On Our Own Terms: Indigenous Histories of School Funding and Policy

By Meredith L. McCoy
University of Nebraska Press (2024)
223 pages

Review by Jon Reyhner

Meridith McCoy (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe descent) “narrates diverse strategies through which Native people have creatively repurposed and subverted federal funding and policy for schools to interrupt settler encroachment into Indigenous bodies, homes and minds and to promote Indigenous futures.” Many of her examples come from Turtle Mountain in North Dakota where she began her teaching career. She highlights “survivance stories” and stories of Indigenous “brilliance, resilience, community and continuity.”

McCoy chronicles the shift in government policies from termi­nation efforts in the 1950s to self-determination in the 1970s, following the Kennedy Report of 1969 and the National Study of Indian Education in 1970 that stressed the need for more culturally sensitive education. She writes about what was feasible in terms of getting laws passed and implemented in Washington, DC, versus what tribal communities want and how Native government officials networking within the federal bureaucracy can contribute significantly to making federal policy more Indian friendly.

McCoy gives the history of various government initiatives, including the Johnson O’Malley Act first passed in 1934 to pro­vide support to public schools enrolling Indian students, the Impact Aid Act of 1950, the Indian Education Act of 1972, and the Indian Self Determination Act of 1975, illustrating what Native people have lobbied for, what was actually passed into law, and the extent to which they were implemented. For example, she notes how in 1973, the Nixon administration attempted to “starve” implementation of the newly passed Indian Education Act. President Nixon and other politicians got support by offering to lower voters’ taxes, which negatively affected the ability of the government to financially support its many programs, including schools serving American Indian students.

McCoy notes how American schools are “physically confining spaces with curricula that hold Indigenous people in temporal, geographic, and narrative suspension” and how neoliberal edu­cation reforms disproportionately stress individualism and effi­ciency. She deplores that American Indian language and culture programs are seen as add-ons versus being made the foundation of all learning, however she does not discuss in detail how the emphasis on testing students in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2009 is a major factor in sidelining these programs. The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 that did fund some programs that supported teaching Native languages only appears in one of her footnotes.

There are some further gaps in her account. For example, while she mentions Dr. William Demmert’s (Tlingit/Oglala Sioux) important contribution in shaping Indian education policy, she does not discuss his role as co-chair of the U.S. Secretary of Education’s Indian Nations at Risk Task Force, and its impact, if any, on Indian education policy. Also, I did not find in the index any terms related to testing or parent involvement.

Jon Reyhner, EdD, is a professor of education at Northern Arizona University.