Native American and Indigenous Studies

while historical scholarship on federal and public schools for Native students has rapidly expanded in the past thirty years, scholarship on the perspectives of Indigenous people relative to higher education has been somewhat under-explored. Stepping into this gap, John A. Goodwin's Without Destroying Ourselves: A Century of Native Intellectual Activism for Higher Education offers a useful overview of some of the key players in Native histories of higher education from the 1870s through the 1970s. Henry Roe Cloud, Elizabeth Bender Cloud, D'Arcy McNickle, Jack Forbes, Robert K. Thomas, Robert V. Dumont, Dillon Platero, Sam Ahkeah, and Ned Hatathli feature most prominently in this telling. Of these, Henry Roe Cloud takes center stage, with early chapters establishing him as the measuring stick against which later experiments in higher education are evaluated.

Goodwin articulates a vision of Native leaders' strategies for advancing Indigenous priorities through the mechanism of higher education, emphasizing how Native people have "search[ed] for cracks in governmental bureaucracies in which they could plant the seeds of their own Indigenous agendas" (2). In doing so, he nuances some familiar stories and demonstrates continuities in Indigenous thinking about possibilities for higher education. Goodwin's analysis points to persistent challenges, including funding and conflicting visions for the "how" of implementing Indigenous forms of higher education. His descriptions of how Native leaders in the past have navigated these challenges may allow the reader to consider the benefits and challenges of specific interventions with ramifications for the present. To support this reflection, the book concludes with a brief set of considerations for policy, funding, and practice moving into the future.

As an intellectual history, Without Destroying Ourselves focuses primarily on the perspectives and visions of prominent Native leaders. Goodwin's narrative focuses on "moments of ambiguity and struggle" as he centers their "creativity to employ institutional frameworks compatible with and recognizable to the world of settler colonialism" while "protecting and advancing [End Page 128] Native-driven goals" (5). He argues that Native leaders in higher education have demonstrated a particular adaptability in strategy and messaging to accomplish these efforts. To support this argument, Goodwin draws upon their own materials, including diaries, speeches, letters, and oral histories, among others. Of the secondary literature he engages, Renya Ramirez's interpretation of the efforts of Henry and Elizabeth Cloud notably informs Goodwin's analysis.

Goodwin notes the potential drawbacks of centering "a particular chorus of leading voices," as the emphasis on individuals can at times obscure collective efforts (186). Even so, scholars seeking information on the American Indian Institute and Haskell (particularly relative to Henry Roe Cloud and, to a lesser extent, Elizabeth Bender Cloud) will find the first part of the book to be of aid. The book's exploration of community-wide initiatives is stronger in the second half of the book, particularly in Goodwin's discussions of Navajo Community College and Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University. The final chapter on tribal colleges focuses particularly on the origins of Turtle Mountain Community College, Sinte Gleska University, Sitting Bull College, and Oglala Lakota College. Of these experiments, Goodwin is perhaps most critical of Jack Forbes and the work of D-Q University, wondering whether Forbes was "so emotionally invested in his own effort" that he cast himself as "particularly innovative" at the cost of acknowledging the legacies of previous activism.

While many of the cast of the book are familiar, other familiar stories are surprisingly absent. Bacone College, for example, founded in 1880, does not appear in the book, nor does the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, founded as Croatan Normal School in 1887. Both of these stories would have usefully expanded Goodwin's discussion of early issues facing Indigenous leaders in higher education. Additionally, some engagement with the 1994 Tribal Land-Grant Colleges and Universities Program would have pointed us toward Goodwin's understanding of more recent developments for tribal colleges.

Despite these omissions, the book provides a helpful...