school years in First Nation schools contextualize the learning process by allowing student participation in traditional, seasonal, outdoor activities. Two case studies in which Hudson Bay area school officials unilaterally reintroduced the conventional calendar illustrate the important roles that First Nations education authorities can…

States that tribal colleges are not Ivory Towers standing above and beyond their communities. American Indians have higher rates of poverty, unemployment, sickness, mortality than others in the United States. Tribal colleges must provide health services, childcare and other community services as well as education to meet the needs of their…

More than a century of centralized government and church control of Aboriginal education in Canada, aimed primarily at cultural assimilation, resulted in injustices, widespread inequalities, and underdevelopment. In the 1970s, after much political wrangling, the Canadian federal government and the First Nations agreed upon a policy of Indian…

This book documents the debate among the Inuit of Nunavik (northern Quebec) over the purposes, strengths, and weaknesses of public schools in their 14 arctic communities. The book begins with a summary of the history of education in Nunavik, including traditional Inuit methods and purposes of education. The 14 communities comprise the Kativik…

Effective strategies for assisting Canadian Native communities to develop school boards included encouraging an unhurried adaptive learning process, providing guidance to achieve consensus, and allowing for an incubation period. Impediments to development included community members' avoidance of leadership roles, cross-cultural misunderstandings,…

Available evidence suggests that Islamic (or Quranic) schools, as the primary contemporary example of indigenous schooling, have made major changes in various countries where they remain active. These include changes in the nature of instruction, style of teaching, and teacher corps. In general, these changes have been made in response to social…

To examine the influence of Western perspectives on indigenous language teaching, a two-dimensional framework of approaches to language teaching is presented. A horizontal continuum concerning the nature of language ranges between form and function, and a vertical continuum concerning the nature of language learning ranges between construction and…