Title Survival schools : the American Indian Movement and community education in the Twin Cities / Julie L. Davis

Published Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, [2013] ©2013

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Description 1 online resource (xv, 307 pages) : illustrations, map Contents Introduction : not just a bunch of radicals : a history of the survival schools -- The origins of the Twin Cities Indian community and the American Indian Movement -- Keeping ourselves together : education, child welfare, and AIM's advocacy for Indian families, 1968-1972 -- From one world to another : creating alternative Indian schools -- Building our own communities : survival school curriculum, 1972-1982 -- Conflict, adaptation, continuity, and closure, 1982-2008 -- The meanings of survival school education : identity, self-determination, and decolonization -- Conclusion : the global importance of Indigenous education Summary In the late 1960s, Indian families in Minneapolis and St. Paul were under siege. Clyde Bellecourt remembers, "We were losing our children during this time; juvenile courts were sweeping our children up, and they were fostering them out, and sometimes whole families were being broken up." In 1972, motivated by prejudice in the child welfare system and hostility in the public schools, American Indian Movement (AIM) organizers and local Native parents came together to start their own community school. For Pat Bellanger, it was about cultural survival. Though established in a moment of crisis, the school fulfilled a goal that she had worked toward for years: to create an educational system that would enable Native children "never to forget who they were." While AIM is best known for its national protests and political demands, the survival schools foreground the movement's local and regional engagement with issues of language, culture, spirituality, and identity. In telling of the evolution and impact of the Heart of the Earth school in Minneapolis and the Red School House in St. Paul, the author explains how the survival schools emerged out of AIM's local activism in education, child welfare, and juvenile justice and its efforts to achieve self-determination over urban Indian institutions. The schools provided informal, supportive, culturally relevant learning environments for students who had struggled in the public schools. Survival school classes, for example, were often conducted with students and instructors seated together in a circle, which signified the concept of mutual human respect. This book reveals how the survival schools contributed to the global movement for Indigenous decolonization as they helped Indian youth and their families to reclaim their cultural identities and build a distinctive Native community. The story of these schools, unfolding here through the voices of activists, teachers, parents, and students, is also an in-depth history of AIM's founding and early community organizing in the Twin Cities - and evidence of its long-term effect on Indian people's lives Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-300) and index Notes Print version record Subject American Indian Movement -- History SUBJECT American Indian Movement fast Subject Indians of North America -- Education -- Minnesota -- Minneapolis Indians of North America -- Education -- Minnesota -- Saint Paul Education and state -- Minnesota -- Minneapolis Education and state -- Minnesota -- Saint Paul Community education -- Minnesota -- Minneapolis Community education -- Minnesota -- Saint Paul EDUCATION -- Students & Student Life. HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI) Community education Education and state Indians of North America -- Education Minnesota -- Minneapolis Minnesota -- Saint Paul Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780816687046 0816687048 9781461933861 1461933862 9781299915381 1299915388 9781452947495 145294749X

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