ABSTRACT
Curriculum is designed to prepare students academically for life of the reservation while grounding them in their native culture. This chapter focuses on trying to understand the educational ideas and practices that existed before that interaction began, many of which continue to play roles in Native American cultural and childrearing practices even today, as well as with the formal educational system that was developed for and imposed on Native Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It examines the current state of affairs with respect to the education of Native American children in the United States. Native Americans had their own well-developed system of education long before explorers and settlers came to this country. In recent years, for instance, Gregory Cajete, a member of the Pueblo tribe and a gifted educational scholar, has attempted to do just this by linking a model of indigenous Native American educational philosophy to contemporary educational practice in our society.
