America Indian culture and traditions have survived an unusual amount of oppressive federal and state educational policies intended to assimilate Indian people and destroy their cultures and languages. Yet, Indian culture, traditions, and people often continue to be treated as objects in the classroom and in the curriculum. Using a critical race theory framework and a unique counternarrative methodology, American Indian Education explores a host of modern educational issues facing American Indian peoples-from the impact of Indian sports mascots on students and communities, to the uses and abuses of law that often never reach a courtroom, and the intergenerational impacts of American Indian education policy on Indian children today. By interweaving empirical research with accessible composite narratives, Matthew Fletcher breaches the gap between solid educational policy and the on-the-ground reality of Indian students, highlighting the challenges faced by American Indian students and paving the way for an honest discussion about solutions.

In this first of a series on critical race theory in education, Fletcher (Michigan State U. College of Law) uses fictionalized narrative concerning a Michigan Indian tribe, loosely based on the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, to examine a range of modern educational issues facing American Indians in grade schools, colleges, and professional schools. Seven narratives feature a community activist seeking to change the sports team name of the local high school; a high school history teacher working to improve the curriculum concerning American-Indian relations; two Indian high school students falsely accused of starting a fight with a non-Indian student; an Indian student weighing the social, political, and familial motivations for attaining a college education; Indian students confronting a secret society on a University campus that mocks American Indian cultures; Indian students and a white professor exposing another non-Indian academic who falsely writes from an Indian perspective; a first amendment legal dispute concerning a presentation by a traditional pipe carrier in a public school classroom; and a Supreme Court case concerning whether a private school founded by the tribe can refuse to accept non-Indians. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)