ABSTRACT
Unwilling to allow Native Americans to provide an education compatible with the needs of their own people, and fearing what they misunderstood, White Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries required that Indian children attend boarding schools in which traditional values and native languages were outlawed (Adams, 1988; Kramer, 1991; Lomawaima, 1993). Historically, federal policy towards Indian education has been directed at ‘civilizing,’ assimilating, and converting Native Americans into the mainstream of American, Christian culture (De Vos, 1980). As a result, Native people came to see government schooling as an attempt to destroy their culture, their way of thinking, and any links to their children (Unger, 1977).
