Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought

This book examines the tensions and intersections between dominant modes of critical educational theory and issues relative to American Indian education. Though at the forefront of educational struggles for equity and social justice, critical theorists have failed to recognize and, more importantly, to theorize the relationship between American Indian tribes and the larger democratic imaginary. This failure has severely limited their ability to produce political strategies and educational interventions that account for the rights and needs of American Indian students. To compound the issue, American Indian scholars have largely resisted engagement with critical educational theory, concentrating instead on the production of historical monographs, ethnographic studies, tribally centered curriculums, and site-based research. The combined effect of external neglect by critical scholars and internal resistance among indigenous scholars has kept matters of American Indian education on the margins of educational discourse.

This lack of interchange has additionally raised a series of important questions: How has the marginalization of critical analyses within American Indian education contributed to the "culturalization" of American Indian issues and concerns? How has the focus on "cultural" representations of Indian-ness contributed to a preoccupation with parochial questions of identity and authenticity? And, finally, how has this preoccupation obscured the socialpolitical and economic realities facing indigenous communities, substituting a politics of representation for one of radical social transformation?