Chapter 1: Southwest Indian Education History

It is worth beginning with a reminder that neither Europeans nor Americans introduced the notion of education to the indigenous peoples of what is now the Southwest United States. Like all human societies, tribal nations in the region taught, and still teach, their children the sorts of skills and social obligations needed to ensure that their communities can continue to survive and thrive. Because much of the scholarship on the history of Indian education in the Southwest focuses on the use of education as a weapon of forced assimilation against Indian communities and students, it is important to remember that neither Spanish nor American colonialism represents the beginning of the story of Indian education in the Southwest.