On Our Own Terms - (Indigenous Education) by Meredith McCoy (Hardcover)

About the Book

On Our Own Terms sets recent federal education legislation against the backdrop of two hundred years of education funding and policy to explore two critical themes: the racial and settler colonial dynamics that have shaped Indian education and an equally long Indigenous tradition of engaging schools, funding, and policy on their own terms.

Book Synopsis

On Our Own Terms contextualizes recent federal education legislation against the backdrop of two hundred years of education funding and policy to explore two critical themes: the racial and settler colonial dynamics that have shaped Indian education and an equally long and persistent tradition of Indigenous peoples engaging schools, funding, and policy on their own terms. Focusing primarily on the years 1819 to 2018, Meredith L. McCoy provides an interdisciplinary, methodologically expansive look into the ways federal Indian education policy has all too often been a tool for structural violence against Native peoples. Of particular note is a historical budget analysis that lays bare inconsistencies in federal support for Indian education and the ways funds become a tool for redefining educational priorities.

McCoy shows some of the diverse strategies families, educators, and other community members have used to creatively navigate schooling on their own terms. These stories of strategic engagement with schools, funding, and policy embody what Gerald Vizenor has termed survivance, an insistence of Indigenous presence, trickster humor, and ironic engagement with settler structures. By gathering these stories together into an archive of survivance stories in education, McCoy invites readers to consider ongoing patterns of Indigenous resistance and the possibilities for bending federal systems toward community well-being.

Review Quotes

"This necessary examination of Indigenous education dives deep into elements not yet explored with this level of rigor and research. Meredith McCoy uncovers schools as colonizing tools, even down to their funding. Likewise, McCoy clearly illustrates the resistance of Indigenous peoples in their commitment to making education their own despite the barriers."--Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine-- (6/3/2024 12:00:00 AM)

"McCoy addresses schools as tools of colonial theft and oppression with masterful Indigenous creative strategies to subvert, repurpose, and create healthy, sustaining, future-building education for Native children. McCoy's critical interventions include a history of Native children in public schools; fine-grained financial analyses of federal grants and appropriations; unpacking of key education legislation; and stories of the giants on whose foundations we build--Forrest Gerard, Helen Maynor Schierbeck, William Demmert, David Beaulieu, and many more."--K. Tsianina Lomawaima (Mvskoke/Creek Nation descent), coauthor of "To Remain an Indian" Lessons for Democracy from a Century of Native American Education

"For those who teach, research, run programs, and work with policymakers at local and state levels, this book is a treasure trove of cross-references useful for taking lawmakers to task on tribal self-determination and the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act."--Vanessa Anthony-Stevens, associate professor of social and cultural studies at the University of Idaho

About the Author

Meredith L. McCoy (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe descent) is an assistant professor of American studies and history at Carleton College.