Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
2005
Abstract
Do we need another history of Indian schools? After reading this book - a revision of Reyhner and Eder's 1989 study of Indian education - the answer is yes and no. Not surprisingly, they harshly criticize education's role in the United States government's coercive assimilation campaigns, but offer only a limited assessment of how students, parents, and communities negotiated the cultural battleground of education between the end of the Civil War and the Indian Reorganization Act. The authors do their best work addressing events since the 1950s, a period yet to receive a full treatment. Their discussion of those years is discerning and instructive, pointing the way to new and important issues.
Comments
Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 25:3 (Summer 2005). Copyright © 2005 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.