Book Review

With all the scholarly attention paid to Indian education over the past two decades, it is perhaps surprising that it has taken so long for a study of higher education to emerge. Because so few Native Americans attended colleges prior to the 1960s, however, the subject has not until recently appeared to be significant. In this book, Cary Michael Carney, a professional educator, notes that, while the idea of providing Indian peoples with advanced education is not new, it has only blossomed with the rise of Indian self-determination over the past forty years.

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The book is divided into three historical periods: the colonial, the federal from 1789 to 1960, and the recent era of Indian control. Carney depicts the colonial period as one in which well-meaning whites unsuccessfully attempted to place Indians in such institutions as Harvard and Dartmouth primarily as a method of spreading the gospel. For many schools, the enrollment of native students served as an excuse to raise funds from charitable Europeans as much as it did to benefit the students. Dartmouth College, which earned a reputation for catering to Indian students, never had more than a few token students. Moreover, Indians seldom realized any benefit from the classical training offered them.

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