To Remain an Indian

K. Tsianina Lomawaima (Muscogee and German Mennonite descent) is a scholar of Indigenous studies and a retired professor. Teresa L. McCarty is Distinguished Professor and GF Kneller Chair in Education and Anthropology and faculty in American Indian studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"To Remain an Indian" traces the footprints of Indigenous education in what is now the United States. Native Peoples' educational systems are rooted in ways of knowing and being that have endured for millennia, despite the imposition of colonial schooling. In this second edition, the authors amplify their theoretical framework of settler colonial Safety Zones by adding Indigenous Sovereignty Zones. Safety Zones are designed to break Indigenous relationships and impose relations of domination while Sovereignty Zones foster Indigenous growth, nurture relationships, and support life. This fascinating portrait of Native American education highlights the genealogy of relationships across Peoples, places, and education initiatives in the 20th and 21st centuries. New scholarship re-evaluates early 20th-century "reforms" as less an endorsement of Indigenous self-determination and more a continuation of federal control. The text includes personal narratives from program architects and examines Indigenous language, culture, and education resurgence movements that reckon with the coloniality of U.S. schooling.